What can be done?

Much depends on how we define the operation of natural law. Many wise men have spent their lives trying to define the order of nature, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Hegel, Darwin, Marx, Nock, Kirk, Wilson, etc.. One thing seems certain in history, big state power has been unable to do anything efficiently, economically, or honestly, it always sinks into corruption and waste.

Albert Nock wrote about how past empires all came to the end of the path that we began centuries ago: a steady move toward collectivism, with the state taking more and more of the national income, then there is a move toward military despotism, and finally the state has sucked all the life out of society and we are left with a dead machine.

Nock said we should leave it to work its own way out. Let the disorder be settled by the operation of natural laws, which are the same laws that Nock wanted governments to live by; that is, state intervention is always a cure worse than the disease. Any contravention of natural law must have its consequences.

A good government, that is, a government following the natural order, will make no positive interventions on the individual and the people, it will make only negative interventions in behalf of simple liberty, not law, but justice.

The present world is a good time to fortify ourselves with Greek and Latin studies, and religion, and dare we say, evolutionary science. Change happens slowly, indirectly, the attitude of mind toward big state rule will change over time. We will have our natural localism back. And we will eventually have the order of the Evolutionary Christian Church.

Post election question

Did the Constitution of the United States only function for the culture and the people who created it, and if so, in the “new America” which now virtually ignores the Constitution, what does this mean for those of us who support the Constitution?

A good economic system

Combine the two definitions below of economic nationalism and laissez-faire capitalism, which are not quite the same, and you have a good economic system.

"Economic nationalism is a term used to describe policies which are guided by the idea of protecting domestic consumption, labor and capital formation, even if this requires the imposition of tariffs and other restrictions on the movement of labour, goods and capital. It is in opposition to globalization in many cases, or at least it questions the benefits of unrestricted free trade. Economic nationalism may include such doctrines as protectionism and import substitution." Wikipedia

"Laissez-faire capitalism is a politico-economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and in which the powers of the state are limited to the protection of the individual's rights against the initiation of physical force. This protection applies to the initiation of physical force by other private individuals, by foreign governments, and, most importantly, by the individual's own government. This last is accomplished by such means as a written constitution, a system of division of powers and checks and balances, an explicit bill of rights, and eternal vigilance on the part of a citizenry with the right to keep and bear arms. Under laissez-faire capitalism, the state consists essentially just of a police force, law courts, and a national defense establishment, which deter and combat those who initiate the use of physical force. And nothing more." George Reisman

Here are articles by Pat Buchanan and George Reisman.

The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Rachel's Hip Wedding

A review of the film "Rachel Getting Married"

The director, actors, and screenplay were excellent, you could not have a hipper wedding than this, with jazz-Indian-Caribbean-Black-Chinese music and food and the cool Connecticut mansion with the long green lawn and the dysfunctional family. No doubt many new brides and grooms will want to duplicate this hippest of weddings.

Here's the problem. You cannot replace sacred with hipness, even with this high level of hipness. What could be hipper than a Black groom singing a Neil Young song to a White bride during a secular marriage ceremony? Yet all the problems, and they were numerous—the drug addiction, divorced parents, the general overall hedonism—were directly and precisely the consequence of the rejection and abandonment of the sacred.

The only way to correct this tragedy is to return to the sacred, but this seems virtually impossible in the present world. What science-minded person, what truly hip person would want to return to religion? Do we wait for the hipness to fade, do we wait for the culture to fall? This we know. The sacred will return. But will it return in the form of the traditional sacred?

Science-rejecting, evolution-rejecting religion will be reformed by a deeper sacred which includes science and religion. Then, at last, the Rachels of the world can have a sacred traditional wedding, in a traditional sacred church, with a sacred traditional family attending. There will be human troubles, of course, but religion knows how to handle all the problems that hipness creates. Nothing else can.

Nightmare States

Here are quotes from Pat Buchanan's latest Creators Syndicate column.

“...Is the old republic then dead and gone, in the irretrievable past? Are we engaged in an argument settled before we were born?

In his 1938 essay "The Revolution Was," Garet Garrett wrote:
"There are those who think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of the Depression, singing songs to freedom."

Nevertheless, there is a difference not just of degree but of kind between unemployment compensation for jobless workers, welfare for destitute families, and confiscating the income of taxpayers who earned it — to hand out to chronic tax consumers who did not.

This last is the socialism Winston Churchill called "the philosophy of envy and gospel of greed." And it is this suggestion of socialist ideology in Obama's words that has produced the belated pause by a nation that seemed to be moving into his camp. What did Barack say in 2001?

He spoke of the inadequacy of the courts as institutions to bring about "redistributive change" in society, of the "tragedy" of the civil rights movement in losing sight of the "political and organizing activities on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change."

Normal people don't talk like that. Socialists do.

This is ideology speaking. This is the redistributionist drivel one hears from cosseted college radicals and the "Marxist professors" Obama says in his memoir he sought out at the university. It is the language of social parasites like William Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and Father Pfleger.

Enforced egalitarianism entails the death of excellence. For it seizes the rewards that excellence earns and turns them over to politicians and bureaucrats for distribution to the mediocrities upon whose votes they depend. One need not be Ayn Rand to see that Barack has picked up from past associates utopian notions that have ever produced nightmare states.”

Why I am voting for the Constitution Party

Obama no doubt absorbed the modern liberal ethos (read socialist) of the romantic 1960's at his mother's knee. Later the political philosophy of his grandparents, in any case, could not alter the modern liberal dominance of his education, which became more intensely socialist in college , law school and in organizing on the streets of Chicago, where Saul Alinsky's organizing philosophy prevailed, eg. join a church for the purpose of better organizing the people. No matter what his political rhetoric is disguising, Obama wants to use the state to institute equality of not only opportunity but equality of condition for everyone, and not only in America but in the world.

If McCain might once have believed that the state should not be used to legislate big social programs, the Neoconservatives have influenced him now to the degree that he promotes both military and big business global imperialism, even if he gives lip service to appointing conservative Supreme Court judges, or suggests more vague general freedom for Americans.

I am afraid that what may eventually happen in reaction to the coming pervasive state control of the Obama administration will be a fascists-like demand that the state be used, once again, to correct the abuses of the state under Obama, on behalf of those who have been virtually taxed and legislated out of existence. People always take the easiest path.

Since I don't approve of either socialist or fascist state power I choose to take the less easy path and support The Constitution Party, which historically and legally seeks to greatly limit state power, and give the people the most possible freedom and security. This seems to me to be both morally and scientifically the best path, given what we know of human nature.

Financial anticipation of an Obama presidency?

Here is a question I have not seen asked or answered: what percentage of the present financial fall is related to a negative anticipation of an Obama presidency?

Voting choices

The global Trotskyite lobby influences the Obama campaign, the global Neoconservative lobby influences the McCain campaign. In the long run the demographics of our nation will probably determine our destiny, and the fastest growing populations tend to be manipulated by the ideas of Trotsky or Marx rather than our Founding Fathers.

Will Pat Buchanan and the Paleos ever take back the Republican Party, or at least the Conservative wing? Meanwhile, The Constitutional Party seems to stand by the American Constitution.

The inner light parallels the outer light

Progress through spiritual inner states mirrors progress through outward material states. This seems to turn Plato upside down, saying that the material-out is equal to or surpassing the spiritual-in, but it is really not rejecting sacred evolution in nature.

Both the spiritual and material realms are vital, these need not be contradictory, in the same way that there can be both a geographical and symbolic homeland. One bolsters the other.

The inner light parallels the outer light. In deep meditation the individual can reach the place of the Soul's origin, which parallels the evolution to Godhood.

Involution and evolution for all races

We should be very clear, the Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) is not racist, not anti-semitic, and not anti any race. People can be admonished for being anti-evolutionary. All people, all races need to evolve to Godhood. Our new religious order of renewal within Traditional Religion has included aspects of Cattell's evolutionary Beyondism within traditional involutionary Christianity and other world religions, which is not racist. We are helping to guide all people, all races, to Godhood, not only through the Traditional involutionary path of seeing the Soul within, but through the bio-spiritual path of evolving to God in the Kosmos. Equal access to evolution for all races is our calling.

The Next Aristocracy

The Obama administration may soon establish itself as the next “aristocracy” in the hoodwinking noiseless revolution that Albert Nock described. In the past a gang of fierce men would force themselves on an unwilling people and establish a state. Now the people voluntarily surrender their own social power and freedom to the state, which they hope will then redistribute their wealth and social power better than they could themselves. The state never gives back what it takes, the state only very slowly rots away, as the Roman Empire did. Perhaps when it rots enough then we can reestablish the American Constitution.

Only Slight Adjustments Of The Same Politics

Once again McCain and Obama will merely modify the same established institution. We have long ago become conditioned to state power over the social power of the people, as Albert Nock and others pointed out many years ago, before and after the last depression. Neither candidate objected to the recent Coup d' Etat of the state over the banks because it was only more, much more, of the same.

Obama, with his socialist mentality, wants to use state power to exploit the wealthier classes in the name of the poorer classes, thinking the state—that is, he and his cronies—can help the poor best. McCain wants to channel more confiscated money to the global military he so loves. But since there is no money to confiscate, the political campaigns are a tragic joke.

I am buying none of it. We need to put power back in the hands of the people and greatly reduce the size of the greatly exploiting state. That is all. Is it too late? Are we headed toward multicultural civil wars and eventual splits into ethnostates? We hope we can return to the American Constitution.

Church, State and Specialization

The reason we are reevaluating the idea of the separation of church and state is that we think the Platonic and Gnostic virtual rejection of materialism in revealed religion—which we have called The Great Spiritual Blockade---is in error. We evolve materially to God Who we also see within in revealed religion, and we require and apply both the Inward and Outward Paths to Godhood in the Theoevolutionary Church.

We would more or less keep the separation of church and state. The revitalized church as an institution would remain a guide, including a sociobiological guide, to the state and the people in life, and in their advance to Godhood. Yet affirming the prudence of conservatism, and also being suspicious of the interference of the state, we would emphasize not so much the idea of separation of church and state as the idea of the separation of specialties. The statesmen or the military have different tasks than the priest. Yet a priest in an executive cabinet post as a secretary or minister of religion seems like a prudent addition to a secularized state, which need not take the priest out of his separate religious specialty.

E. O. Wilson's Darwinian Ethics

This is "E. O. Wilson's Darwinian Ethics of Natural Law," from the blog "Darwinian Conservatism" by Larry Arnhart.

"..If we saw Wilson's biology of moral sentiments as part of the natural law tradition, we might see that much (if not all) of what Aquinas said about the natural inclinations supporting natural law would be confirmed by modern biological research. For example, we might conclude that the biological study of the social bonding between male and female and between parents and children provides a modern, scientific way of understanding what Aquinas identifies as the natural inclinations towards conjugal bonding and parental care. Aquinas's reasoning about marriage--that monogamy is completely natural, polygyny only partly natural, and polyandry completely unnatural--makes sense in the light of modern biological theories of human mating and parenting. Aquinas explained the natural inclinations by appealing to Aristotle's biological account of human nature compared to the natures of other animals. Wilson's biology of the moral sentiments continues in that same tradition of Aristotelian biological naturalism..."

The rest of the essay here.

Faith, Right and Law

Tension between the claims of order affirming evolution to God, and the freedom to evolve or not evolve, lean lightly on the side of order in evolving. Godhood's law, the laws of nature, intuition and faith say that we evolve to Godhood, the same Godhood that has been seen for ages from within the Soul. This is a natural right due to it being a natural law in harmony with the laws of nature, or Godhood's law. There is freedom but within a few naturally determined choices.

Economic Nationalism

American Federalism as defined in the American Constitution is as good as government can be; dividing power between national and state governments, safeguarding liberties, while securing national interest.

Economic Nationalism is constitutionally justified under the federalist principles of resisting external enemies (e.g. national defense), putting down domestic disorder, and securing commerce within the union (e.g. stopping outsourcing of jobs).

Economic Nationalism was the trade policy of Washington and Hamilton, Jefferson and Jackson. The American System consisted of high tariffs on foreign goods to support internal improvements. China and Japan, Europeans, Arabs and Russians, all economically protect their nations. We may also return to the establishment of a National Bank issuing credit from the government based on sound money, and not from private banks.

But when speaking of economic nationalism, we must not forget that our Constitution also said that Federalism gives the main part of internal affairs to state and local units. The national government has increased far beyond what the Constitution granted, however, we don't want to therefore go back to the Articles of Confederation giving the states sovereign power and the national government merely a diplomatic position.

Economic Nationalism would have prevented the present destruction of our economy, and we need to return to it.

The Theoevolutionary Church Combines East/South and West/North

Our Involutionary Inward Path can be compared to the East/South contemplative Brahmans, the Evolutionary Outward Path to the West/North active Kshatriyas. The West/North has tended to have more Kshatriyas but few Brahmans, as Rene Guenon, Julius Evola and others, have pointed out. These two social orders represent contemplation and action, traditionally, and their relationship in the East/West is as spiritual authority and temporal power. We balance these in the new religious order of the Theoevolutionary Church.

The East/South has much to teach the West/North about contemplation and the West/North has much to teach the East/South about action. Contemplation is no longer superior to action in the TC synthesis, since the Outward Path of Evolution to God is at least as important as the Inward Path of knowing God within.

America's Founders' Financial Advice

A few simple but powerful financial solutions from Chuck Norris.

“Turn back the financial clock 200 years and return to the fiscal prudence of our Founding Fathers.”

Five basic approaches to fiscal management.

“The 10th Amendment restricts the size of government, and that always should bear out in spending and the federal budget...income and export taxes were unconstitutional to our Founders...

Don't bail out debt with more debt. George Washington wrote in 1799 to James Welch, "To contract new debts is not the way to pay for old ones...." Have a pay-as-you-go government. If we don't have the money, we shouldn't spend it. Period...

Minimize taxes to citizens. Our earliest government's primary tool to raise revenue was from tariffs... abolish the unconstitutional Internal Revenue Service and implement a "fair tax," which doesn't penalize productivity and will bring American manufacturing back within our borders..." "Taxes on consumption are always least burdensome because they are least felt and are borne, too, by those who are both willing and able to pay them; that of all taxes on consumption, those on foreign commerce are most compatible with the genius and policy of free states." James Madison

Get over the greed...

Norris says "If you get in a pinch, go back to the basics."

“...Recall unconstitutional congressional incumbents; and rise up and elect above-reproach, non-greedy and selfless representatives who aren't afraid to stand up to governmental status quo and corruption, will vote for constitutional restrictions of government, reduce big government (deficits, budgets, spending and taxes), reform the tax code (by providing a "fair tax" or its equivalent) and fight for a constitutional amendment that would mandate a balanced federal budget.”

Saving The System To Change The System

Historically the Wall Streeters and bankers have demanded complete freedom to do business, but now after they grossly abused and virtually destroyed the system, they call for (and they will get) big government regulated socialism-fascism to bail them out. Honorable aren't they?

We desperately need a sound money system but it would be too radical to cut the head off the whole system in one swoop, as many libertarians want to do. Pat Buchanan said to save the sheep we have to save the pigs, and that's the conservative thing to do, but the conditions imposed on the bailout should lead to phasing out the whole borrowing and lending ethos of the nation, and perhaps eventually an end to the Federal Reserve System.

A sound money system based on real wealth, and perhaps economic nationalism, looks better and better, that is, a return to the philosophy suggested by our Founding Fathers, and the American Constitution.

The Sacred Synthesis

The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) does not depart from the worship of God in the form of the Soul within the Self in Eastern religions and Judaism, and the ECC does not depart from the worship of God outside the Self as in Christianity, the ECC includes both.! The Inward Path of God to the Soul Within, and The Outward Path of God evolved to and existing Both outside and inside the self is the sacred synthesis.

A symbol can join the divine and human

To paraphrase Martin Donougho in “Myth And Symbol,” priests give names to the nameless. Explicating and making symbols are the same. A symbol inhabits the realm between the ideal (spirit) and sensuous ( matter). A symbol can join the divine and the human. Symbol consists of a momentary totality.

The Isfahan Masjid Shah Dome and the E8Plane

It's interesting to compare the Isfahan Masjid Shah Dome with the E8plane image model (top image) of the theory of everything.

On Seeking The Truth

If you say you want the truth which resides in the activating Spirit-Will you are being religious. If you say you want the truth which does not reside in any Spirit, you are being scientific. If you say you want to know if such a thing as truth exists you are being philosophical. So when someone says they want the truth it may be the beginning of wisdom, and they may need to examine all the fields, each has elements of the truth. Courage is probably the best trait to have in seeking and finding the truth.

Reconciling Spirit and Matter

Marx took heaven to earth, or Spirit to Matter, religion had always taken earth to heaven, Matter to Spirit. The Evolutionary Christian Church doesn't take sides like that, we put them back together. Using religious terms, Matter is the child of Spirit, Matter evolves to Spirit.

It is not the either/or of Kierkegaard, either faith or total knowledge, these two are reconciled in ECC.

Reconciling Church and State

We could agree with Hegel's thought that the reconciliation of the state and religion comes through the realization of the religiosity of the community. We evolve to God, ever upward, culture and biology, religion and state.

Hegel said, “A people that has a bad concept of God also has a bad state, bad government, bad laws.”

We have to overcome the so-called opposition of the sacred and secular, church and state.

The implicit Spirit within must attain It's goal of explicitly evolving to Godhood.

The new mandarins not up to the task

..."Our American mandarins gained their places by political image-mongering and bureaucratic infighting.  They lack the ethics and the wisdom to manage an empire or to be in charge of the lives and wealth of the American people. They are the accidental figureheads of an immense machine which they do not begin to comprehend but pretend to direct (to ends that are largely puerile and self-referential).  Yet they are busy playing incompetent games of manipulation in every place in the world.  The last American leader who had any remote claim to statesmanship was Eisenhower, who left office almost a half century ago”....

from “Observations and Lamentations on the Way We Are Now” by Clyde N. Wilson, “Chronicles.”

Thoughts On Faith And Reason

I might say could say that reason guides faith, faith is not guided by reason. That is, the Evolutionary Christian Church guides Beyondism (science) not Beyondism the Church.

Biology is moving toward Godhood, the sacred goal of Godhood guides biology through the Soul-Mind and the activating Spirit-Within, we do not adjust the goal of Godhood to biology, but biology is the vehicle of evolution to Godhood. We have faith in religion, and we can be skeptical of science even as we apply science to religion.

We see Godhood and the destination of evolution to Godhood through faith, methods of evolution to Godhood are seen through reason, science and faith.

Mind Games And The Return

Philosophers and religious thinkers play mind games while the material world of business and politics falls apart. Empire will once again devolve into localism. But we can begin again making the old new.

The original American system, with its brilliant if imperfect Constitution, so undervalued by the European Right, champions localism and variety, while protecting the whole, and it can be affirmed by the Church. Radicalism is not necessary, only making the old new.

Making Whole

It has for some time been suggested among neopagans, Traditionalists, and non-liberal psychologists, that when Christianity came to Northern Europe it damaged the psyches of Northern Europeans by cutting them off from their ancestral religion, and that the only way to repair the damage is to restore the ancient Odinic religion. We would say that the problem came from missing a deeper synthesis of religions than was done at the time.

The advent of the Evolutionary Christian Church, with its Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood, included with the Traditional Involutionary Inward Path to the Soul within, and applying such modern sciences as sociobiology and Beyondism, can help solve the problem of a damaged European psyche, making it psychologically, spiritually and physically more whole than it has ever been. The old ways were not wrong, they were incomplete. We evolve materially to Godhood.

Our Revelation

The theologic is also the biologic, the biologic is also the theologic. This closes the ancient duality. The Involutionary God is the Inward Spirit of the Outward Evolutionary God, whom we evolve to over time. We accede to the authority of the Church regarding the Involutionary Inward God of theology, which is the God of Revealed Religions. The Evolutionary Outward God of biology is added to the old Revelations as a new Revelation, which we pray the Church will eventually affirm. But we are not holding our breath.

Keeping The New With The Old

Conservative principles of order are also good for evolution and religion

The Theoevolutionary Church has no intention of getting in the way of the Conservative religious and political ties which have been the foundation of America and the West. Without these convictions there would be no America.

The Traditionalist School has taught us that all Revealed Religions affirm what we have defined as the Involutionary Inward Path to Godhood. St. Thomas Aquinas brought the Greek philosophers into Catholic Christianity, we apply evolutionary science, as well as Eastern Religions, which have affirmed the same God Within.

Conservative principles of order are also good for evolution. When we include the Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood in traditional Christianity, and in Conservatism, it is not at all done because old things are wrong, we are underlying science and the Evolutionary Outward Path with the traditional Involutionary Inward Path to Godhood to create a more complete world view.

Post-Catastrophic Conceptions of the World

The superficial political conventions in Denver and St. Paul have caused me to think about the future. I agree mainly with the post catastrophic world predictions of James Lovelock and Guillaume Faye. Lovelock speaks of “sustainable retreat” (not sustainable development) to the Northern Lattitudes from cities overrun and descended into chaos, predicting that of the present 6.6 billion people, only 500 million will survive. Guillaume Faye has the Third World invading European Homelands, with violent conflicts, increased paralysis, and the world unfit for human habitation. Nothing, Faye believes, can stop the advance into the abyss, big change will happen only after the catastrophy. Faye accepts modern science but says it should become the provence of a small elite, along with a revitalization of “ancient spirits,” rejecting liberalism and egalitarianism. Faye wants a new European Empire which uses science and technology along with reestablishing ancient heroic values. Humanity will return to biological or sociobiological values out of necessity.

My question is, will these “archaic values” be imposed or restored by Islam, Neopaganism, or a revitalized Christianity? We believe the Evolutionary Christian Church can become the required revitalized Christianity, the right blend of philosophy, science and religion. We prefer the terms “evolutionary” to “futurism” and “Traditional Christianity ” to “archaic.” Conservatism or Paleoconservatism gives strong practical advantage to our cause, people are in favor of things long established, while we also boldly reconcile the opposites of the material and spiritual, the archaic and the future. And we will not revive the beast to do so, we will civilize the beast to evolve from the material to the spiritual, and on to Godhood, by retaining the moral bonding of such things as Catholic Social Philosophy; we can synthesize Cattell's Beyondism with Aquinas's Catholicism. It will not be easy. A Wolf-Age is coming. But even a brave little French Girl, Joan of Arc, could change the world. And if God is with us, nothing can stop us.

Toward Defining The Universal In Religion, State, And Evolution

Bede Griffiths wrote about how in order to unite religions we might return to something like the organization of the five patriarchates of the fifth century, where Rome was considered first among equals (Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria and Constantinople) yet the other patriarchs independently chose their own liturgies, theologies, etc. Into this Universal Church can come the Asian religions, as Asian ministries, with the same perennial philosophy and religion.

In American politics Christianity has affirmed helping with aid the bottom 20 percent of the people, who are inevitable in any system. This is realistic. The classic definition of justice is equality of opportunity under the law, but not equality of final reward. This way “merit” can rightly be the guide. Variation is natural and useful in evolution.

It may seem at first difficult to reconcile Christianity and scientific evolutionary culture, such as Cattell's Beyondism, into a political state, but we can see the implications for enhancing evolution in the U. S. Constitution, which affirms equality of opportunity but not equality of reward. Evolutionary advancement, even positive eugenics, does not seek to guarantee equality of final reward, whereas guaranteeing equality of final reward has been linked with both totalitarian states and with modern liberalism.

The Religious Order Of  The Theoevolutionary Church affirms that we can pursue intelligence, higher consciousness, even beauty, all evolving toward Godhood, lightly guided by a Universal Church, and federal states.

Going Forward While Going Back

Affirming A Neolithic Ethos With Conservatism In The New Age


The problem with the Industrial Age, which more or less followed the Paleolithic and Neolithic Ages, is that it was not Conservative, it did not substantially bring forward the permanent things evolved or revealed from the former ages. For example, in the mechanistic age, rural life, ethnic and cultural connections and religion were gradually undermined and replaced by mechanistic materialistic thinking, leading to a world which, among other negatives, has been depleting and destroying the material world.

The Theoeolutionary Church (TC) does not advocate merely “going back” to the permanent things lost from the Neolithic or Paleolithic Ages, we advocate “going forward” while re including the lost permanent elements into the modern scientific age, as good Conservatism must do.

We part company with the New Age, which could perhaps agree with this assessment so far, when they say that spiritual education should merely “go back” to the perennial philosophy while essentially rejecting the scientific age; going back this way departs from the Conservative dynamic of “bringing forward” the permanent things. We seek to bring forward the perennial philosophy to join with evolutionary philosophy. The Inward God seen in perennial philosophy is attained through the Outward God of Evolutionary Philosophy. The Material evolves to the Spiritual.

We do not see a reconciliation of all religions merely based on their shared perennial philosophy, as the New Age tends to advocate, this eliminates all the advances, changes and variations of evolution. We do not see this kind of “going back” as desirable, realistic, or Conservative. The addition of the Evolutionary Outward Path of TC brings religions together, which synthesizes variations and differences with the perennial Involutionary Inward Path. We all seek to evolve to Godhood and the Church is there to help guide all of us.

Those who advocate the perennial philosophy in the New Age usually do so with the idea that divisions between religions and people must be overcome and that competition is evil, since all religions are talking about the same perennial God. TC agrees that the involutionary insights of the Revealed Religions reveal basically the same God, but we must not try to eliminate natural evolution, we must conservatively bring natural evolution forward into the new age with the sacred realization that we evolve in nature to the God we have seen in all Revealed Religions. The religion of the Theoeolutionary Church civilizes and refines competition, civilizing the beast, making available Wilsonian Sociobiology and Cattellian Beyondist knowledge regarding evolution, in our universal quest to evolve to Godhood, for all people and all localities.

When E. F. Schumacher called for a new technology that would create an “intermediate technology,” building upon localism, with respect for local arts and crafts, local agriculture and small industry, the term “new technology” must be emphasized. This is not really “going back,” this is not a new Ludditism, this is bringing positive elements of past ages into the technology and philosophy of the modern age. Science can actually introduce improvements in neolithic localism, e.g. new forms of solar, wind, water and other energy sources, which can work well in small decentralized localities, which do not require huge and damaging industrial energy institutions.

Classical Federalism, and perhaps Subsidiarity and Distributism work in harmony with TC, which means that the original Constitution of the United States can be reaffirmed. Recently Pope Benedict has spoken well of the Constitution of the United States, perhaps for some of the reasons just mentioned.

When the material world is seen as rising naturally into the spiritual world through evolution then both the material and the spiritual are integrated into a whole. The beauty of TC, if we may say so, is that it brings together materialistic and spiritual philosophy without suppressing either side. Our reforming synthesis suggests that the Theoeolutionary Church has the potential to bring about a sacred renaissance of art, culture, science and religion.

Speculations On Eros and Agape

“Eros” is the urge toward God, “agape” is God's love coming into one, and they meet in the Spirit Within and the Soul. These are terms used by St. Gregory of Nyssa. In the Evolutionary Christian Church, eros, the urge toward God, would relate to the Evolutionary Outward Path, and agape, God's love coming into one, relates to the Involutionary Inward Path.

The Spirit of eros is the capacity for evolution to God but is not God. God is implicit in agape and the Soul and explicit in eros and the Spirit-Within. The explicit is unfolding, the implicit is enfolding. Eros is Transcendent, agape is Immanent.

The Soul of agape and the Spirit of eros spring from God as an overflow of abundance and love—not as a Fall as the Gnostic's would have it. This is evolution, Spirit and matter working in nature forming new species, new organization. As matter evolves matter becomes conscious in humans, perhaps through contact with the Soul Within.

The Laws of Spiritual Matter

Conventional matter is evolving along with Soul of the body and the Spirit ultimately to God, Who is the creator of the Kosmos with the highest consciousness and intelligence. We can see these different levels of Spiritual/Material Matter both inwardly and outwardly in the Involutionary Inward Path with the various levels of material evolution.

But “as below so above,” and we evolve using the Evolutionary Outward Path, through the various levels of matter/soul/spirit to Godhood, the highest Spiritual/Material Matter. We are in this sense the “image of our Father.”

Spiritual Matter is subject to the laws of Spiritual Matter. This does not mean that Spiritual Matter is no longer subject to the laws of Material Matter but to a far more subtle level of laws that science is still discovering, and which mystics have examined for many ages.
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(Biophysicist Deno Kazanis has inspired this way of looking at God as Spiritual Matter.)

Contra Gnostics

It would seem that in knowing the Soul we cannot know God completely, because the Soul is "only" the zenith of the body, powerful as it is. This would counter Gnosticism (and Plato) which seems to think we can know all of God from the Soul-Within. We must evolve to the Material-Supermaterial Object Body of Godhood to fully know God.

No Revolution

We stand reformed from traditional Involutionary Christianity, not against them, by adding Evolutionary Christianity. This is certainly not a revolution against the Church.

Kirk's Tilt

Russell Kirk was a great writer and a great historical mind, yet it seems to me that he under emphasized the importance of the Enlightenment in the thinking of the Founding Fathers of the United States in developing our Constitution, and he overemphasized the importance of the “Grand Tradition,” ie. Judaic-Christian and Greek influences. This may be what we should do, but is not exactly what the Founding Fathers did.

Courageous truth is vitally important. If we bias the foundation even very slightly, the building will eventually tilt more than slightly. In the case of American Conservatism, science was eventually under emphasized as a result of the Kirk's tilt against the Enlightenment.

Good And Evil Genius

Fashion and Tradition

There is good and evil genius, which is why it is easy to be taken in or even seduced by evil geniuses. Evil genius in fact has genius, and genius is magical, mysterious and even godly.

Usually we hear that Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx were evil geniuses, St Thomas Aquinas and T.S. Eliot were good geniuses. There seems to be less dazzle and more noble depth in good geniuses, but it's not clearly understood..

With their tendency to dazzle, evil geniuses tend to dominate popular culture, they are perhaps at the origin of fashion. Good geniuses tend to ride the dynamics of tradition rather than fashion, they are perhaps at the origin of history. The trick is to know which is which and choose the good geniuses.

 

Horror in foreign policy

The latest move from the now nearly criminal neoconservatives who continue to manipulate the idiotic Bush administration--- with Russia saying its response to the further development of a U.S. missile shield in Poland will go beyond diplomacy---is truly taking things too far. Congress does nothing even though they were elected this time to stop this sort of behavior, the Lobbies again control them. Are there no men of courage and morality and statesmanship and historical wisdom in Washington? Now is the time for big deal actions, resignations from major players, impeachments, outrage! But we get nothing. Only Pat Buchanan ( Who Started Cold WarII?) is trying to avert this horror in foreign policy.

The One In The Many: Two Meanings

The first meaning of the term “One In The Many” defines God, the second meaning defines the worship of the same God in different forms.

The Involutionary Inward Path reveals the same God for all religions (also called the perennial philosophy or the Traditionalist School.) The Evolutionary Outward Path of the Theoevolutionary Church (TC) leads to God through evolution.

TC can have a calming effect on the hostilities arising between religions, even in the midst of competitive evolution. The religious order of the Theoevolutionary Church can be the common ground for knowledge and wisdom on how to evolve to the God all religions have seen inwardly.

At Last A Western Yoga

Two Necessary Paths to Godhood

Experiencing the Soul-Within, the goal of religious tradition, is not really devolutionary but more an involutionary activity. Experiencing Atman or Brahman or Nirvana, Heaven, or the Godhead, requires the discipline and strong efforts developed by the religious traditions, which are slightly different from one another, but pointing in the same direction. The Involutionary Inward Path leads to one of two central goals in the Theoevolutionary Church (TC), whereas it is the single goal of other religious traditions.

The Godhead, seen by a select few with the Involutionary Inward Path, is not Godhood Itself, which must be fully attained by another path that is really the First Path, and this is the Evolutionary Outward Path. The Involutionary Inward Path is called the Second Path in TC and not considered the only path or the exclusive path to God.

The God-Within seen by the Soul and Spirit is not God Himself but is a Blissful Aspect Of God, so glorious that It is wrongly experienced as Blissful Godhood Itself. We must not stop here, because here lies the Great Spiritual Blockade. Here we must take up the First Path, the Evolutionary Outward Path, which is Evolution from the Kosmic Beginning to the Person of Godhood in the Kosmos.

We do not consider the Involutionary Inward Path of traditional religion as a Gordian Knot of distracting complication which must be simply cut so that we may concentrate on the Evolutionary Outward Path. The traditional Inward Path is a very important way for us to see who and what God is, to see and be guided to our Ultimate Goal, even to gain actual contact with God. The Evolutionary Outward Path can apply all of our best present and future science, sciences such as the sociobiologically-oriented Beyondism of Raymond Cattell, who unfortunately seems to have rejected the Involutionary Inward Path of traditional religion as if it were a Gordian Knot to cut and no longer necessary. Conservatism in TC is called for along with change.

In very ancient terms, we don't separate Spirit from Matter, Skyfather from Earthmother, both evolve together to Godhood. Science arose from religion...the two will meet again on a higher level.

Anglican Communion ending

Here from "The Catholic Knight" : the Anglican Communion comes to an end.

A Spectrum of Matter

Deno Kazanis seems to have developed the term “Spiritual Matter” as being like uncharged atoms in relation to Material Matter with three-dimensional charged atoms. We like the phrase spiritual matter, but will probably interpret It as the following:

Evolution moves or transmutes both Spiritual and Material Matter, back to the Godhood of the Trinity.

We like the idea of a Spectrum of Matter rather than the "spectrum of consciousness” of, say, Wilber and other mystics.

Abstaining And Sustaining

The Involutionary Inward Path says abstain to find God within, the Evolutionary Outward Path says sustain to find God without.

Interesting that Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher, was said to have remarked, “All philosophy lies in two words, 'sustain' and 'abstain.'” However, Evolution makes the Will of God less hopelessly fixed and more dynamic in human affairs than the Stoics seem to have described It.

Universal force versus local morality

We don't need the "man on horseback."

It has been said that if the lust for power is not restrained by religious morality then it will eventually be restrained by dictators with force. The presumption is made in this pattern that a universal rather than a local means is the only solution to disorder or anarchy unrestrained by religious morality.

We have to build back local religious morality rather than calling for big government force. Localism is both the best long and short term solution to this pattern. Applying universal force to stop disorder or anarchy is like cutting off ones arms or legs to save ones eyes. In modern terms, we need a Ron Paul rather than a Barack Obama, but the nation seems to be in the mood for a “man on horseback” at the price of local freedom.

Of course, Obama is too moderate to really qualify as the “man on horseback,” but when moderate force doesn't create order, the pattern always moves from moderate to radical horseman.

Inner and outer space

Eastern religions consider the exploration of inner space more important than the exploration of outer space, and the Western secular world consider it just the opposite. Ultimate Reality is more than even the deepest level of inner consciousness. Inner consciousness is the inward mirror of outward Ultimate Reality. The Evolutionary Christian Church values both. Attaining Godhood more directly includes the Evolutionary Outward Path.

Physical consciousness?

Pure intuition is not "beyond" the senses, contrary to Eastern sages. God is not human so their experience of nirvana or ultimate reality is not Godhood.

The split between spirit and matter has wrongly degraded the Material. God is the zenith of the spiritual-material at the end of evolution and God has not yet been correctly defined by science or religion.

(Here is an excellent essay, "Is Consciousness Physical" by David and Andrea Lane)

Where Western Christianity Is Different From Eastern Religions

Eastern religions see history and time in cycles, whereas Christianity sees time moving toward an actual end. Also, as Bede Griffith has pointed out, in Christianity matter is taken up into God, transmuted in Christ's Resurrection. Matter is finally transformed and spiritualized after billions of years of evolution.

Both of these ideas harmonize well with the bio-spiritual evolution of God as affirmed in the Evolutionary Christian Church.

Brideshead Mediocre

When Sebastian Flyte first appeared as very effeminate I knew we were in for a painful interpretation of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Waugh said that the theme of Brideshead was the operation of the Grace of God in the lives of these characters, but this movie could be easily seen, from beginning to end, as an affirmation of atheism. The only scene that gave a slightly overt nod to Christianity was the last scene in the little chapel at Brideshead, and this was cut to a very light symbolism. Since no great civilization has ever risen or lasted without being based in religion, the question of how to revive religion in a decadent world remains unanswered, both by Waugh and by this movie. Bottom line, the movie and its theme were not up to the challenge. The book wasn't either.

Science and Religion See Reality from Opposite Sides

Science and Religion look at Reality from opposite sides. Both talk about “mediation” through the senses and through reason as letting us see only partial reality.

Science says that what we see through our senses and through reason is all we can accept, that this is reality, and anything outside this is virtually an illusion. Religion says what we do not see through the senses and through reason, is reality, and that what we see through the senses is illusion (hypothesizing that intellectual intuition lies beyond the normal senses.)

The Evolutionary Christian Church affirms both what we see through the senses and through reason and what we do not see through the senses and through reason. It is the world of the material senses that evolves to the world of bio-spiritual Godhood.

Conservative Tradition and Futurism

Can the finite, attainable yet noble values of Conservatism be synthesized with the religious goals of the evolution of man to Godhood?

Evolutionary visions have historically set the world on fire, whereas the conservative life is always realistic.

However, biological and Kosmic evolution is connected to the deepest elements of human nature, and coordination with human nature and the Kosmos has always been one of the strengths of conservatism.

Therefore, the Evolutionary Christian Church is attached to the deepest streams of conservatism, indeed evolution works best within the Jeffersonian Conservative Tradition of small separate states, and with its people bonded by religion.  But we recognize the need for the protection of a light federalism.

We think we represent a mending of the divide between conservatism and futurism.

Where illusion is not illusion

Religious seers see this world as illusion and God as real, but nonreligious thinkers see God as illusion and the world as real. The Evolutionary Christian Church sees both the world and God as real---this world is the means by which we evolve to God.

Religious seers see only the Soul or Spirit Within and think that this alone is Reality, but the Spirit is only one aspect of God, as well as only one aspect of man. The body-soul and spirit in man evolve together to God, Who is the Supreme Reality, the Perfect Trinity.

What Buddha Offered

Nirvana is the goal of the Inward Path, but this is not Godhood. If Buddha had become God he would have evolved to God, he would not have entered a “state,” he would have become God, the High Person.

Buddha was said to have decided to tell others about how they might reach the inner state of Nirvana, he did not tell others how to evolve to Godhood, or how to become God.

Other religious seers did much the same thing, eg. Shankara in Vedanta, Nagarjuna in Buddhism and Ibn al Arabi in Islam.

Knowing and Becoming God

To know God is to become God. To become God is to evolve to God. To know God-Within is to see how we may evolve to God, but to know God is not to be God. To know God is the Inward Path. To become God is the Outward Path.

With evolution it is somewhat easier to see how we become God rather than only knowing God. We can know God through pure intuition, using the traditional Inward Involutionary Path of the revealed religions. But we can only become God through the Outward Evolutionary Path.

We Do Not Oppose The Authority Of The Church

We do not wish to dethrone God, we wish to evolve upward to God. Is the Theoevolutionary Church a new kind of Christian humanism, on the order of Pico della Mirandola's attempt to broaden and deepen the Church in the Renaissance? We are aware that here can rise the seeds of arrogance and egoism. But we believe that the Church is big enough to appreciate creativity and new synthesis; we prefer the word synthesis to synchretism, which has been called a corrupting of the gospel with alien elements. These definitions are never very clear.

Let it be said that we would prefer to emphasize what the various Christians have in common as well as the eastern religions.   However, we think that within the Authority of the whole Church, the scriptures, tradition, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the church councils, the saints and the papal decrees, the mystics of the East, there can, eventually, be room for a new order of renewal called the Theoevolutionary Church.

Including the Medieval Spirit

In our attempt to reconcile science (Beyondism ) and traditional religion, we hope to hearken back to the medieval universities of the 13^th century, which tried to put the pagan philosophers (Plato, Aristotle etc) and Christianity in one place, not two.

The separation between these two seems to have begun with William of Ockam in the 14^th century, who split theology from philosophy, which eventually it seems led to the Reformation. William denied “universals” saying they were only words or names, thus developed Nominalism.

Modern Catholicism has at best attempted a minor reconciliation of science and religion, cherry picking the scientific bits least controversial and leaving out vital areas of science--like evolution and sociobiology--from synthesis into religion----it keeps the two separate as it can. This is not in the spirit of the medieval universities. In defense of the church, I suppose the church has always moved slowly, but eventually does move. It will have to move far to transform the Inward Path to the Father or God Within to the Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution to real Godhood.

The Austrian Economic Perspective

Although we disagree with the lack of affirming national and local traditions, and we disagree with the subjective individualism of Classical Liberalism, here is an excellent article from Lew Rockwell by Murray Rothbard on the causes and cure of economic depressions, from the Austrian economic perspective.

Literalizing the Unliteral

For centuries religion has developed symbols using literal objects to stand for spiritual things. It is time to turn this around again. For example, “New Creation” and “Heaven” are not merely spiritual symbols for indwelling states of consciousness, they are actual places and things, which we evolve to.

With this, prehistorical religions can join traditional religions and move beyond to the Theoevolutionary Church transcending both the literal and unliteral.

Symbolic language is not the only way to express spiritual things, especially since spiritual things are the evolved-material. “New Jerusalem” is not seen merely as a new highest consciousness, but as a highest level of evolution.

We do not deny the interpretation of Heaven in the Bible as a symbolic highest mode of consciousness, but we do define this highest consciousness as only the indirect Involutionary Inward way to experience the indwelling Soul.

We also affirm a more literal interpretation of these things in the more direct Evolutionary Outward Path.

A “new man” literally means a new man, a “new heaven” literally means a new material-spiritual place evolved to from the material to the spiritual. The Evolutionary Outward Path reliteralizes unliteral symbols.

Problems With Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo

A complete understanding of Godhood is beyond human consciousness, although we can have a blissful indirect experience of the indwelling Soul and Spirit when we apply the Involutionary Inward Path of Traditional religions.

The Omega Point of Teilhard, and the Supermind of Aurobindo, apply only to the Involutionary, not the Evolutionary Path. Human consciousness, no matter how highly developed, cannot become God, although we can indirectly symbolically experience the indwelling God. We can only supermaterially evolve to Godhood, far beyond the human species.

God exists as Supermind in a Superbody and not merely as Supermind-consciousness or Omega Point-consciousness. We evolve both materially and supermaterially to Godhood, through the Evolutionary Outward Path.

Restoring Earth Mother to Earth Father

The ancient Israelites (and ancient Indo Europeans) were patriarchal people, and the people they encountered in there migrations were matriarchal, worshiping the Earth Mother. We could say the former worshiped the Spirit, the latter the body-soul-ego. By rejecting the Earth Mother, or the body-soul-ego, the patriarchal religions became lost, perhaps even allowing daemonic elements to enter their religions.

The Evolutionary Christian Church restores the Earth Mother to the Earth Father by bringing the body-ego-soul back to religion through the needs of the body-ego-soul to evolve to the Spirit and God. The material is not contrary to the material-spiritual.

On Science and Technology

“Technology is way ahead of our ability as a society to think about the consequences.” (from www.popsci.com

Science and Technology should not be rejected, as the Traditional School tends to do. Science and Technology must be made subordinate to the needs of the Spirit, the Will to Godhood. Evolution can apply the discoveries of science and technology on the path to Godhood.

More on the Fall

If we follow the guidance of the Spirit we can reach Godhood, if we do not we may not. This is the essence of the idea of the Fall of man. In the Garden of Eden man was following the track of the Spirit evolving toward Godhood. When he stopped following the Spirit, and allowed the Soul-body to dominate, then he fell from Grace into sin.

When man is centered on his Soul, ie. his ego or psyche, he acts differently than when he is centered on the Spirit. When centered only on the ego-body-soul, evolution may stop, or move sideways, or move back from the direction of the Spirit. Humanity can even be destroyed.

When we stop the guidance of evolution by the Spirit and follow instead the ego-only-soul, then as Genesis says, “The earth will bring forth thorns and thistles.” And women “shall bring forth children with pain.” This was symbolized by Adam and Eve being turned out of Eden.

The way of return is not easy or simple. This present world will pass away. New species will rise, as Noah and his sons survived the flood.

Direct and Indirect Spirit

The Involutionary Inward Path is the indirect-- not direct--experience of the indwelling Soul.

The Evolutionary Outward Path eventually directly experiences and attains Godhood-- and not “merely” indirectly; the goal of the Spirit and the Soul is Godhood.

Do we have free will?

We seem to be free to accept or reject a few determined paths. When working well our minds can discern divine laws of nature, and this is a kind of freedom, but the required intelligence for seeing is also largely determined, the rest is determined by nurturing. Lucky for us Godhood seems to be best seen with our intuitive intelligence, which all men may have, and not only the intelligent.

When to support and not to support state and church

Christianity has said that the state's main function is to keep the peace and that salvation does not come from the state but from religion. We are therefore to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. But if the state commands us to worship false gods then we can disobey.

We say the same about religion. We can affirm under established religion what is not false, and render this unto the Church. But if we are asked to worship false gods or false teachings then we are under no moral obligation to obey. Religion must act according to the natural law, God's law, and the laws of nature.

Yet there is no perfect thing on earth, we end up choosing the least evil. The Church is usually right and just, but not always. Change or correction does not call for revolution, it calls for Revitalized-Conservatism.

Our Fusion

There are seven rather than five streams of conservatism, in the Theoevolutionary Church, and  in Revitalized-Conservatism.

According to the excellent writer Fred Hutchison, the five streams of Conservatism are: Traditionalist conservatism, Neoconservatism, Christian conservatism, Natural law conservatism, and Libertarianism. But this does not include the deeper stream of Sociobiological Conservatism and the seventh stream relating to our evolution to Godhood seen in the philosophy of theological materialism, that is, Revitalized-Conservatism of the Theoevolutionary Church.  Taken alone, without fusion into the other Conservative streams, sociobiology is religiously stunted. However, when the modern understanding of our biological human nature was left out---it was drummed out of the Conservative movement by William Buckley and others---this left the Conservative movement handicapped and missing the deepest view of natural rights and the richest design of nature, which are now included in theological materialism and the Theoevolutionary Church.

For example, when the great conservative historian Russell Kirk says that America inherited almost nothing of our civilization from Anglo Saxon England and that most of our laws and culture came after the Norman conquest of England, and from Rome, this seems mainly correct, but he undervalues, like most conservatives, the bio-racial elements involved in Western civilization.

The consequences of drumming the modern biological aspects of social behavior out of the Conservative movement have been damaging, and have given Conservatism a bias against our deep history, and against science, which has kept so many good people away from the Conservative movement; this could be the one thing that eventually dooms the Conservative movement in the West.

The Theoevolutionary Church also synthesizes the sociobiological Beyondism of Raymond Cattell into Traditional Religion. We believe that the design of the nature of man (natural rights) most essentially includes our divine bio-spiritual evolution to Godhood, and this is the seventh stream of Conservatism which political and religious Conservatism has not seen. This is the deepest political and religious aspects of nature and evolution. This design of nature, the evolution of life to Godhood, along with the other five streams of Conservatism, allow for the true “full flourishing of our nature according to the design of that nature.” This is our fusion.

"That by which we fall is that by which we rise"

The old tantric saying “that by which we fall is that by which we rise,” can be seen in the Inward and Outward Paths of the Evolutionary Christian Church, and in our saying, “ Involve and awaken. Evolve and arrive at who awakened you.” The inward renunciation of the body to unite with the God-Within, and the outward evolution of the body to Godhood, can be reflected in this saying.

However, Tantra remains involutionary in that it seems to teach the method of changing the "outgoing current" into the "return current," which "releases" or "liberates," thereby considering the outgoing current as the "fetters created by Maya." If anything, we think the opposite of this, the Outward Path of Evolution is only blissfully reflected in the Inward Path.

Innate ideas?

Adjusting Descartes

Contrary to Descartes who said the mind is not matter, the mind is matter, and the Soul is the zenith of the body (which some call the psyche). The Spirit-Will within is the zenith of the Soul. The Soul and the Spirit-Will are not “without matter,” at the most they are supermatter.

It is here, within either the Spirit or the Soul that “innate ideas” seem to exist. The mind can perceive (barely) these innate ideas. The Inward Path to the Father Within of the Soul can show us the innate Outward Path of the Spirit-Will and the material evolution to Godhood.

The laws of nature, natural law, and the Theoevolutionary Church

The laws of nature understood through intuition with reason are defined as the natural law. Intuitive faith does not contradict high reason, it transcends reason. As Huston Smith put it, absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence.

The laws of nature can be called the highest reason.

Justice and the laws of the state best work in harmony with the laws of nature, discerned as the natural law, however imperfect we are at discerning and applying them.

Religion too must work in harmony with the laws of nature, which are the divine laws, originating long before the written laws of man.

Evolution works according to the highest reason in the laws of nature, which are being discerned through intuition with reason. The Inward and Outward Paths of the Theoevolutionary Church based in theological materialism attempts to work in harmony with the laws of nature and the natural law.

Past, Present, Future in Revitalized-Conservatism

Arcadians seem only concerned with the past. Metropolitans seem only concerned with the present. Utopians seem only concerned with the future. Revitalized-Conservatism considers the past, present, and future as a whole, evolving toward Godhood.

More Contra Wilber

Stages of Consciousness are Involutionary

Ken Wilbur's six stages of consciousness are not best described as “evolutionary,” they are more involutionary when experiencing them as stages. And they are not really a hierarchy, they are simply human consciousness. We do not “transcend” these stages as we develop, just as we don't really transcend the body in higher consciousness, they remain essentially undifferentiated. We “transcend” only when we evolve to new species.

The first womb-state of consciousness is only a very small difference from the later ego state. A human is a human and not a God, though we have traces of God within us. Even the highest human consciousness is not “transhuman,” and is barely a baby consciousness when compared to God's consciousness.

Knowledge Doesn't Free us From the Material

With language and knowledge we do not “control” the world and we are not “free” from being molded by the environment. We merely manipulate the same concrete world. Evolution works upon matter but does not free matter, not until we evolve to Godhood, and even then we are not so much “free” as transmuted into the highest matter possible.

The Concrete is Not Bondage

Contrary to Wilbur, the development of language did not bring “release” from the “bondage” of the concrete world—why is the concrete world “bondage”? Release from the concrete world can only come through biological evolution to Godhood. Language separated us from the reality of the world when we began to use symbols rather than applying the thing itself. Contrary to Wilbur, language does not enable the human mind to span both space and time, it is not a “liberation” from the body, language is only a concrete copy within the concrete mind.

This Gnostic hating of the material World is a mistaken notion in religion which is continued by Wilbur. God is both concrete, or material, and spiritual, as we are, although the Trinity is the Zenith of evolved life.

The Materialistic Unconscious

Contrary to Wilbur, there is not a real difference between the pre-logical state of consciousness and the so-called “transmental.” It seems that Wilbur wishes to describe these states as only profoundly analogous to save his version of religion from being more than Jung's view of a materialistic unconscious.

Of the six levels of Wilbur's consciousness, the first, the Uroboric, is described as the bliss of At-One-Ness with Nature, reflecting the child floating in the amniotic fluid. But there is virtually no difference between the bliss of At-One-Ness experienced by mystics and the Uroboric. The Soul and Spirit lie still deeper within the activating heart of life itself, long before this unconscious-conscious experience of the child in the womb. This is not a transmental state, this is a material state.

To attain true Godhood, which is only glimpsed Wilbur's way in deep meditation, we must evolve biologically, all the way to Godhood. Here the true “transhuman” exists, along with transhuman consciousness, and not before.

Toward A Declaration Of Revitalized-Conservatism

We believe it is the duty of man to try to understand the ways of nature, and when an entrenched order ceases to, or never has, harmonized with biological laws, the laws of nature, and divine law, it is our moral duty to object and revitalize the law. But we feel it is our duty to revitalize as conservatives not as radicals.

We seek to revitalize church and state so that they are more in harmony with natural laws as understood since the discoveries of evolution. We understand that the laws of nature are not a written code and that a tension exists between virtues and the realities of nature and power, we can only refer to the laws of nature approximatety, therefore we are Revitalized-Conservatives not revolutionaries. Like Burke we prefer to think of “reform” as the opposite of “change” or “innovation,” but we prefer the term revitalize.

We feel it is our duty to harmonize and adapt the laws of church and state to the laws of nature and the science of evolution. Traditional religion, that is, chiefly the Involutionary Inward Path, and Beyondism, chiefly the Evolutionary Outward Path, require each other for a Revitalized-Conservatism. We believe that we cannot reach Godhood without this revitalization.

"All men, if you only go back to their beginnings, have the gods for their fathers." (Seneca)

The transpersonal is still prepersonal, yet is biologically beyond as well

Carl Jung has been charged, by Ken Wilber and others, with confusing the personal subconscious mind with the “superconscious” mind. The “collective unconscious,” where Jung discovered archetypes existing, contains what we might call the God-archetype, and here is where the Wilber types are fearful of admitting that God remains there in the personal subconscious. They want God to be more than this, (indeed God is more than this, biologically) so they expand the God archetype to exist outside and beyond the personal subconscious, but outside biology itself. Yet the transpersonal God they define is still the prepersonal God of Jung.

The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) takes a different perspective. The God archetype is not exactly free from the body even though it appears similar in different life forms, much as the father's genes are similar in his offspring; God is implicit in all explicit life forms. We can discover the God-archetype within, which is prepersonal, but we must evolve biologically to that Godhood we can see (with effort) inwardly.

Traditional religion involves seeing more or less the same God Jung imagined in the subconscious, using various methods of prayer and meditation, but we cannot reduce God to this experience of the God within. However, unlike Wilber's view, reaching the God within is defined in ECC as the Involutionary Inward Path, which we do pursue. But to reach the Real God, Who is only partially (though blissfully) seen as the God within, we must apply the Evolutionary Outward Path, to evolve biologically and bio-spiritually to Godhood.

This fear of biological evolution in new age religion seems to stem from fear of the idea of future biological evolution, which has been politically incorrect at least since evolutionary theory was made evil by the political study of eugenics. Fear of biology in old age religion was not so much fear as the lack of knowledge of evolution. But truth requires courage.

Natural and Divine Law Redefined

Moving forward from the Greeks, the theological materialism defines natural law as not fully distinguished from the laws of nature. Cicero wrote that “True law is right reason in agreement with Nature,” and over the ages we have learned more of nature than we once knew. The former definition of natural law as prescribed by an authority superior to the political state, a law of divine commandment, from God, can now be seen in the evolution of nature to Godhood, with no separation.

Bringing our "Souls" and the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood in harmony with the divine order does not really mean moving outside of nature, it means bringing ourselves in harmony with evolution, which can then lead to Godhood. Godhood is the zenith and culmination of nature and evolution.

Russell Kirk pointed out that the scientific theories of Plato and Aristotle have continually been supplanted by modern science yet their ethics, politics and metaphysics have not been, at least not for conservatives. Perhaps it is due time to do so. Metaphysically there is no real dividing line between biology, the individual, the group, politics, ethics and science.

The Golden Mean

The Golden Mean in evolutionary political and culture form.

The old Greek formula of “nothing to excess,” or the Golden Mean, can be pursued in the evolutionary format. We evolve best within this conservative dynamic. Radical excesses and extremes rarely work well. Catholic virtues can work in harmony with Beyondist ethics, both are needed in conservative evolution.

Reforming Plato and Aristotle

Harmonizing religion and science in nature

Plato distinguished a difference between the laws of nature and the laws of God. The Sophist's declared that justice comes from following nature. Plato countered that justice comes from obeying the nomos, divine law, divine tradition. Theological materialism combines these views saying that by following the laws of nature we evolve to the nomos, to Godhood, but nomos is only a definition of Godhood. This combines religion and science.

Aristotle suggests to us, however, that we should evolve prudently, along the Golden Mean, between the traditions of both religion and science. City-states can still affirmed in the form of thousands of "ethnostates," lightly guided by subsidiarity, or federalism. As Aristotle might have predicted, perhaps we need a guiding (not ruling) national religion.

It is said that Aristotle's Ethics, Politics and Metaphysics lived on but his science was supplanted by modern science. Perhaps it is time now to update Aristotle's ethics and politics with theological materialism and modern science.

Choosing the future

“There is no law of physics preventing many of science fictions most imaginary devices,” said Michio Kaku. But there can be religious laws picking and choosing—not outright rejecting future imaginary devices, or science.

Development of national and individual aspects of religion

Early prophets addressed and affirmed a national God for the people. Then as their people were conquered (eg. the Hebrews) the new prophets began to affirm a personal, individual aspect of God, where national concerns would be less necessary. We would call these the Outward and Inward Paths of religion.

the Evolutionary Christian Church once again affirms a “national,” Outward Path, along with the Inward Path, in the form of thousands of independent “ethnostates” upon the earth, with each little state evolving its people to Godhood, seeing God both Inwardly and Outwardly, yet within an interdependent world. For example, as Cattell expressed it, a man's ethical loyalty to his own group exceeds that to members of "mankind" generally, however, circumstances put emphasis on the primary survival of all groups, if the total existence of man is threatened. We are all evolving to Godhood.

On Scientists

Along with a religious upbringing I was taught to believe that science was virtually God, the only source of unbiased truth. What caused me to lose faith in science (there's a phrase for you) was when a majority of scientists attempted to wriggle away from the biological aspects of social behavior. This made it very difficult for a non-specialist to find unbiased reporting in fields such as anthropology, archeology, linguistics, history, political science, etc.

I continue to think that science holds a vital place, but mainly because of this bias against sociobiology I remain skeptical of scientists. Perhaps this was a good thing, science alone has not been enough to describe the truth.

Solving Nietzsche's Dilemma

God is more alive in the East and Middle East because science has been slowly killing God in the West, and has, at least until recently, been less so in the East. Nietzsche even declared that “God is dead,” which he said was killing all shared belief in the West. Now that God is Dead, Nietzsche asked, where could morality reside?

Nietzsche's answer was that only a “Superman” could create values within this world of lost values, otherwise all would be Nihilism. It was “the Will to Power” of the Superman who would be the creator of new morality, as it had always been beneath the surface.

In completely giving up the old values for new values, Nietzsche's view was far too radical. Rather than a) throwing out religion and replacing it with science, which was happening in the West, b) keeping fundamentalist religion and throwing out everything else, c) throwing out both science and religion and creating new values of Supermen, as Nietzsche advocated, d) throwing out all values and becoming a Nihilist... it is better to...e) retain both science and religion, which theological materialism and the Evolutionary Christian Church has done.

The Traditional religious God is seen in the Involutionary Inward Path, the scientific God is, or will be, revealed in the Evolutionary Outward Path. The Will To Power is more the the Spirit-Will Within, (Will To Godhood) activating material-spiritual evolution to Godhood. This is a new yet Revitalized-Conservative response to all of the above: to Nietzsche's dilemma, to science, to fundamentalist religion, and to modern Nihilism.

Synthesizing Science and Religion

Science doesn't accept anything unless it is verifiable through positivist methods, and religion accepts things obtained through direct knowledge, not verifiable through science. The Evolutionary Christian Church accepts both kinds of knowledge, scientific and religious, both fields must eventually meet and synthesize.

Civilizing Differences

Instead of complaining and trying to legislate against “sexism” and “racism,” which after all, are deeply genetic within basic human nature ( eg. see sociobiology), it seems better to think of civilizing the differences between gender and race. For example, a Gentleman treats all races of men and women in a chivalrous Christian manner. This is the fair, just, and realistic way to improve behavior between sexes and races.

Civilizing Nietzsche

The “slave morality,” which values submissiveness, benevolence, humility, patience etc. does relate to the Inward Path of theological materialism and the Evolutionary Christian Church, which seeks to know the God-Within by way of the Soul and Spirit Within.

The “master morality,” which values pride, assertiveness, affirmation of life, aristocracy etc. relates to the Outward Path of evolution to Godhood.

To split these, as Nietzsche did, into warring factions makes both men and society incomplete. We need both to evolve to Godhood.  This is the Twofold Path.