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.

Where Nietzsche and his postmodern followers went wrong

The will to power is a secondary activation to the will to evolve in the material world to ascending levels of supermaterial Godhood, which activates the will to power for that essential purpose, like the pleasure from eating food is secondary to the need of food for successful survival and reproduction.

"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 ascending levels of Godhood. As long as we are alive every cell in our body demands life and survival and reproductive success, with the zenith of success as evolving to Godhood. This natural activation can be blocked, subverted, or it can be unknown to us, but it can't legitimately be intellectually or instinctively denied.

If the epistemology and ontology of the philosophers can't find this to be real and true, if the intellect can find no direction or purpose to life or can find no meta-narrative to life, then there is something wrong with the way the intellect finds truth.

The purpose of life is far more than Nietzsche's directionless will to power and the nihilistic relativity of his postmodern followers.

There exists a biological teleology

The hopeless relativity of values that is promoted by modern philosophy is untrue and unreal. There exists a biological teleology, a design and purpose in the material world, flowing through all life, which offers freedom but within a determined biological teleology.

I ask why does “life” “live?” Why is life animate rather than inanimate? Why does life have metabolism, growth, reproduction? Why doesn’t life just sit there doing nothing? Why has life persisted time and again in evolving from the simple to the complex under the most extreme conditions?

It is more than an outward action or reaction, there is an inward vitalism working within and shaped by outside evolution. This is the activation of the will to life, and when it is amplified it is seen as the will-to-evolve-toward-Godhood. 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.”

This process of evolution is activated from within every cell of living bodies, which then react and adapt to the various outside environments that life lives in. This activation is the same activation that leads to the desire to successfully survive and reproduce. And this activation is a material/supermaterial activation, not spiritual.

The goal of evolving to Godhood need not deprive us of either science or religion. When Godhood is seen as a naturalistic and theological goal, the goal of evolution, then biology and theology need not settle for the empty spiritualism that Nietzsche detested. Nature and philosophy can be seen as life materially evolving toward ascending levels of Godhood.

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.

The hierarchy of drives

We have the desire to eat before we have the pleasure sensation or happiness that comes from eating, which lowers the value of the ethical theory of hedonism saying that pleasure is the highest good and proper aim of human life, as well as lowering the Greek philosophical position (Aristotle) that happiness is a final end or goal that encompasses the totality of one’s life.

I see the hierarchy of drives roughly in this sequence:

First comes the primal material activation to evolve to Godhood

Then the material activation of desire

The biological activation to survival and reproduction and evolution

The biological activation to power

The biological activation to pleasure and happiness

The biological origin of social behavior.

This places religion at the beginning of drives with the material activation to evolve to Godhood and culminates in the biological origin of social behavior and the creation of sophisticated cultures that unconsciously or consciously serve the hierarchy of drives.

Theological materialism is built on this hierarchy of drives, as well as the political philosophy of ethnostates based in sociobiology.

The apotheosis and idolization of only words and ideas

 The apotheosis and idolization of words and ideas alone brought us spiritualism, deification, and God, but it is a spiritualism and God unattached to real physical objects, spiritualism and God became words and language and definition only. And so the “truth” became words and language unattached to real physical objects. Priests and “intellectuals” became the purveyors of spiritualism, deification, truth, and God, using words only. And so the real world of objects slipped away from the minds of intellectuals and their students.

We never, in reality, move beyond the object. Religion and philosophy think that they can move beyond the material or supermaterial object, but they are creating false, non-object absolutes. They create Gods of non-objects and definitions, which are not Gods.

Rational and religious categories can define objects but the definitions will always be the shadows of objects. This means that Plato needs to be trans-valued: it is the mystical definitions that are the shadows, and it is the objects that are reality.

Godhood is an Absolute Mind in an Absolute Body and not merely a Mind. Godhood is not beyond form and structure, Godhood is Absolute Supermaterial Form and Structure. There is no need to put up a great spiritual blockade against the material world if ascending levels of Godhood are seen as supermateriality which we evolve to from the material world.

We are not able to fully conceptualize Godhood at this stage in our evolving intelligence but this does not mean that Godhood is therefore non-conceptualizable. It takes a God to accurately conceptualize a God, and when this is done it will be a supermaterial mind conceptualizing within a supermaterial body, not a non-material body-less mind.

We need to abide strictly within material and supermaterial objects. This is the base of Theological Materialism. The great allure of seeing or experiencing the virtual God Within of the Involutionary Inward Path must not put up a Great Spiritual Blockade against evolving to Real Godhood in the Evolutionary Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution.

The “innovation” in metaphysics comes from the Evolutionary Outward Path

Spirit” IS matter, but the highest epiphenomenal matter, it “dominates” matter in that it can also be defined as the Will To Godhood, or Tirips, activating within life---so there is no need for a duality here. And, again, evolution is not “blind and pointless.” The lesser CAN evolve into the higher, just as the child grows to be a man. The Logos is definition or principle only, which is less than the Object God which the Logos defines. It is time to affirm the real thing, not merely the definition of the real thing. Matter CAN create the Spirit and Soul and Godhood out of itself.

Who says “there is no innovation in metaphysics?” Perhaps not in the religions that stem from the Perennial Tradition, but they are all of the non-material spiritual Involutionary Inward Path. The “innovation” in metaphysics come from the Evolutionary Outward Path, which is really a recognition of the sacred direction of material evolution to ascending levels of Godhood.

The biological origin of social behavior is the narrative that gives the lie to postmodernism

The biological origin of social behavior is the narrative that gives the lie to postmodernism and brings forward the supernarrative of theological materialism.

Postmodernism rejects “metanarratives” saying that something is always left out to in order to make an integrative total narrative, therefore all integrated narratives are criticized and rejected by postmodernism---the metanarrative of postmodernism is the exception to their rule.

As William Lind put it postmodern “critical theory” (including “critical race theory”) is basically the theory to criticize, to “submit every aspect of Western culture to constant, unremitting criticism, so it would be discredited to the point where people would abandon the ways of thinking and living it embodied.”

The biological origin of our social behavior as empirically explained by sociobiology actually ends the intellectual defense of postmodern relativism. 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. Any existing "relativity" of values can come only from the various social and cultural methods we try (including postmodernism) to biologically and genetically advance our kin, related ethnic group, locality and nation.

Ideas are expressions of the biological origin of social behavior related to whatever field the ideas are presenting. This includes the ideas of religion, philosophy, politics, art, etc, which usually define the moral superiority of their causes. Ideas often mask the will to life of biology. But the idea of the biological origin of social behavior does not mask the biological origin of social behavior.

“Physicalism” does not have to lead to the loss of religion when ascending levels of Godhood are seen as evolved to in the material and supermaterial world. Consciousness is derived from material experiences. We can indeed immanentize the eschaton, attain Godhood directly within nature and evolution, when we affirm that 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 toward ascending levels of Godhood---science can help it along the way.

In theological materialism religion, faith, art, and science can legitimately unite.

My religious philosophy simply stated

Simply stated, Tirips or the will, which is material and within every cell of the body, is reborn in the physical body in procreation and reproduction, with its primary task of activating the body to evolve to ascending levels of Godhood while being shaped outwardly by natural selection and evolutionary mutations. Then Tirips is born in new bodies, and so on. This has happened since the beginning of the unending cosmos, leading ultimately to the evolution of life to ascending levels of Godhood, which is the sacred goal of all life. A civilizational and cultural totality derives from this religious philosophy of aiding the evolution of life to Godhood, which brings religion and science together. The biological origin of social behavior then suggests that ethnostatism, with an ethnopluralism of protected ethnostates, is the most humane and rational way for humans to live and evolve, given kin and ethnic centered human nature.

The Twofold Path and the nature of the Sacred Cause (from the archive)

The Will or Tirips within matter seeks to materially evolve to Godhood by activating matter to do so, which is then shaped by evolution and natural selection. As long as we are alive every cell in our body demands survival and reproductive success. This natural activation, which I call Tirips, can be blocked, subverted, or it can be unknown to us, but it can't legitimately be intellectually or instinctively denied. This cause is not like the child of Gods, it is more like the Mother of Gods, like a Materia-Spiritus giving birth to evolving matter which can then evolve to ascending levels of Father Godhood. The matter and supermatter which do not succeed in evolving to Godhood can fall back to Primal Matter and can try again. And so the cosmos acts. This religious perspective can harmonize with natural science theories of the origin of the universe, with the Will or Tirips added.

“External alchemy” is the material and super-material ongoing evolution of human beings all the way to Godhood by way of the Evolutionary Outward Path, whereas “internal alchemy” is the traditional way of seeking the “God” Within of the “Soul” by way of the Involutionary Inward Path---the “spiritual” God Within of the Soul is inwardly and materially experienced as bliss when all the material desires are gotten rid of by ascetics, like Christ or Buddha, which, alas, blocks evolving matter from evolving to ascending levels of Godhood.

“Alchemy” denotes the remaining mystery of these goals, now merged with the modern sciences of chemistry, biology, genetics, and so on in the Outward Path of material evolution toward Godhood.

Beauty as the leading player in our progressive evolution toward the truth and goodness of real material/supermaterial Godhood (from the archive)

The religious worldview of material life evolving to ascending levels of supermaterial Godhood---and not merely involution to the Inward God---gives a different perspective on the old formula of truth, goodness and beauty.

When beauty becomes connected to the traditional Logos, beauty moves away from the material world and this creates the naturalistic problem of beauty entering a transcendental world of a non-material spirit, which then leads to the worship of ideas, definitions, words, and the idol of beauty, and not the real supermaterial object of beauty as Godhood.

In relation to material and supermaterial evolution to Godhood, beauty is not in reality separated from goodness and truth, but a separation tends to happen when the spiritual dimension of goodness and truth blocks out or even excludes real material beauty from the trinity of truth, goodness and beauty, because the non-material is worshiped.

In regard to material-supermaterial evolution, beauty does not separate itself from truth and goodness, which are values and traits that need to be included in upward evolution, because any one of these alone is incomplete.

The Outward Path of evolution rescues truth, goodness and beauty from the Inward Path, which is not rejected but transformed, and restores beauty, the real material object beauty, and even places beauty as the leading player in our progressive evolution toward the truth and goodness of real material/supermaterial Godhood.

The world of beauty is not leading us astray as a siren or temptress (see Dante and others) as long as truth and goodness are included with beauty on the path of our evolution to Godhood, which is the zenith of all these things.

The sacred activation and the goal of life

The biggest sticking point for most scientists comes in believing in the complete randomness of evolution, denying any kind of direction to evolution, which when asked what is the purpose of existence tends to put them in that camp of quiet desperation. 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,” as Cattell put it.

The separation between the material and the spiritual in 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. The exclusively Inward Path of most religions claim that the Soul (and also their version of the Spirit) is the only reality. But Spirit is better defined as Tirips, which is the symbol for the activation within life, within every cell of the body, demanding things like metabolism and reproduction. I also define the “will” as Tirips.

The zenith of the material mind, which is what the Soul is, and the physical body, follow after Tirips and are activated by Tirips. The closest thing to Godhood we have is Tirips which activates the reality of the body to materially evolve within nature and natural selection toward ascending levels of Godhood. The will, spirit, spirit-will, or material Tirips, ultimately mean the activation of the material world to evolve all the way to ascending levels Godhood while working within the outside ups and downs of nature, evolution and natural selection...We need to end the great mystic war and unite science and religion.

Time is not Being (from the archive)

I understand that Zurvanism, an extinct branch of Zoroastrianism, said, "time created everything." They seem to think that when something or someone is said to be in that state of timelessness there is no you or I or it or separations, there isn't birth or death, which suggests an immortality for "time.”

That is very good description of what is not timeless Being. Time is judged in relation to living beings who see time passing, and can remember past time and can think of future times.

So Heidegger's idea of Being as Time is in line with that tendency of intellectuals, at least since Plato, to overlook the fact that the “names” of things are an abstraction which only point toward the reality of the thing named---the abstract name is not the thing-in-itself.

“Time” is a secondary abstraction or name for the actions of material evolution in time. Living objects are the real Beings, not the abstract name “time” for the course or period that living beings move through.

The highest evolved material-not-spiritual Beings are called Godhood, which are evolved to in the material-supermaterial world, and time is important only in relation to living objects living in time.

Evolution is also teleological and theological (from the archive)

"The Romantic conception of the transformation and morphogenesis of molecules, plants, and animals, was already fully evolutionary. Schelling spoke of evolution of plants and animals out of the earth by way of a chemical process (see, e.g., p. 168, The Romantic Conception of Life by Robert Richards). Goethe and Coleridge agreed...The reason Darwin is supposed to have discovered the “real” evolution is that his version is a-teleological, based on a conception of nature driven exclusively by efficient causes, while the Romantic theory of evolution is not only teleological, but theological. It breaks the rules of scientific explanation by attributing animation/agency to that which it theorizes. Modern science takes it as a matter of course that nature is without intelligence or intrinsic value...” (“Footnotes to Plato”)

The romantic Naturphilosophen of Goethe, Coleridge and Schelling conceived of nature as a creative archetypal process of generation. They thought “Nature is God and God is Nature” which is not the same Godhood as defined in theological materialism. Theological materialism attributes an inward material agency activating life (Tirips) to continually evolve toward ascending levels of material/supermaterial Godhood, while working along with natural selection and evolution, and this is considered a rational not irrational process which science will one day acknowledge.

Future religion depends on changing the scientific taboo that evolving life has no teleological or theological goal. Evolution also 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. True religion and science become an aid in that sacred goal.

Renewing mythopoetic power with material evolution (from the archive)

The transfiguring goal for Friedrich Nietzsche in his early writings was the creation of great men, a republic of genius. Although that is important it is not nearly enough. Renewal requires the religious goal of our material evolution to Godhood in the cosmos, which brings a far more exalted renewal of consciousness, and contains the power to revive religion, philosophy and art in the modern world.

Early Nietzsche could not see his way out of the loss of both religion and science other than through the rebirth of art-myth as a guide to truth, along with creating individual great men as the goal of culture. Nietzsche thought that this loss of myth was the result of the reasoning ideal of Socrates which supposedly destroyed myth, and also after the “historical sense” and the abstract pursuit of knowledge for knowledge sake in modern times further destroyed myth and religion. Kant helped this destruction along by showing the limits of knowledge, and Schopenhauer by adding the Will as the superior force to all knowledge.

But we don't have to loose reason with religion or lose science with religion. Theological materialism continues the alliance of faith and reason but with an evolutionary, nonspiritual, material view of Godhood and Logos, with religion affirming an ordered, rational, material, evolution to supermaterial Godhood. 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 toward ascending levels of Godhood---science can help it along the way.

It is not tragic music, as Nietzsche and Schopenhauer thought, which expresses “the immediate language of the will,” it is evolution. It is not the will to power but the material inward evolutionary will to live, or Tirips, that activates evolution to ascending levels of Godhood, which evolution and natural selection then shapes. That is the real and deepest source for a renewal of mythopoetic power; evolution is the source of the super-epic for art, affirming the struggle to attain Godhood. Art can bring religion to life but it is not religion.

In theological materialism religion, faith, and science can legitimately unite

The alliance of faith and reason was one of the primary characteristics of the West. The Logos God, of ordered rationality,

was considered to be at the core of the cosmos by Judaic-Christianity, where reason reveals most of the truths of life but faith then completes the process.

Theological materialism takes the same position but with an evolutionary, nonspiritual, material view of Godhood, with religion affirming an ordered, rational, material, evolution to supermaterial Godhood. Having a goal to evolution---when the conventional position is a goalless random evolution---of evolving toward ascending levels of Godhood is where a slight amount of faith comes in, but it is an hypothesis that will one day be considered rational.

We can indeed immanentize the eschaton, attain Godhood directly within nature and evolution, when we affirm that 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 toward ascending levels of Godhood---science can help it along the way.

In theological materialism religion, faith, and science can legitimately unite.

Totalities

Both Christ and Darwin were organized around a complex of laws and concepts that fit together in a totality. Christ's world view was instigated by God and Darwin's by material evolution, although Darwin seems to have believed in God as well. Before Darwin science had challenged the Christian totality with the Enlightenment as scientific reasoning became the instigator of the totality.

Integrality became the more politically correct new word for totality following communist and fascists attempts to create political totalities. The fascists became entangled in racial supremacy versus racial inferiority and the communists became entangled in forcing racial equality, and both fell apart rather quickly.

The arrogance of traditional religious philosophy is to believe that the human intellect (which some call spirit ) can grasp the “totality” of things, which defined the goal of philosophy for them, that is, to see the world by transcending the world to experience the “spiritual” world of God.

Regarding totalities we could almost think of history as BD, before Darwin, and AD after Darwin. Before Darwin in the West total history was thought of as before and after Christ, BC/AD.

I see the goal of philosophy as seeing the ongoing process of life activated by the deepest sacred drive of life to live and evolve, which essentially creates the biological origin of social behavior, and that activation has the material goal of evolving life all the way to Godhood within the ups and downs of natural evolutionary life. 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, where grasping the “totality” of things may be possible, but beyond the reach of the present human species.

So Godhood, religion, and moral end-goals remain, but without demeaning life or the material evolution to those goals. Thomas Aquinas got the goal right when he said the goal of human beings is to attain the likeness of God, but he got it wrong when he said to attain the likeness of God an un-material soul must separate from the material body. It is not a non-material soul or or spirit that brings us to a non-material Godhood, the sacred material drive of life brings us to super-material Godhood by way of material evolution, and the great and sacred task is to help it along its way.

If real kin and ethnic-centered human nature is allowed to be what it is, it would naturally lead to regionalism, localism, general conservative values, eventually ethnostates, and finally an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, protected from marauding imperialists, supremacists, and global money grubbers, with a defensive federalism.

That defines the next totality.

Why the “fallen nature of man” was an evil idea

The “fallen nature of man” was an evil idea put in place to explain why the natural human material tendencies don't conform to the religious spiritual definition of man, and to hold in check those natural tendencies.

Contrary to the Traditionalist school it is the idea of Maya that is mistaken, which says that the material world is an unreal illusion and the spiritual world is real, when it is the material world that is real; the spiritual “God” is only inwardly and materially experienced as bliss when all the desires are gotten rid of by the ascetics. 

In 413 Augustine said there is a material city of man and spiritual city of God and Christians were not of this world, which thereafter brought a tension to Western Christianity between church and state. Monastic loving Augustine was thinking more like Christ, just as Christ resembled Buddha, who believed that material desires are hell and the religious path is to rid the body of all material desires, that was the way to see or experience the bliss of nirvana, which Christ called the God Within.

The material evolution of life toward real Godhood shows the contrast between the Outward Path evolution of life and the Inward Path of sacrifice, renunciation, asceticism, fasting etc. designed to reject the drives and desires of material life mainly so as to experience the beatific vision, which like nirvana is a peak material experience brought on by severe ascetic restrictions.

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.

The deep degrading of material life brought on by the church defining God as non-material and spiritual

The root of sexual abuse in the church, the sexual molestation of minors, etc., which the church itself considers a mortal sin, ultimately comes from the deepest degrading of material life brought on by the church defining God as non-material and spiritual. The celibacy of priests derives from the same degrading of material life. In his study of the Vatican, journalist Frederic Martel said that up to 80 percent of the clergy at Vatican City are homosexuals, though not all of them are active. And the Vatican thinks that this plague can only be eradicated with more spiritual weapons!

The biggest tragedy that comes from the degrading of material life and the spiritual definition of God is that it sets up a Great Spiritual Blockade against material life evolving to real supermaterial Godhood.

The material evolution of life toward Godhood shows the contrast between the Outward Path evolution of life and the Inward Path of sacrifice, renunciation, asceticism, fasting etc. designed to reject the drives and desires of material life mainly so as to experience the beatific vision, which like nirvana is a peak material experience brought on by severe ascetic restrictions. There is massive metaphysical irony in the church being against the abortion of babies while in its deepest theology degrading the material world and defining God as non-material and spiritual.

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

But for conservatives we can in the Twofold Path retain that old Inward Path to the God within as the first imperfect glimpse of Godhood wrongly defined as spiritual, which has blocked the evolutionary path to real supermaterial Godhood in the Outward Path.

Why theological materialism doesn't have to venture into spiritualism

Materialism doesn't have to venture into spiritualism, materialism covers all the forms of matter all the way to Godhood. Matter is convertible into energy or light (photons or atoms of light), the same matter can change from solid to liquid to gas. The beginning world-cosmos originally can have been in the material form of vibrating atoms of light, then as the world cooled the forms of matter changed to their other forms of matter and those various forms of matter interacted and selected in evolutionary ways, eventually evolving us. Matter evolved to be materially activated from within toward metabolism, growth, reproduction, which suggests direction toward an end, at least toward survival and reproductive success, or evolutionary success in the world...No need for spiritualism in that dynamic. Energy or light is not God, it's a primitive form of matter. The deepest drive of “life” is toward evolving in the material world to ascending levels of Godhood, supermaterial Godhood, which is also the zenith of success in material life.

Theological materialism instinctively and logically suggests totality, more than a total work of art (“Gesamtkunstwerk”), more a total religion which can include all distinctive groups politically living and evolving toward Godhood in an ethnopluralism of ethnostates, with as much social order as is possible given real kin and ethnic centered human nature, and retaining their uniqueness.

The philosophy of theological materialism sounds fantastical, unreal, phantasmagorical, but it is also down to earth, material, practical, and we determinedly need it in our increasingly chaotic world.