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.

 

Metaphysics is nonsense

Metaphysics is nonsense in all the meanings of that word: foolish, not logical or reasonable, and literally not of the senses. It is impossible to have knowledge not of one material sense or another, even the vaunted "intellectual intuition," which mystics claim brings truths from beyond the world of the senses, is nonsense in all the meanings of that word. Abstract theory with no basis in reality is a game we can play but the material object is all when defining reality, and even when defining supermaterial Godhood.

As I have written here before: Nonexistent spiritual definitions have been given far too much attention and power in religion and philosophy, which has led to misdefining and degrading the real world. Ascetics even put up a Great Spiritual Blockade against the material world, which actually blocks the real path to Godhood of material evolution. When people like Paul Tillich or Heidegger say such things as, “God is being-itself, not being,” they perpetuate the same belief in nothing but a mode of thinking.

Spiritual definitions need to drop back to their support role or defining role and they need to cease to be Gods themselves. The natural world has to be unblocked if we are to reach real Godhood by way of evolution. The confusing name-games for God will stop when Godhood is seen as existing in the same sense and the same world that everything else exists in. The exoteric needs to rise again over the esoteric in religious theology, and does so with theological materialism where Godhood is seen as a supermaterial object evolved to in the material world.

But The Twofold Path can make room for the traditional, non-object-idea-only definitions of the God-Within, or even the bliss feelings of the Father-Within of the Inward Path of the great religions---this is included but transformed in the Outward Path of the theological materialism of the projected Theoevolutionary Church. This brings the real world into religion and religion into the real world, and most importantly it unblocks the long-blocked natural path to evolving to real Godhood, the real purpose of existence, which is only reflected in the God-Within. This means a transvaluation of Plato's and I dare say Heidegger's world, long overdue.

Is the game over for traditional philosophy and religion?

If philosophy is “the rational, abstract, and methodical consideration of reality as a whole or of fundamental dimensions of human existence and experience” (britannica.com) then for the most part sociobiology has superseded philosophy. When E. O. Wilson, the father of neo-Darwinist sociobiology declared the biological origin of social behavior it was virtually game over for traditional philosophy and religion. The postmodernist's became like scholastics arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

As long as we are alive every cell in our body demands survival and reproductive success. This natural activation can be blocked, subverted, or it can be unknown to us, but it can't legitimately be intellectually or instinctively denied. The biological origin of our social behavior as empirically explained by the evolutionary sciences and sociobiology actually ends the intellectual defense of postmodern relativism. Generally speaking any existing values come from the various social and cultural methods we try (including postmodernism) as attempts to biologically and genetically advance ourselves, consciously or unconsciously.

When Wilson said, "The genes hold culture on a leash. The leash is very long, but inevitably values will be constrained in accordance with their effects on the human gene pool. The brain is a product of evolution. Human behavior . .is the circuitous technique by which human genetic material has been and will be kept intact. Morality has no other demonstrable ultimate function," it was game over for traditional philosophy and religion.

But Godhood is not dead, spirituality is dead. With theological materialism I say that the activating purpose in evolution---along with random selection—is to evolve toward higher and higher consciousness and intelligence and finally toward the survival and reproductive supreme success of ascending levels of Godhood; but that's a moral function and an end or purpose in nature that Wilson probably doesn't affirm because he probably believes in the complete randomness of evolution. When we can take a serious look at activating purpose in evolution then the separations between religion, philosophy, and science can harmonize with a real single narrative of history and morality.

Is great music an attempt to find the order of the Sacred? (from the archive)

Is music a “balance” of intellect and emotion? Music seems to be an attempt to order emotions. Emotions come from the ancient dominant part of the brain system. The intellect or neocortex is newer and it tries to understand ancient emotions. But to dominate emotions with intellect? Music is more the intellect harmonizing with emotions, like a jockey riding a horse, only this horse is not really broken to the will of the rider-intellect, even if we are arrogant enough to think so.

But something is missing from intellect and emotion, and it is the activation of material life by the material Will or Tirips within.  Life is shaped by outside evolution and also activated inside by the Will or Tirips to materially evolve toward ascending levels of Godhood. Is the path to the Sacred in art to harmonize all three: emotion, intellect and Tirips, but then to concede leadership to Tirips? I suppose it is the intellect that harmonizes and understands it all this way, which does make the intellect a powerful element in this dynamic.  But it is an affirmation by the intellect of emotions more than control by the intellect that is happening with music...Is great music an attempt to find the order of the Sacred? That also describes the evolution of life toward Godhood.

The moral rot of the Media

For years now the Media has been increasingly expanding the moral rot of same-sex marriage, LGBTQ uni-bathrooms, Teen Vogue has promoted homosexuality, transsexuality, and gender transition, the media has applauded doctors who provide children as young 12 with sex-changing hormones, the media is increasingly anti-white, anti-religious, and anti-male, the media highly values the now decadent industries of fashion, film-making, porn, and gambling. And pushing this moral rot has been successful: for the first time since the United States was established, a majority of young adults do not identify with religious morality.

Religion in the West has not been successful in blocking the moral rot, most Christian's don't realize that turning the other cheek was based on discipline designed for ascetics like Christ and Buddha who sought the bliss of the God within by blocking all the desires of the flesh, which would include any involvement with things like holding the media accountable for moral rot. That central ascetic goal is the real origin of most of the values of most religions which were founded by ascetics who had no time for the material world.

So the moral rot advances.

The separation between the material and the spiritual in all the revealed religions was a big metaphysical error, which set up a great spiritual blockade against the material and supermaterial evolution of life to ascending levels of real supermaterial Godhood. There need not be that tension between the material and the spiritual just as there need not be tension between religion and science and the political. A better more real and more natural formula is to follow the biological origin of social behavior.

The evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood brings back the ideals of life and living, heroism, cultivating wisdom, strength, beauty, health, kinship and ethnic bonds, harmony with life and nature; natural instincts can then be religiously appreciated and seen as vital because we evolve to Godhood by way of material evolution and successful survival and reproduction, which now can be aided by the genetic sciences...So the moral rot can be stopped.

How I interpret Raymond Cattell's eugenics---yes the dreaded word (from the archive)

Human evolution proceeds ultimately by natural selection among groups, which then determines the natural selection among individuals, genetically and culturally. The ethics of the group are fixed by aiming to survive in reaction to the environment. We have loyalties in a hierarchy of values from fellow group members to mankind in general.

New cultural creations tend to be the work of genetically/culturally superior intelligences and are developed in two main ways: cultural creations as outlets for frustrations, such as poetry, music, drama (p-culture), and cultural creations that are more adaptive to fit us to the environment, engineering, medicine, science (r-culture), not “merely” an “outlet.”

These cultural inventions from superior intelligences tend to require more complex adjustments for the general population than the general population tend to be genetically suited for---Cattell calls this “genetic lag.” It's like the old instinctual brain having to adjust to the newer cortex.

Cattell suggests that we deal with these frustrating discrepancies with eugenic measures ( improving the genetic composition of a population) to help reduce the frustrations, which can spill over into many social problems, including revolutions. It's like having foresight for groups akin to a medical watch on individuals, which can lesson the morbidity rate of the group...Sounds more humane to me than what we see today where cultures just painfully die.

Adventurous societies will always be looking for new helpful (not antisocial) inventions from superior people, which then need adjustment to the general population. The goal is to always be evolving, which Cattell believes is the prime process of the universe. He calls this scientific religious philosophy "Beyondism."

I adjust Cattell's prime process of the universe to the material evolution of life to ascending levels of supermaterial, not spiritual, Godhood.

Expansion and positive manipulation of evolutionary realism in art (from the archive)

Architect Peter Kellow (American Arts, Spring 2013) defines the Baroque as the manipulation of classical architecture for the sake of theatrical effect. Adapting this to Evolutionary Realism (ER) I would define ER as the expansion and positive manipulation of realism in art for the religious sake of affirming the material evolution of life to Godhood, which is art as an affirmation of the sacred.

ER might have been called idealistic realism, which seems to have been what the classical realists were up to in Ancient Greece. Representing things as true to nature defines realism, and in being idealistically future-oriented ER is a realistic central part of nature. Evolution can be seen as metamorphosis in the sense that life is activated from within by the material Will-To-Godhood, or Tirips, which is later shaped by genetic evolution and outside natural selection.

Science accepts no end-goal purpose or teleology in evolution seeing only blind survival and reproduction, and I don't fault science in their empirical strictness. I don't advocate a vitalistic activation within life to support anti-rationalism or to be anti-science, I expect science to affirm this activation from within toward Godhood one day.

Evolutionary realism in art points to purpose behind evolution, it sees Tirips activating material life to evolve to supermaterial Godhood, shaped by outside evolution, and ER seeks to represent and affirm this with art in an expansive and creative but still realistic way.  Art, like true human nature, is a group endeavor and realism communicates best with real human nature.  Art for art's sake is as short-sighted and silly as anarchic individualism or moral relativity.

Reductionism in religion and science has to watch not to kill the thing observed

Just because a physical object is a collection of subatomic particles held together by energy does not mean that “all is energy,” any more than man is only mind. These things evolved to be the increasingly complicated material objects that they are. Reductionism has to watch not to kill the thing observed.

Just as we can't say that all is energy, we also can't say that all is spiritual. Ascending levels of Godhood are not gradually evolving toward the nothingness of non-material spiritualism, there is no non-material spiritual, all is material and evolving toward supermaterial Godhood.

The God of traditional religions lives only in the mind as a peak experience of the mind and body, seen best after ascetically blocking or overcoming all desires, then it is wrongly defined as a blissful non-material experience of God.

In the coming world we can have Godhood and religion and priests who work with scientists on the ways and means to materially evolve to real supermaterial Godhood.

Means and Ends in Art and Culture (from 2012)

I don't think high culture sits above the struggle for existence, or that culture is above the world of necessity. Sociobiology has taught us of the biological connections with all social behavior.

The “State” is usually thought of as a means to an end, but so is culture, including religion. Life is evolving to ascending levels of Godhood and that is the end to which biology and culture are going, consciously or unconsciously. Perhaps only when we are fully conscious can we attain the goal of Godhood.

High art is an affirmation of this divine goal and should not therefore be defined as being out of the world of struggle for existence or out of the world of necessity. High art is an affirmation of the sacred and evolving to Godhood is sacred. Art and culture are not an end in themselves, and when they are, it creates inferior and lower directed art and culture.

Speculation on why we need new religious and scientific metaphors

Matter is energy, but energy is matter, do we really want to rate one higher than the other? Yes. Energy comes from matter. There would be no energy without matter. Spiritualist's turn the world upside-down to claim that their religio/philosophical world is not material. 

The “field” which governs the particle seems to be created by the interaction of material forces. The field is not spiritual. Energy, frequency, and vibration in the universe are not the secrets of the universe, it is matter, discovered and undiscovered, which drives these forces. 

 “Non-physical phenomena?” There are only the forces developed by physical phenomena. In the same way gravity or electric forces are not spiritual, they are brought about by material objects. 

The only “duality” I see, which is not a duality, is the inward dynamism of the material activation of life activating material life to evolve in the outside world, shaped by outside natural selection and evolution. This material inward activation is a “force” but not a non-physical force. 

Facts are connected in a complex structure, we need new religious and scientific metaphors to explain them. The material will to Godhood, or Tirips, is our connection to the earth but also our connection to the universe, and it contains the activation toward fulfilling our material/supermaterial purpose: to evolve in the material world to ascending levels of Godhood---it probably exists in every cell of the body.

What is the deepest root of culture?

Clear thinking and clear writing religious philosopher Joseph Pieper wrote about an era where the world of work and moneyed business is the whole field of human experience, in contrast to living in an era where the deepest root of culture is in concord with and validated by undisputed festivals, celebrations, or masses of the gods as the deepest root of culture.

But traditional religions introduced into the “deepest root of culture” festivals and masses celebrating a non-material spiritual world not of this material world. How can a world whose religious founders reject the material world and affirm a non-material spiritual world be the deepest field of human experience and the root of all culture? In reality the world has faded away from religion that way.

Yes, we need a world where religion is the root of culture, but a religious philosophy that affirms the evolution of the material world as the path to Godhood, which can heal the rift between religion and science, not by considering them two different ways of looking at the world but as allies in affirming the deepest root of culture as being the evolution of the material world to always ascending levels of supermaterial Godhood.

Masses celebrating the sacrificing of the material world to the spiritual world need to be transformed, not rejected, with Masses celebrating and validating the evolution of the material world to supermaterial Godhood. With the Twofold Path the Inward Path saints can be transformed by Outward Path heroes. That is the goal of theological materialism and the projected Theoevolutionary Church.

Transforming with evolution those first ancient inward experiences of Godhood

We can retain the traditional, conservative, classical, and biblical experience of the inward God, and most of the morality that comes with it, but a spirit didn't speak to religious founders from outside of the human material experience, it was the deepest part of human nature within the natural world that did the speaking, and it was not spiritual but was a peak material experience.

The Outward Path of material evolution to ongoing levels of supermaterial Godhood transforms but does not replace those first peak inward material experiences of Godhood. The Twofold Path contains both the inward and outward paths.

The moral laws come from nature, including the essential material activation within life (Tirips) to evolve to ascending levels of Godhood---which also defines the zenith of success in survival and reproduction---while adjusting to the ongoing unpredictable dynamics of natural outside evolution.

These essential conservative and evolutionary principles in theological materialism transform but do not reject the old inward path.

The sacralization of evolution, not wealth, may come in the future

I have no doubt that the profit motive and free enterprise have led to many great things in the world, but I also have no doubt that the profit motive, or the intense and selfish desire to create wealth, as affirmed by libertarian economists like Milton Friedman, should not be the highest or only value of free enterprise and business.

The material evolution to ascending levels of supermaterial Godhood should be the highest value of our culture and civilization. This doesn't necessarily suggest theocracy, but the profit motive and the free enterprise system should be grounded in the highest value of the material evolution of life.

We are obviously a long way from this value system, but populism and economic nationalism are at least reluctantly beginning to wake business people up to the idea that the profit motive is not the highest value to live by. Globalism has done more damage than good in the world. The sacralization of evolution, not wealth, may come in the future.

When the moral imagination leads to a spiritual non-materialism it leads away from reality, but not necessarily away from religion

T.S. Eliot and Russell Kirk rightly worried that the humanities and literature were turning away from the traditional Western “moral imagination,” and things certainly have gone that way. They worried that literature wasn't doing its job of adjusting to the conditions of human existence by adjustment to the traditional norms of Christian and Western tradition and was instead adjusting to weird norms or not adjusting at all.

But the “norms” are really related to human nature and so the judgment comes first from defining human nature and then from seeing how humans have socially and culturally adjusted to real human nature. It so happens that traditional religions did a good job of defining human nature the way the non-religious evolutionary sciences much later defined human nature as being basically kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection.

But you'll notice no spiritualism in that sociobiological definition other than the general tendency of humans to create religions for successful survival and reproductive purposes. And it is from here that we can see the modern moral imagination go jumping off from the traditional norms of the Christian and Western imagination. This was not due to an “idyllic” or “demonic” imagination infiltrating into our cultures, as Eliot and and Kirk defined it, but was basically due to the natural biological will to power of the “usurpers.”

I know that philosophers tend to think their thinking is beyond the pedestrian drives of biology but they are deeply biased by it. You will notice that many of the pre and postmodern philosophers were not Christian: Husserl, Leo Strauss, Derrida, Foucault, etc. and they felt no compunction biologically or culturally to adjust to the conditions of human existence by adjusting to the norms of the traditional Western Christian moral imagination, and instead adjusted to ethnic norms, weird norms, no norms at all, or a relativity of all values.

None of them adjusted to the biological origin of social behavior, and that explains their biases. The work now of literature and the humanities is to take the dusty physical and biological sciences and give them a moral imagination which is not dusty. For example, psychological novels can apply the moral imagination to adjusting to human nature as defined by evolutionary psychology and sociobiology. When the moral imagination leads to a spiritual non-materialism it leads away from reality, but not necessarily away from religion (see theological materialism), so futurist novels can deal with the moral dilemmas of materially involving to real supermaterial Godhood.

How we exhume and re-constitute the permanent things in art and politics

Burke, Eliot and Kirk told us about the loss of the traditional themes, which Eliot called “the permanent things” in literature, art, film, and which are now replaced by nihilism, porn, egoism, etc. Traditional literature and art generally taught us about real human nature without being too didactic, teaching through analogy and allegory---the best art did it subtly with “imaginative persuasion.” But this great fall, this transvaluation of values, this presenting of nihilism, porn, and egoism was also taught to the people using analogy and allegory, although not always subtly. Why?

Essentially the transvaluation of traditional values was the will to power of the transvaluators. They tore apart Western tradition and Western people so that they could inherit what was left. And the transvaluators mainly picked the weakest link of spiritualism, using science to make the kill.

But what science kills it can re-constitute. The science of sociobiology has taught us about real human nature from the evolutionary perspective and it turns out that human nature as gradually defined by the evolutionary sciences is not that different from the permanent things of Burke, Eliot and Kirk, but with a few vital changes.

The evolutionary sciences have shown us that human nature is basically and genetically kin-centered, gender defined, age-graded, heterosexual, marriage-making, hierarchical, ethnocentric, even xenophobic, and religious-making, among other things, with group-selection as the primary unit of selection. The addition and prominence of ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and group-selecting as being natural to man, and not evil, is the biggest change and addition to the permanent things.

Political philosophy needs to affirm the implications of the biological origin of our social behavior---which points toward ethnostates and an ethnopluralism of ethnostates. This needs now to be taught with analogy, allegory, imaginative persuasion, and subtly. That is how we exhume and re-constitute the permanent things in literature, art, and film.

Transforming the moral imagination

I agree with the conservative call for the moral imagination in literature, art, films etc. but the question is, which moral imagination, which ethical imagination? What is your criteria for discrimination between good and evil? Which religion?

Does your moral imagination creatively show us that we are sinful fallen beings and the material world is evil, while the non-material spiritual world is good? If decadence is defined as the loss of an end, an object, as C.M. Joad said, what is your end, what is your object?

Affirming the material world of evolution as the means to attaining real Godhood is the source of the moral imagination, the ethical imagination, and the criteria for discrimination between good and evil in the philosophy of theological materialism. Some would call this the "diabolical" imagination which supposedly puts the kiss of death on the idea of evolution as the means to attaining Godhood. That bothers me, but it is not a good enough blockade to change my philosophy.

In any case, the old ascetic experience of the God or Father within is retained in the Twofold Path, but that inward path is transformed in the Outward Path of material evolution toward always-ascending levels of real Godhood.

Literature, art, films, etc. will be revived from both the blockade of asceticism and the modern decadence of the loss of an end in art when the moral imagination is transformed by sacred evolution in theological materialism.

The sacred path of naturalism

Just the word “eugenics” scares people today. The Oxford dictionary defines it as “the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics, developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race---it fell into disfavor only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis.” Eugenics was suggested by Plato, Campenella, Galton, and Cattell, among others.

The idea to begin with was to attain obvious good genetic mutations, and as few as possible obvious bad mutations. Technology is now able to direct us more precisely away from negative traits and proceed toward choosing the most obvious positive traits.

It can be organized by sociobiologists, geneticists, bio-engineers, theological materialists, etc. to aid and guide people in ongoing research centers, open to everyone, every ethnic group, every state. Raymond Cattell did much forward thinking on this subject.

Evolution moves inevitably in a pattern, even though it has its random elements, and the pattern has a discernible direction, in spite of instances of stagnation and retreat, toward higher and higher more effective living forms, all the way to ever-ascending levels of Godhood. Eugenics can help us to get in harmony with this sacred path of naturalism.

I think of eugenics as all voluntary, never imposed by church or state, and as continuously seeking the true, the good, and the beautiful, but defining these things materially and super-materially, and reaching these things through material and supermaterial evolution. Reaching Godhood requires a sacred biology, a sacred eugenics. Most essentially my eugenics is grounded in the religious philosophy of theological materialism.

The leap too far and bringing Godhood back to reality

The times of Homer were more right philosophically than the times of Plato in seeing the life-force depart with death, extended only with reputation and material offspring. The life of the non-material transcendent soul, the “leap of being,” was a leap too far.

But this does not mean that Godhood and order are lost, far from it, the evolution of material life to ever-ascending levels of Godhood brings Godhood back to reality, back to the natural world, back to philosophical naturalism (see theological materialism).  It will require all the real conservative order, all the bonding of religion, all the discoveries of science that we can muster to retain the best of the past as we continually evolve toward the future.

Audacious as it sounds, the death of religion, the death of God, the death of order, the death of the West, the death of Western people, need not advance if we can transform outworn, non-material, theological spiritualism into theological materialism.

A leap of being with its feet in reality

Although there is more a gradual change of being in evolution, there is “a leap of being” in the material evolution of life toward Godhood, but it is a leap with its feet in reality, unlike the leap of being, or leap of faith, away from reality in the leap from the material to the spiritual world.

We do “leap” toward Godhood in the activation within every cell of the body (Tirips) to evolve toward the zenith of success in survival and reproduction, without having to cause a split between the the material and the spiritual---there really is no spiritual, there is only the supermaterial.

The language of philosophical anthropology can be linked with the language of religion in the evolution of life to Godhood which is a leap of being, but it cannot realistically be connected to symbols of non-material spiritualism.

As Cattell and others have implied, evolution moves inevitably in a pattern, even though it has its random elements, and the pattern has a discernible direction, in spite of instances of stagnation and retreat, toward higher and higher more effective living forms, all the way to Godhood---that is a leap of being with its feet in reality.

The “ends of man” are to be found in material evolution in space and time

Evolution is the real expression of history and the real structure of order. The “ends of man” are to be found in material evolution in space and time, not in a non-material transcendence beyond space and time. Non-material transcendence is the dream that blocks or slows down the natural path of material evolution toward supermaterial Godhood.

The religious transcendent school of history has been a veil thrown upon the workings of material evolution toward real Godhood. Religion should not be a blockade upon the evolution of mankind. Religion should affirm the natural path of material evolution toward ever ascending levels of Godhood, helped along by science, human culture, and the biological origin of social behavior, as affirmed in the philosophy of theological materialism.