Theological materialism can re-enchant and repair the world

Conservative Christians see materialism bringing only narcissism and nihilism into the world, and they look forward to the religious “re-enchantment” of the world. They believe only traditional religion can restore a politics and a culture oriented toward the highest Good.

But conservative Christians are mistaken about materialism. Materialism can give us a Godhood that includes both religion and science.

Conservative Christians think that our disenchantment with the religious world coincided with scientific advances but scientific advances have given us the best way to repair and re-enchant the world. Meaning can once again pervade the world, producing men and women capable of restoring a politics and a culture based in the evolution of the material world.

There is a way to reconcile and synthesize these things: Godhood is evolved to in the material world. It is the material will to Godhood that replaces the will to power and the spiritual drive. The “first cause” is the material activation within life, Tirips, or the will-to-Godhood activating material life, and then life is shaped by the vagaries of natural selection and evolution. There is endless evolution toward higher and higher truth, intelligence, beauty, and goodness, that is, continually evolving ascending Godhoods are reached. But life can also fall back in devolution, new cosmos are formed again, but always giving life another chance to evolve to Godhood. 

We can repair the world not tear it down. We can conservatively keep the old ascetic inward path to the "god" within in the Twofold Path, but only as a symbolic glimpse of the real Godhood reached in the outward path of material evolution to real Godhood. The Twofold Path can make room for the traditional, non-object-idea-only definitions of the God-Within, or even the bliss feelings of Father-Within of the Inward Path of the great religions---this is included but transformed in the Outward Path of the evolution to Godhood in theological materialism.

There is a way to reconcile and synthesize the endless battles for First Things

 In the battles between the right and the left, the replacement the spiritual by the material, the group by the individual, the will to power versus reason, Nietzsche against Aristotle, there is a way to reconcile and synthesize these things: Godhood is evolved to in the material world. It is the material will to Godhood that replaces the will to power and the spiritual drive.

The “first cause” is the material activation within life, Tirips, or the will-to-Godhood activating material life, and then life is shaped by the vagaries of natural selection and evolution. There is endless evolution toward higher and higher truth, intelligence, beauty, and goodness, that is, continually evolving ascending Godhoods are reached. Life can also fall back in devolution, new cosmos are formed again, always giving life another chance to evolve to Godhood.

We can conservatively keep the old ascetic inward path to the "god" within in the Twofold Path, but only as a symbolic glimpse of the real Godhood reached in the outward path of material evolution to real Godhood. The Twofold Path can make room for the traditional, non-object-idea-only definitions of the God-Within, or even the bliss feelings of Father-Within of the Inward Path of the great religions---this is included but transformed in the Outward Path to Godhood in the theological materialism of the projected Theoevolutionary Church.

And evolutionary conservatism believes that if real kin and ethnic-centered human nature was allowed to be what it is, it would naturally lead to regionalism, localism, general conservative values, eventually ethnostates, and finally an ethnopluralism of ethnostates for all groups, black, white, brown, yellow, or red, with each ethnostate protected from marauding imperialists, global businesses, supremacists, Marxists, etc., and defended by a defensive federalism. An ethnopluralism of ethnostates could be established legally in the United States with our constitutional separation of powers and states.

The Third Covenant versus both the Traditionalist School and the Great Reset

Political philosophers talk of ideologies, like the Great Reset, religious philosophers talk of covenants, mysticism, etc, like the Traditionalist School, I believe the Third Covenant, the Cosmic Covenant, surpasses both of these.

As Michael Rectenwald said in his excellent essay on Klaus Schwab, chairman of the World Economic Forum, “What Is the Great Reset?” (Imprimus, Dec 2021) “Another way of describing the goal of the Great Reset is “capitalism with Chinese characteristics”—a two-tiered economy, with profitable monopolies and the state on top and socialism for the majority below...While approved corporations are not necessarily monopolies, the tendency of the Great Reset is toward monopolization—vesting as much control over production and distribution in as few favored corporations as possible, while eliminating industries and producers deemed non-essential or inimical. To bring this reset about, Schwab writes, “[e]very country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed.”

As have said before, my view of the absolute importance of human evolution kept me away from the brilliant seduction of the Traditionalist School which is where the Alt-right turned. Many have now gone over to the school of Guenon, Evola, and the Russian Dugin, and embraced a non-populist, old spiritual religious, imperialist, hierarchy of rule, and have downplayed or even rejected the idea of science and evolutionary progress. Why didn't the Alt-right feature more Western geniuses, men like the brilliant British/American psychologist Raymond Cattell, or the great Neo-Darwinist field of sociobiology, rather than converting to the West-hating Russian imperialist Aleksandr Dugin and his Traditionalist School teachers, Guénon and Evola who did not find science (a jewel of the West) nearly as important as Eastern spiritualism (a jewel of the East).

I wrote of Three Covenants explaining how in the First Covenant of Primordial Tradition the Spirit and Soul of the Inward Path were understood as existing in the blood, that is, as being passed on only racially and tribally to a chosen eg. (Jewish) or noble (Aryan) people, etc.. Then Jesus Christ (and Eastern masters) brought the knowledge that the spirit and Soul-Within need not be understood and affirmed only racially or tribally but could be understood and followed by any race, any people, universally, provided they were taught the proper way to see or experience the God Within; Christianity said we were “Chosen” through faith in Christ not chosen by blood. That was the Second Covenant. Theological materialism (and the projected Theoevolutionary Church) affirm the mission and path of the Third Covenant, the Cosmic Covenant of the Evolutionary Outward Path, which revitalizes Primordial Tradition, Christianity, Hinduism etc. by once again affirming the First Covenant of genetic and biological qualities within our material evolution to supermaterial Godhood as applied to the Outward Path of material evolution to supermaterial Godhood, yet also, as in the Second Covenant, this is applied to all people, all nations, all races, all people, preferably living in their own protected states or ethnostates with access to knowledge of the material evolution to Godhood. That is the synthesis of the Three Covenants in theological materialism.

The Third Covenant acknowledges the biological origin of our social behavior which can end the intellectual separation between political ideologies and religious covenants, pointing toward the religious/political/cultural solution of the ethnopluralism hypothesis, often written about here. It is a conservative transformation---not revolution---that can bring about an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, which is the sociopolitical or political/cultural structure most in harmony with kin-centered and ethnocentric real human nature which evolved many thousands of years ago and remains with us today. Each ethnostate, each ethnic group, each race, can have access to knowledge of our sacred material evolution to supermaterial Godhood, and can pursue that sacred evolution in their own way in their own protected states, in the variety that is conducive to evolution, perhaps aided by nonpartisan international sociobiological research centers, as Raymond Cattell suggested.

The forced imperialism, supremacism, and multiculturalism of the world will give way to an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, in line with real kin and ethnic-centered human nature. I think the real debate in the U.S. should be over how we can conservatively adapt the Constitutional separation of powers and states to an ethnopluralism of ethnostates. Cooperative competition between small ethnostates and regions, protected internally and externally from imperialism, supremacism, and multiculturalism by some sort of federalism, which can bring the variety and creativity that evolution prefers, as we all materially evolve toward Godhood.

Darwinian evolution doesn't define the material “agency” that first activates material life and then the process of natural selection which follows

Speculation on Tirips and primal beginnings and endings (from the archive)

The “first cause” would be the material activation within life, Tirips, or the will-to-Godhood activating material life, and then life is shaped by the vagaries of natural selection and evolution. This activation is not confined to biological life, it happens with prebiological life, chemicals, even in big bang beginnings, etc. I do not see a final cause, I see endless evolution toward higher and higher truth, intelligence, beauty, and goodness, that is, continually evolving ascending Godhoods are reached. Life can also fall back in devolution, new cosmos are formed again, always giving life another chance to evolve to Godhood.

This suggests that the “essence” of life is Tirips or the will-to-Godhood within material life.  Tirips is the “God-Instinct” (rather than the "soul") and is the highest of all the material  instincts, higher even than the conscious brain which the activation of Tirips helps develop. Tirips has been concealed under the superficial polish of civilization. We need to go back and allow Tirips or the will-to-Godhood to develop and evolve. Science needs to discover and define Tirips.

This suggests that Tirips is “rational,” within the bounds of reason, not irrational like Nietzsche's power-seeking Dionysus. Tirips could be a form of divine consciousness since it "knows" to seek Godhood by activating material life to evolve to Godhood.  But Tirips is not Godhood, it seeks Godhood and is shaped by the vagaries of outside natural selection and evolution.

Human consciousness develops in the brains of humans which the materially-life-activating Tirips first helps develop along with outside natural selection and evolution. The Tirips theory of history says that the outer events of material life are the result of the activation of the usually unconsciousness inward Tirips or will-to-Godhood, and then is shaped by evolution from the outside, all the way from big bangs or electric universes to human civilization and beyond.

This resembles the way intellectual intuition is often followed by empirical science, that is, Tirips or the will-to-Godhood decides where it wants to go first, to Godhood, and then the body, mind and culture, and outside evolution, follow as best they can, given the various environments life finds itself living in.

Religion and science need a deep tune up

In an essay on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in Chronicles, Lee Congdon quotes Solzhenitsyn saying that a political system should not be measured by its military power or the size of its economy, but by the sum of the spiritual progress of individuals under its authority. Deeper than politics and economics is religion and the spiritual. Solzhenitsyn made it clear that his concerns were fundamentally religious and moral—the state structure was of secondary significance. I agree in general, but religion and science need a deep tuneup.

It has been said that politics is down stream from culture, and culture is down stream from religion. But religion has been slowly dying since the the 17th and 18th century Enlightenment, and it's demise has been speeding up since then. Science has not filled the gap although for many in the West it has tried to take the place of religion. Both religion and science need a tune up where they can take things from each other.

I would say the Enlightenment was 50 percent right in affirming science, and traditional religion was 50 percent right in affirming religion, but the Enlightenment was 50 percent wrong in smearing religion, and religion was 50 percent wrong in smearing science.

It is true that attempts were made to synthesizes these things. The Enlightenment affirmed Deism with God defined as nature, and religion tried bringing more rationalism into religion, but they really didn't like each other much, and that dislike grew worse as science advanced and religion faded.

Theological materialism retains religion and Godhood but religion and Godhood are reformed by evolutionizing religion, philosophy and politics, which is different from the Teilhard de Chardin project to evolutionize religion while retaining an entirely non-material, spiritual, trinitarian God.

We don't look to experience merely the symbolic God Within the human brain or heart, as traditional religion has done---although this is retained in the Inward Path---the Twofold Path seeks to save religion not destroy religion.

A rebirth of religion is needed. Perhaps the theological materialism of the projected Theoevolutionary Church will help bring science, art, philosophy and religion back together. The material world and mankind will materially evolve on earth and in the cosmos to ascending levels of real Godhood, the Godhood first seen only virtually, as a mirror, in the inward paths of the great religions.

The future of religion transformed (from the archive)

Matter is energy, but energy is matter. There would be no matter without energy but also no energy without matter. Do we really want to rate one higher than the other? I would then rate living matter as more evolved than simple energy. Spiritualism turns the real material world upside-down and claims that the religious/philosophical ideal is not really material, is not matter, or is more sacred energy than lowly matter. They claim that their supreme ideas are non-material and Godlike, or even God.

Why the hatred of the material world even to the point of blocking all material desires or blocking all life, at least for ascetics? They do it so that they can dwell in the blissful bodily experience of supreme ideas, unbothered and unaffected by material desires. It is a cloistered world ultimately driven by hedonism.

The main problem with traditional asceticism is that it blocks the path of material evolution to real supermaterial Godhood, which requires material desires, but channeled desires that need to genetically and culturally funnel evolving life-forms toward the supermaterial zenith of beauty, truth and goodness. This allows material science to enter religion as a help-mate. That is the future of religion transformed.

We can conservatively keep the old ascetic inward path to the "god" within in the Twofold Path, but only as a symbolic glimpse of the real Godhood reached in the outward path of material evolution to real Godhood.

 

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Spirit is Matter

Matter was Spirit to Teilhard de Chardin. He believed he had resolved a core conflict of the split between Matter and Spirit, between Body and Soul. He believed he understood that the evolution of matter was one and the same with the evolution of spirit (consciousness).

"The Way Teilhard Saw It"

               Spirit did not by the touch of the divine
               call lowly Matter to life,
               rather Matter was Spirit
                     from the absolute beginning
               latent with unimaginable power
               in the embryo of a cosmic mustard seed
               dreaming of bursting into flower!
                     -- Charles C. Finn, August 10, 2021”

Theological materialism sees it the opposite way: spirit is matter, there is no spirit. Spirit and matter are of one essence and not dualistic, just as energy can “freeze” into matter, and matter can unfreeze into energy. It's not really accurate to say that matter is the inferior aspect of spirit and spirit the superior aspect of matter, spirit is really super-materiality and not something apart from matter. This means you really can't define spirit and matter as good and evil, but you can define matter as evolved and unevolved. Evolution is the activation of the will to life within matter to evolve to Godhood, working along with outside evolution and national selection. Godhood is ascending levels of super-materiality.

 

How traditional religions can be transformed to save them

 Maybe the magnificent beauty alone of the church buildings will save them from the slow fall of Christianity which has been dying as materialism increasingly explains the former mysteries of religion. Change is reality, but so is retaining the best of the past. That is also the way evolution works. The human body and brain evolved by retaining the fish, reptilian and mammalian brain. That is conservatism in action.

Conservatism is vitally important in the lives of human beings and human cultures, retaining what was long developed is important to humans and to human survival. The culture of Christianity is virtually baked into Western civilization, but it can be transformed, just as Christianity retained but transformed Judaism, Odinism, and the pagan Greeks and Romans.

Odin could be called the first Western Faustian man seeking knowledge and power at all costs. But being Faustian, Western knowledge has moved on from Odin to where we can now see that the path to real Godhood is through material evolution, with help from science.

The Christian world has disparaged the idea of becoming God as being highly blasphemous. Traditional religions have demanded that their God be spiritual and beyond the vulgar and evil material world, the desires of the material flesh are to be blocked or overcome in order to see the God Within.

But the Inward Path to the God Within of Christ (and Buddha) can be retained and now seen as the first symbolic experience of the real Godhood reached through the Outward Path of material evolution. This is explained in the Twofold Path of theological materialism. The Twofold Path conservatively does not reject either paganism or Christianity. We can actually become Gods by affirming the material evolution to ascending levels of supermaterial Godhood, which is the transformed and evolved Godhood of the great religions.

Inward path religion needs now to enter the Evolutionary Outward Path stage, while retaining the traditional Inward Path. Then we can keep our magnificent church buildings and our magnificent religions.

Intellectuals of the old far right and the new far right (from the archive

Intellectuals of the old far right had respect for Western science, men like Raymond Cattell, Richard Lynn, Roger Pearson, John Baker, and Wilmot Robertson respected the Enlightenment. But in the last several years the far right has seen the rise of the Traditionalist School and the works of Julius Evola and Rene Guenon who rejected rationalism and materialism in favor of a Vedic-Hindu, neo-Platonist worldview that disparaged Darwinist material evolution and downplayed the biological origin of social behavior in favor of spiritualism over naturalism.

Was it the deep desire for an all encompassing religion missing from Western science that drew the new Alt-right away from the science-oriented intellectuals of the old far right, or did the Traditionalist School de-emphasizing of race and genetics appeal to the new Alt-right as a way to escape the hatred of racism across the media-driven culture? It was probably some of both.

The new intellectual far right seems to have ignored or is unaware of work of research psychologist Raymond Cattell and his religion from science, Beyondism, or my religious development of theological materialism.

Theological materialism is thoroughly Western and proud of it, following the Western path in centering on science and reason. But unlike the Enlightenment, theological materialism affirms religious tradition transformed rather than rejected.

It is difficult to find ecumenical commonality between the ethnocentric proto-Indo-European pagan religion and the traditional Judea-Christian religions. Rather than getting lost in comparing the symbols of lost spiritualism it is better for us to return to the material world and find our religious connections that way.

The eastern experience of Buddhist nirvana, and the beatific experience of heaven, or the Father Within of Christ, were just that, a peak experience in the physical mind after much ascetic discipline in blocking or overcoming material desires. We can conservatively retain that preliminary Inward Path experience of the God Within, but it needs to be transformed in the Outward Path of material evolution to real Godhood.

We can look beneath thoughts and feelings and find the multifarious processes of the instincts activating life to evolve toward the supreme survival success of Godhood. This activation exists within material life and is never separate from it, and adapts and evolves within the environments life finds itself living in---there is no spiritual/material duality here. The activation of material life toward evolving to Godhood is the unchanging constant as natural selection and evolution make new discoveries and present new challenges as we evolve toward ascending levels of Godhood.

While I respect some of the conclusions of the Traditionalist School (Guénon and Evola---and now Aleksandr Dugin) the Traditionalist School does not find science (a jewel of the West) nearly as important as Eastern spiritualism (a jewel of the East) and they reject and want to destroy the Western world (and its great genetic potential?) due to its gross materialism. Among American followers of Dugin, patriotism seems unfairly lost in seeing only the flaws of the West, which are redeemable. For example, an ethnopluralism of ethnostates or regions could be established, legally, in the United States with our constitutional separation of powers and states, protected from marauding imperialists, supremacists, Marxists, chosenites, and money grubbers, by a defensive federalism.

How the Third Covenant, the Cosmic Covenant, is amenable to liberals, conservatives, scientists and religionists (from 2018)

Political philosophers talk of ideologies, religious philosophers talk of covenants, they can be combined in the Third Covenant, the Cosmic Covenant.

In the past I wrote of Three Covenants and how in the First Covenant of Primordial Tradition the Spirit and Soul of the Inward Path were understood as existing in the blood, that is, as being passed on only racially and tribally to a chosen eg. (Jewish) or noble (Aryan) people, etc.. Then Jesus Christ (and Eastern masters) brought the knowledge that the spirit and Soul-Within need not be understood and affirmed only racially or tribally but could be understood and followed by any race, any people, universally, provided they were taught the proper way to see or experience the God Within; Christianity said we were “Chosen” through faith in Christ not chosen by blood. That was the Second Covenant. Theological materialism (and the projected Theoevolutionary Church) affirms the mission and path of the Third Covenant, the Cosmic Covenant of the Evolutionary Outward Path, which revitalizes Primordial Tradition, Christianity, Hinduism etc. by once again affirming the First Covenant of genetic and biological qualities within our material evolution to supermaterial Godhood as applied to the Outward Path of material evolution to supermaterial Godhood, yet also, as in the Second Covenant, this is applied to all people, all nations, all races, all people, preferably living in their own protected states or ethnostates with access to knowledge of the material evolution to Godhood. That is the synthesis of the Three Covenants in theological materialism.

The Third Covenant acknowledges the biological origin of our social behavior and can end the intellectual separation between political ideologies and religious covenants, pointing toward the religious/political/cultural solution of the ethnopluralism hypothesis, often written about here. It is a conservative transformation---not revolution---that can bring about an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, which is the sociopolitical or political/cultural structure most in harmony with kin-centered and ethnocentric real human nature which evolved many thousands of years ago and remains with us today. Each ethnostate, each ethnic group, each race, can have access to knowledge of our sacred material evolution to supermaterial Godhood, and can pursue that sacred evolution in their own way in their own protected states, in the variety that is conducive to evolution, perhaps aided by nonpartisan international sociobiological research centers, as Raymond Cattell suggested.

I see this as a traditional and conservative and not a revolutionary undertaking, as the evolving Covenants affirm, and it is amenable to liberals and conservatives, scientists and religionists.