Balancing Aquinas With Darwin

Goals of Higher Learning

According to Russell Kirk, quoting John Henry Newman (Redeeming the Time), the primary end of higher learning in all lands and all times has been the training of intellect to form a philosophical habit of mind. The idea was to develop “right reason” and imagination for the sake of the person and the republic.

Higher learning is concerned with abstractions, difficult abstractions, and most people don't like abstractions. But what is meant by “right reason,” to think like St. Thomas Aquinas? No doubt Aquinas was a very great theologian and philosopher in his adaptation of Aristotle for Catholic Christianity and the West, but in the end, Aquinas essentially believes only in the Involutionary Inward Path to the Soul or Spirit within of Tradition.

Right reason needs to balance Aquinas with Darwin and therefore the Theoevolutionary Church includes the Evolutionary Outward Path of Evolution to God. This balancing is the true goal of education. The “centre” did not hold and “mere anarchy” was loosed upon the world because the right reason of Aquinas was insufficient to hold the centre. You cannot virtually extirpate materialism and expect life to hold firm. A reluctant nod to the needs of the flesh is not enough to support the needs of life and evolution.

A Great Spiritual Blockade against evolution was instituted, which inadvertently helped anarchy to be loosed upon the world, since spiritualism alone could not and should not have expected to hold the centre.

Higher learning in the Theoevolutionary Church pursues both Paths, the Involutionary Inward Path (Aquinas and others) and Evolutionary Outward Path (Darwin and others).

Exhuming Materialism And Evolution For Religion

John Lukacs and Russell Kirk too quickly announced the end of historical determinism (The Passing of the Modern Age). Our will is not as free as they wish it to be.

History may be a teleological process, as John Lukacs writes, (Historical Consciousness) but it is not only or merely moving toward that end of mankind and the Day of Judgment in the sense of the Involutionary Inward Path alone, or in the Traditional religious sense. It is not a purely spiritual teleology, it is a spiritual teleology which activates material evolution, or the Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood.

And Lukacs, again, too quickly announced that our evolution will be only the evolution of our consciousness (Teilhard de Chardin made the same mistake). This was another side-stepping, and perhaps unconscious slight-of-hand, of the controversial subject of human evolution. This was a serious mistake which stunted Conservatism and stunted true Western progress. Men are so terrified of the “armed ghost” of historical determinism (and perhaps rightly afraid), that they create another ghost, the end of materialism. We are so afraid of Stalin and Hitler (wrong or evil as they may be) that we murder materialism.

It is true that quantum physics has made scientific certitude less possible, but this does not mean that scientific certitude does not exist, as Lukacs wishes it, and this does not mean that materialism is dead. We are simply too ignorant at this point in our evolution to have scientific certainty in these things. Nevertheless, the Evolutionary Christian Church exhumes the material evolution to Godhood, with the Evolutionary Outward Path, while maintaining the religious teleological end of the Involutionary Inward Path of Tradition. That is, we can have both Spiritualism and Materialism. One dare not kill the other.

Avoiding The Great Spiritual Blockade

Reforming man does not mean only “ tearing him away from the reign of the passions, from the cult of matter, quantity and cunning, and reintegrating him into the world of the spirit and serenity, we would even say: into the world of sufficient reason.” ( Frithjof Schuon, Understanding Islam) This is the way of the Involutionary Inward Path. However, advocating this Path Alone leads to The Great Spiritual Blockade.

What we must first do is understand the sacred, not the profane, direction of the “passions,” which are related to the Evolutionary Outward Path of evolution. If we extirpate the passions we may see the Soul or even the Spirit within but, no matter how difficult it is to attain, this is a limited goal. The instincts and passions most essentially seek the goal of Godhood, the Ideal of the Instincts,which we must evolve to.

Is Esotericism Necessary?

Plato didn't really reject the religion of the old Greek Gods, as Western Philosophy sometimes suggests. Plato more or less opened another school of the old Tradition resembling more the Eastern Tradition, such as Advaita Vedanta.

And Plato and the Eastern School didn't really go against the later Orthodox Judaism (e.g. the Kabbalah), which was influenced by Eastern Traditions during the times of enslavement (Egypt and Babylon). Plato and the Eastern Traditions may have gone against some versions of Judaism and Christianity, which did not see God as a philosophical First Principle, as the esoteric versions did. (eg. Gnosticism)

There is no legitimate battle between matter and spirit or religion and science. We cannot presuppose a dualistic distinction between mind and body. Mind is part of body, mind is real in relation to the body. What is required is a philosophy of the body, a religion of the body, a religion of biology and sociobiology, which is true to the body. Our primary encounter with the world is not outside the body.

This does not suggest a Godless world, as one might expect, because God too is a body with a mind. That is, Godhood is the attainment of Supreme Body with a Supreme Mind. And furthermore, the natural world of bodies and minds can evolve their bodies and minds to Godhood.

We can now ask, if Godhood is the highest evolution of the material and supermaterial world, are Esotericism and Philosophy necessary? One could answer that the Evolutionary Outward Path utilizes Western Science and could perhaps stand on its own; but one doesn't radically turn one's back on the Gods of one's fathers, which are valid and useful in the Two Paths to Godhood. Techniques for approaching the Soul and Spirit Within were developed over thousands of years and can still help us understand Godhood, human nature, and the cosmos. The Theoevolutionary Church applies this old Tradition in the Involutionary Inward Path. The term “Ordered Evolution” suggests the balance between the Evolutionary Outward Path and the Evolutionary Inward Path.

False Separations

We cannot presuppose a dualistic distinction between mind and body. Mind is part of body, mind is real only in relation to the body. What is required is a philosophy of the body, a religion of the body, which is true to the body.

This does not suggest a Godless world, as one might expect, because God too is a Body with a Mind, that is, God is the Supreme Body with the Supreme Mind. And furthermore, the natural world of bodies and minds can evolve their bodies and minds to Godhood, the Supreme Body and Supreme Mind.

Therefore, there is no legitimate battle between matter and spirit or religion and science. Spirit exists within matter as the Seed of the Kosmic Beginning. The Zenith of Matter, or the Zenith of the Mind in Matter, is the Soul, which the Spirit activates to evolve. And the Highest Matter is God, who can also be described as “Spiritual,” but He is really the Highest Evolution of the material world and is not separated from the world any more than the mind is separated from the body.

Those who separate the mind from the body also tend to separate God's Body from His Mind, claiming even that God's Mind is superior to His Body. The Mind of God requires the Body of God. Some call the separate Mind of God the “Father,” when the Father is really the Mind of God, or a Supreme Definition in the Mind of God.

Misleading and Demeaning Definitions of Nature and God

Mystics like to reduce nature to a blind force, even if infinite, which they say is “substituted” for God, a force below the thrown of God, but this is misleading or demeaning.

Nature is not “blind,” it seeks to evolve, through material evolution to Godhood. “All, no matter how different a grade, is still animated.” (Spinoza—Ethics). Godhood is the Zenith of Nature, the Zenith of Evolution.

There is a tendency of intellectuals and mystics to prefer the definition, to prefer the Word denotating or defining God rather than Actual Nature of the Object Godhood.

Past Ages and Unborn Ages

We would change the following old saying : “ Ye unborn ages, crowd not my soul,” to “Ye unborn ages, fill my Spirit but do not crowd my Soul, which contains past ages.”

The balance or tension in Ordered Evolution between Order (past ages) and Evolution (unborn ages) must be maintained.

This helps define the Involutionary Inward Path(Soul or past ages) and the Evolutionary Outward Path (Spirit or unborn ages).

Our View of History

When we say the Evolution to Godhood is the terminal event in history, this is a religious as well as a scientific view of history, although both religion and science have yet to affirm it. Who will be the new Thucydides of our history? Perhaps a religious sociobiologist within the Evolutionary Christian Church will be the new Thucydides of our history?

Mending Our Ways and Divine Wrath

If there is to be a “coming of Divine Wrath” should we not mend our ways? How do we mend our ways to pay heed to this old Hebrew Prophesy? Human nature is largely biologically derived, we must affirm this before we can mend our ways.

Our definition of “Ordered Evolution” is not exactly the same as the Ordered Freedom of paleoconservatives. Ordered Evolution is the basis of our Revitalized Conservatism, which is the way we will avoid divine wrath.

Progress Was Not The Monster

Was it really the notion of “ineluctable progress” that brought on all the monstrosities of the modern age and the disintegration of the West? The “Permanent Things” of Conservatism did not prevent this disintegration. Why? Perhaps because the permanent things did not really include biological and cultural evolution.

The Great Spiritual Blockade against evolution and the material world petrified the “Ordered Freedom” of Conservatism. The Evolutionary Christian Church seeks to revive progress within the Ordered Evolution of a Revitalized Conservatism.

Expanded Path, Contracted Path

The Evolutionary Christian Church affirms both the Expanded and Contracted Paths but we unblock the Great Spiritual Blockade of the Contracted Path, or the Inward Path, leading to the Soul and Spirit within, by also affirming the Expanded Path of the Outward Path, which can take the Spirit and Body (Soul) in evolution to Godhood. Thus religion can join science and physics can join metaphysics.

Justice in nature and perfection

Plato's justice can be seen in the Evolutionary Christian Church as man doing what it is his nature to do, which is, to evolve by his nature to Godhood. This is described as the way that leads to perfection in the Bhagavad Gita, which is speaking of the Involutionary Inward Path to the Soul or the Spirit within, whereas when we speak of perfection of our nature we are speaking of the Evolutionary Outward Path to the Zenith of Evolution, Godhood.

Conservatism and courage

Paleoconservatives have come closer to a philosophy of history and to affirming sociobiology, but they still more or less deny these things mainly because these things do not correspond close enough to their traditional religious view of history, they tend to exclusively affirm the Involutionary Inward Path of Traditional religion. This way lacks courage.

Einstein thought that imagination was more important than knowledge, and Nietzsche thought that courage in philosophy was more important than intelligence. The Evolutionary Christian Church affirms a Revitalized Conservatism in which we affirm imagination and courage in religion and science, as well redeeming the great traditions of perennial religion or philosophy, which takes us deeper and higher into religion and science than traditional conservatism.

On Naked Apes

Russell Kirk said that we are “more than naked apes,” (Redeeming The Time) but what is this “more?” Are we naked apes who seek “only” the involutionary God-within, or are we naked apes who seek an evolutionary God-without?

“Spirituality” should not virtually exclude “materiality,” especially since the Outward Path of material evolution is the way we attain true Godhood, and not “merely” the way we attain the God-within (no easy task in itself), which is really not God but is the Soul or the Spirit within as Enlightenment.

Debating God, Man Loses

When a spiritual master can debate God and defeat Him, as in some religious traditions, then it is not God who is being debated, but a human version of God. This is absurd and highly arrogant, although typical of mankind. Winning a debate with God is like an atom overpowering the Kosmos. We can only try to evolve in harmony with God and the Laws of the Kosmos, this is difficult enough, especially since most of the laws are yet to be understood.

Knowledge may be difficult to obtain from “The Tree Of Life” but this does not mean that knowledge is “forbidden,” and we do not defeat God when we obtain knowledge. We defeat the devolutionary forces that are, or can be defined as Satanic, but not defined as God. Satan does not help us obtain knowledge, he hinders us. God helps us.

Are we Platonists or Aristotelians?

We seem to be Both. Plato doesn't really look up (or point up), as in Raphael's portrait, Plato looks inward, and Aristotle concentrates outwardly, although both do look in and out. From the perspective of theological materialism, Plato more or less lives in the Involutionary Inward Path of ancient metaphysical Tradition, Aristotle lives more in the Evolutionary Outward Path of Science, which is more forward looking.

Adjusting to Real Human Nature

Adjusting to the real conditions of human existence means more than adjusting to the norms of culture and history, which has largely been the Conservative definition of adjustment. The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) also affirms the deeper adjustment to biology and genetic human nature, leading to a Revitalized Conservatism. According to conservatives normative knowledge is found in Revelation, Authority and Historical experience, but we would add biological or sociobiological knowledge, which has been neglected by most conservatives. Knowledge of sociobiology must be included in a revitalized view of the human existence within conservatism. This evolutionary perspective informs the Evolutionary Outward Path in ECC which works in conjunction with the Involutionary Inward Path informed by the old Traditionalism.

Moral Imagination In Religion

The Evolutionary Christian Church is applying the power of “moral imagination” (Burke and Kirk) in religion and not merely in art, we are expressing afresh the old standards while at last including the Evolutionary Outward Path within the traditional Involutionary Inward Path. We seek to revive the religious foundation but we also seek to unblock the Great Spiritual Blockade against material evolution to God. We can be both new along with bearers of the old standards and the “permanent things.”

Revitalized religion can be imaginative and artistic even if it is more difficult to develop a great religion than a great work of art. Religion is greater than the arts and it should be portrayed better than a great novel or a great political philosophy. The Outward Path can work with what Burke thought of, negatively, as the “idyllic imagination” (eg. Rousseau), and even the “diabolic imagination” (the occult), making religion fresh and new while remaining grounded in the old dogmas and manners. This is Revitalized Conservatism.

Rainbow Bridge

The Theoevolutionary Church (TC) will last and endure because it has affirmed a Rainbow Bridge that goes from the past to the present, (Ordered Evolution) and another less seen Rainbow Bridge that goes from the present to the future. Where the ends of the Rainbow come together the Evolutionary Christian Church stands, as the watchmen Heimdal stood at the Rainbow Bridge (Bifrost) in ancient northern Odinism.

Metaphysically universalists but practically or operatively exclusivists

“...Perennialists say, of course, that there is more than one saving Path back to God, but they’re equally adamant that a man must follow only one of those Paths. Metaphysically, we’re universalists, but practically—or operatively—we must be “exclusivists”...” (from the Cutsinger weblog)

A Solution To U.S. Trade Deficit

..."Anyone who examines U.S. trade and tariff history quickly learns that the USA did not practice free trade before 1933. From the early days of the republic until 1933, America practiced a policy of high tariffs expressly designed to protect domestic manufacturing..."

Continued here, from Economy In Crisis

On Beauty

The Traditionalists say that beauty pertains to cognition (A Coomaraswamy). But we say more importantly beauty pertains to the object, the physical object, which cognition can only describe or try to describe. God is more than the Highest Cognition which describes or defines God or God's Mind, the Father. God is the Supreme Object.

If we apply Beauty as the first or most important test in either mathematics or in theology there is no real place for ugly theology. The patterns must be beautiful. The proof should connect many different things and ideas. Yet beauty can look very simple, childishly simple, and still have far reaching results.

Beauty (the Son) has to do with the ideal of the Instincts, the dreaded senses of Plato, whereas Truth has to do with “knowledge” more than the object defined by knowledge. “Goodness” has to do with actions (essentially the Holy Spirit).

Toward Noble Art and Popular Art In the Evolutionary Christian Church

The Traditionalist School doesn't like Renaissance art, or the ancient Greeks because they think here art shifted from the inner presence to the outer presence (see Ananda Coomaraswamy), or from the future to the present, from spiritual to material, from Godly man to animal man. But we say this was a necessary shift, however, it shifted too far, too radically away from the Involutionary Inward Path to the point of rejecting spiritual man and religious art entirely in the modern world. Russell Kirk said that decadence can be defined as the loss of an end goal.

Noble Art is basically the art of the Involutionary Inward Path, concerned with the Goal Itself, the ethical perception of God, iconography, sacred objects. Popular Art is the art of the Evolutionary Outward Path, concerned with progress toward the Goal, variability, common but religious objects. The Evolutionary Outward Path of evolution to God needs to supplement not supplant the Involutionary Inward Path of Tradition which seeks the God within.

Both Noble and Popular Art are concerned with theology, both are “heavenward leaning.” The distinction is between theological and nontheological, not between cultured or primitive art. There may only be a difference in the degree of refinement. As it turns out the so-called ignorant masses may be the only ones to preserve traditions, sometimes without even understanding them, as the higher social levels have all but broken the links.

Enlarging not reducing science and metaphysics

We try to ground our religious and philosophical convictions in rational argument and science, but we won't be restricting our imaginations or our metaphysical convictions to these things. We believe that ultimately metaphysics can become physics, religion can become science, and vice versus, not by reducing metaphysics but by enlarging metaphysics with science, not by reducing science but by enlarging science with metaphysics.

On Absolute Reality

I agree with a writer on the Object-oriented philosophy blog when he says that “scientific claims about absolute reality are inadequate, and need supplementation by a metaphysics of objects.” But I think in turn metaphysics is also inadequate to explain absolute reality. I think we will one day find the scientifically discernible qualities of the Spirit-Will, Soul and even Godhood which were formerly “explained” by metaphysics. Godhood the Supreme Object first IS absolute reality and second Godhood's Mind reflects, defines and detonates absolute reality within the Object Godhood. This helps define the real and the mirroring equations of the real. Godhood is not merely a mirroring equation, as so many Traditionalists assume. The material world of evolving objects is vital and needs to be exhumed, since Godhood is reached this way.

The Mind is the mirror of the Body

(a poem by Shen Hsiu:)
"Our body is the Bodhi-tree,
And our mind a mirror bright.
Carefully we wipe them hour by hour,
And let no dust alight."

(to which Hui Neng, the 6th Patriarch, replied:)
"There is no Bodhi-tree,
Nor stand of a mirror bright.
Since all is Void,
Where can the dust alight?"

-Platform Sutra from World Wisdom

The poem above illustrates the difference between the Gnostic belief in Truth as Nothing over truth as Object. The first poem is more accurate than the second although the Traditionalist's believe the second is superior. The Mind is the mirror of the Body, as Absolute Truth is the mirror or Mind of the Object Godhood.

Identifying with the Soul and not the Spirit

The Traditional Involutionary Religions identify with the Soul, which is Zenith of the Mind, and not the Spirit, or the Will to Godhood of the Body and the Soul, and that is the source of all their difficulties. The Soul and the Spirit need to be balanced in the evolution to God.

Basics

There is one universal Spirit from which all the Kosmos evolves. Devolution is not necessarily the “antithesis” of evolution but is natural, and the resulting selection struggles in the Kosmos involves the entire Kosmos, including humans.

Ethics and morality are necessary to ensure evolution and happiness in nature, and balance and harmony with the Spirit within nature, which helps activate life to Godhood in conjunction with natural selection.

Evolution will ultimately prevail over devolution at which time Godhood is Attained in evolution.

A Deeper Adjustment To Norms

When Russell Kirk and other conservatives speak of the real adjustment of humans to the norms of human existence (See “The Perversity of Recent Fiction”), conservatives usually underemphasize the biological origin of much social behavior (See Sociobiology), which requires an even deeper adjustment to norms. Biological roots must also be nurtured and restored rather than restoring only old history.

The Evolutionary Christian Church is revitalizing conservatism in this direction of biology and social behavior, or Ordered Evolution. Attaining Godhood rests upon the evolution of biological life to Godhood, which is the most vital adjustment to the norms of nature.

Balancing The Paths

When you “starve desire to death” you can stop desire, at least with religious discipline. But this can also describe the Great Spiritual Blockade of the exclusively Involutionary Inward Path of Traditional religion. The Inward Path needs to be balanced with the Evolutionary Outward Path, the biological path of evolution to Godhood. This balancing describes one of the main tasks of the Revitalized Conservatism of the Evolutionary Christian Church.

God is precisely an Object or Objects

God is precisely an Object without any reference to knowledge or ignorance. Godhood is Absolute Truth in reference to knowledge or ignorance. But Absolute Truth only denotes Godhood the Object, Absolute Truth is not a thing-in-itself. To name what Godhood is: Godhood is made up of Absolute Beauty and Absolute Good, which are the highest evolved Spirit-Will and the highest evolved Body in the cosmos, and defined as Absolute Truth. The Mind of the Object or Objects of Godhood, or the Soul of Godhood, is Absolute Truth, or Godhood thinks Absolute Truth. Life in the cosmos evolves toward Godhood. Life in the cosmos contains the Spirit-Will or the Seed following the birth of the cosmos at the beginning of Evolution. The Spirit-Will or Seed within life helps activate life evolution toward Godhood as the general pattern of evolution, working within the natural world of material evolution, which can also devolve. Human science has yet to define or understand the substance of Spirit-Will-To-Godhood or the substance of the Object or Objects of Godhood. The higher we evolve the more we will know.

Connecting the temporal and the spiritual

Bringing back the Divine to normal life

Evolution works best in small separate states, and evolution is activated by the Spirit seeking Godhood: this connects the spiritual and the temporal.

Religious or state imperialism is forbidden in the Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) as imperialism greatly damages the evolution of separate states, thus blocking the evolution to God.

The Church has always been responsible for “care of the souls” but this should not affirm imperialism. The Order of the Outward Path in ECC is more like a research center for evolving to Godhood (see Cattell's Beyondism, which, unlike ECC, is minus the Involutionary Inward Path(which makes it more radical)) States can of course defend themselves applying the Just War laws.

The Spirit is not separate from the Will but is the Will to Godhood, and the Will is connected to the Soul (reason/science) and the Soul is connected to the Law. The Spirit is guided by the Soul (the Zenith of the Mind).

The Spirit is primary but this does not suggest a dictatorship of instinct over reason. The Spirit, or the Will to Godhood, is the power behind human reason and the Soul and contains the Truths of God.

We are under the Law of God as we are under the law of nature, and it is ever our task to better and better understand the Law of God.

In this way we seek to bring back the Divine to normal life.

Essential Theology

Will-Spirit, Mind, Divine Nature, Church And State

The Will, which is the Spirit in the Theoevolutionary Church (TC) cannot be subordinated to the mind, the mind must align itself with the Will-Spirit. This is not such a fearful thing when we see how faith in the Goal, or reasoning toward the Goal of the Will-Spirit, helps us understand life evolving to Godhood through natural evolution activated by the Will-Spirit.

The mind at it's zenith, defined as the Soul, must learn to understand the Will-Spirit and then help guide the body in the direction of Godhood, the Goal of the Spirit.

This defines the Divine as what is true in nature. The Law of God is what is in nature.

The “personal” aspect of God is the Will-Spirit within each individual that can be contacted and harmonized with the evolutionary path to the more "impersonal" Godhood. The “logos” is thus both personal and impersonal.

It is not the separation of church and state that is primary, it is adapting the state to the church in any given history or environment that defines the primary relationship between church and state, just as it is not a separate mind and will which is primary but adapting the mind to the will that defines the relationship between them.

We are not free from Divine Law yet we have a certain amount of “freedom” in how we adapt to Divine Law, just as natural selection in evolution can diverge, go sideways, go backwards or forward but still be activated by the Spirit toward the pattern of evolving to Godhood, the Zenith of the Will-Spirit.

It seems that the only way Traditionalists can be free is to be free from true nature and the natural world. This Gnosticism defines God as a denotation, an equation, not an object, not a Supreme Object. We cannot and should not be free from the very nature that takes us to Godhood by way of the Spirit.

(For an alternative discussion of these things see “A Symposium on Remi Braque's The Law Of God,” Modern Age, Winter 2009)

Gerald Celente Interview : It’s the end of the world as the Greater Depression hits after 2010

"...Mr. Celente follows over 300 trends: family, crime, war, education, consumer & business patterns which Trends Research Institute synthesizes to predict the future..."

"...We predict state secessionist movements will rival the breakup of the Soviet Union."

"The only way we can ever recover is to return to individual community, personal responsibility, local government. Next, average will disappear, Quality will return. Look at GM. Junk cars financed by junk bonds. Now owned by a junk government. As a consumer, don’t consume quantity -- consume quality."

"How will it all end?", we queried. Will the dollar survive?

"The dot com bubble should have burst and gone away in a short sharp recession. But the boys at the Fed re-inflated the economy by lowering interest rates to a 46 year low -- and in turn created the real estate bubble -- much bigger than the dot com bubble. "

"Now they’re creating the bailout bubble -- which will ultimately dwarf the real estate bubble. It will cause the implosion of the global economy world wide -- which will not be able to be repaired by creating yet another bubble. Every time the government fails, it tells a bigger lie and then a still bigger lie..."

The rest of the interview here, from Human Events.

The Confounding of Reductionism In Art

The Ideal of The Instincts

It seems to me that one of the difficulties conservatives have with imparting a “moral imagination” (Burke, Kirk) derives from the difficulty that comes from disdaining and denigrating the “naked ape” notion of man.

When you try to teach morality by appealing only to “spiritual things” while demeaning the instincts and material things, you are ignoring the 1000 pound Gorilla in the room. It is not the instincts that are bad but the teaching of goalless instincts that is bad. The Ideal of the Instincts is Godhood, what could be higher? This is far more than a mere naked ape view of the instincts.

How We Are Moral Beings

Natural Law And Divine Law

“Law for Man” Or “Law for God”? Emerson and Kirk separate these, but they need not be separated. God is also a “Thing,” an “Object.” God is as much of a “thing” as man, only God is the Zenith of Things, and the Zenith of Nature. This is how natural law can be the same as divine law.

We are moral beings in this sense of having natural laws within us, which are also divine laws; the natural laws lead in evolution to the divine laws of God. When we deny this or are ignorant of this we can be defined as immoral.

The Body And Object Too Can Be Noble

When St. Thomas speaks bitterly of man who could not “think of anything nobler than bodies” (Sum. Theol.), he is speaking of the God of the Inward Path, as the Buddha and others also saw, which defines the God seen in the Revealed Religions. This more precisely defines the Soul Within, the Zenith of the Mind. To reach Godhood requires the Outward Path of material evolution to Godhood. The Body and Object too can be noble.

Contemplation and Action as the Two Paths

Contemplation is not superior to action, both help define the Two Paths, the Inward and Outward Paths. It is through the Outward Path of evolution and action that we evolve to the God seen in the Inward Path of contemplation.

We are more than naked apes but...

Revitalizing the moral imagination

Our age requires the moral imagination that Burke and Kirk wrote about, we must make Traditions fresh and new, but this includes more than literature. Religion has rejected science and evolutionary human nature for long enough and it needs to be revitalized. If the end of moral imagination is to teach us what it means to be human then we can no longer ignore evolution in religion.

Spiritualizing Evolution

We are more than naked apes, but this is not because we reject Darwin and evolution but because we spiritualize evolution. We accept that we are animals but we are animals on the great Path to Godhood. We do not wish to puff ourselves up with definitions of a human Godhood that rejects the animal instincts. The instincts carry us to God, activated by the Spirit.

Relaxing the tension between faith and reason

The synthesis of reason and revelation has been thought to not be possible. The tension Leo Strauss saw between God-directed, revelation, and Darwin-directed, reason, can be relaxed when evolution is seen as evolving to Godhood, as it is seen in theological materialism and the Evolutionary Christian Church.

There is not true tension here, but there is a goal-directed, or teleological evolution, requiring a combination faith-hypothesis, which says that science and reason will eventually find proof of the Godhood goal of evolution now known mainly by faith or intuition. The activation comes from the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood within life which is itself material/supermaterial.

Laws of God

We have the basic laws of God within our nature, we must learn to follow the laws, after first seeing what they are.

We need to orient ourselves toward the evolutionary laws of the Kosmos, toward the Godhood of the Evolutionary Outward Path, while also seeking to know God, the goal of evolution, through the Involutionary Inward Path. This is the Twofold Path.

We can learn about the world by learning about God, but we can also learn about God by learning about the world.

The Eternal Law is the same as the natural law yet to be fully discovered. Natural law, human law and divine law are the same law in its full extent. The highest culture would harmonize these laws.

Transvaluing the Being-narrative

Being does not begin with abstract non-Being, Being is a force of nature which is only reflected or mirrored in abstract non-Being. God is in nature as the highest evolved Being, God is the goal of life and evolution.

The Being-narrative does not pass from symbol to idea to nature, Being is nature, symbol and idea only reflect the nature of Being.

The Spirit-Will is also part of nature, It is not non-Being. Spirit-Will is yet to be defined and discovered by modern science, but one day it will.

Thing-In-Itself-With-A-Goal

The Spirit, or the Spirit-Will-To Godhood, is the Thing-In-Itself-With-A-Goal, the Goal of Godhood at the zenith of evolution.

This does define a teleology, design in nature, (evolutionary teleology) which is within nature and it can be explained materially, with Godhood perhaps existing in some kind of supermaterial “spiritual atoms,'' called spiritual because it has not yet been explained by material science, although it has been much examined and limited to the non-material by religion.

Blood Activated By Spirit

We cannot and should not abolish Tradition, we cannot remove the moral or ethical foundation. We do not seek to demolish the old so that the new can be built, as all revolutionaries do. Yet we can recall that our tradition was once new.

We do not reduce humanity to biological origins when we acknowledge the biological origin of much of social behavior. Our foundation is not placed in biology, genes, race or in spiritless matter. It is not a choice between “blood or spirit,” blood is activated by Spirit to evolve to Godhood.

We do this by synthesizing Tradition and Science, the Spiritual and the Material in the Inward and Outward Paths leading to God.

Political nature of man

The nature (constitution) of man is not really democratic, it is led by the Spirit, and guided by the Soul. We are the instruments of the Spirit, individualism and democracy must be approached from this perspective. We evolve as a group. This more suggest the hierarchy of Monarchy as the smoothest running, natural system, under the right conditions. But the Spirit is flexible, adaptable, and it may advance itself best through democracy, or at least representative Republics. We could just as well say “The Republic is dead, long live the Republic” as we could say “the King is dead, long live the King.”

Good/Bad, Spirit/Body, Definition

Regarding the Spirit we can say that It is the doer and we are the instrument by which the Spirit moves the body through evolution to Godhood. But care must be taken here with the religious tendency to define the body and the person as “delusion.”

The Spirit cannot be defined as the only good and the body as the only bad, dualism should not be set up here. We do not “save ourselves” by losing our body, the body is the instrument whereby the Spirit evolves all the way to the Supreme Body of Godhood.

Both Spirit and Body are good, as the Holy Spirit and the Son are the highest good, defined by the Father.

Function and appearance in art and religion

There is a strong tendency toward dualism between function and appearance in Traditionalism making appearance far less important. In art this means the creation of icons and archetypes representing the function rather than the appearance.

However, when God is seen as a Supreme Object then the dualism between function and appearance does not apply. God is not merely an idea. More than the intellectual virtues must survive death, these need to be carried forward by the successful survival and reproduction of our genes and our body.

Let the Body be unblocked from the Great Spiritual Blockade in art and religion. We can have an archetypal art with heroes and myths representing universal functions, but appearance deserves equal treatment, the Body and Spirit both evolve to Godhood.

We need to avoid the extremes of modernism that seems to care only for appearance, and Tradition which cares only for function. Contrary to many mystics, we need not use the lowest symbols to represent a God who is only an idea, there is nothing nobler, at least on earth, than the highest evolved human body, representing the Beautiful, the Good and the True.

Imitating nature's manner of operation

The Evolutionary Outward Path in the Evolutionary Christian Church imitates nature in her manner of operation. Art was said to do this in Traditionalism.

The art of God is the work of the Son and Holy Spirit through which all things are made and evolve, defined by the Father.

Contrary to the Traditionalists it is the looks of existing things and not the ideas that is important, and it is the destination of things that is primary.

Soul and Spirit

The Soul searches for the absolute order and truth of things as they might exist in the mind of God—this is the Soul defined as the Zenith of the Mind.

Deep within the Soul is the Spirit, the Zenith of the Soul, which activates the Soul to Godhood, guided by the genius of the Soul.

Genius lies in the Soul, the immanent Spirit activates genius as individual, but the Spirit is both individual and universal.


A. Coomaraswamy said the immanent Spirit is equally artistic, moral and speculative.

Immanent Pantheism

We do not place divinity in the transcendental beyond the object universe, that is, purely as in Classical Theism (see definitions here), which held to the transcendence of God, his existence over and beyond the universe. Panentheism—unlike pantheism, maintains that the divine can be both transcendent and immanent at the same time. Whereas Pantheism holds to the divine immanence, or immanent pantheism. This places the Divine within and around mankind, indwelling and near dwelling as the Spirit or the Will to Godhood which activates within life rather than as completely remote---yet Godhood, at the zenith of material evolution, is far evolved from man and the general cosmos as to be mistaken for transcendent.

Synthesizing Religion and Psychology

The Will, or Will to Godhood, is both instinctive-unconscious and superconscious-supraconscious. There need not be a split between modern psychology and Traditionalist religion. The instincts have been wrongly driven out of religion, or virtually so, which in effect blocked the true activator to Godhood with a Great Spiritual Blockade. The Ideal of the Instincts has been grossly limited and virtually thrown out of religion.

The “demon “ of psychology is the same as the “daemon” of the mystic, the “libido” is the same as “Eros.” This is how the innocent primitive, unaware of style, art or religion can apprehend God as well as the refined metaphysician. This is not the “reduction” of religion to psychology, or reduction of psychology to biology, this is the amplification of the Material to Spirit. The material and the spiritual should not be forced apart. Eros leads to Godhood, the material evolves to the material-spiritual.

The Will to Godhood is universal, it is our way of apprehending it that may be individual, or define our “style,” our art, or our religion.

(For the Traditionalist perspective, which tends to reduce all things to Involutionary theology, see “Christian and oriental philosophy of art” by Ananda Coomaraswamy.)

New Right Definition of Tradition

Brief Excerpt: New Culture, New Right

"New Right identitarians believe a people is a living organism. As such, it can die. To guard against this a people needs a common heritage to define itself and maintain its will to live together. In this sense, tradition serves as the scaffolding around which a people constitutes itself. If there is no heritage – no transmission (traditio) from one generation to another – a people has nothing to live for and no reason to remain together. It is, then, as the horizon against which a people's existence is worked out that tradition imparts purpose to its common endeavors. As [Arnold] Gehlen writes, 'without it one can keep restlessly active...and yet lack any inner sense that all this busyness carries any moral significance.' This is why identitarians believe Europe's pagan, mythic traditions are key to its renaissance..."

Excerpt continues here..

Freedom, Abstinence and Order

The discipline of “freedom through abstinence” can be useful in concentrating the mind and body on attaining the Soul-Within, as is applied in the Involutionary Inward Path (Thanatos), which is taught in the Revealed Religions and in Stoic philosophy. But beyond this specialty it cannot be applied to the whole of life, the social and political order, where it becomes a negative freedom and can devalue the material world, even to the point of creating a Great Spiritual Blockade against evolving to God.

The Evolutionary Outward Path redeems or balances this misapplication of the Inward Path in relation to the material world, creating order through the evolution to Godhood (Eros), an order that is not the extreme of abstinence but material evolution directed by evolutionary knowledge (Ordered Evolution) to Godhood.

On reality that transcends our grasp of it

The Absolute Truth (AT) can be known only by the Supreme Objects of Godhood. AT is “in the world” only in it being in God the Object's mind and not outside his mind. Abstract Truth is Abstract Truth and does not exist on its own as an object, it exists only in the mind of a living object.

Kant closed off “the possibility of correspondence with a reality that transcends our grasp of it.” (see discussion here) We don't exactly agree, because Godhood is beyond our grasp and God perceives truths beyond our grasp yet grasps truths that are within his/her grasp.

What we would say is that we close off the possibility of truth if we try to go beyond the living object who grasps it. The denotation or definition of God does not exist as an object in itself but exists in the mind of God, which exists in the body of Godhood.

The Theoevolutionary Church responds to the challenge of the fallen culture

According to the wise Russell Kirk (Redeeming The Time) a culture develops and civilizations arise by a process of “challenge and response” (Toynbee). If a culture vigorously enough surmounts the challenge, the culture will grow in strength. But if the challenge is so great that it damages or distorts the culture—the culture can become stunted and possibly fall.

Modern culture has been such a formidable challenge that it has in fact distorted and nearly destroyed Western civilization, and particularly the Anglo-American culture. The Christian West has not been able to mount a vigorous enough and deep enough response the the great challenge. Conservatism was missing the power of science, and particularly the knowledge of sociobiology that could have a direct biological, demographic, response to the declining West, which is virtually missing in Modern Conservatism.

The Theoevolutionary Church (TC) with its Revitalized Conservatism (RC) has the great potential to be the vigorous response to the challenge of modernism and postmodernism because science and sociobiology are synthesized into traditional religion and conservatism with the Evolutionary Outward Path. The question is, will TC and RC be applied in time, or will it be the foundation and revival of our culture and our people, along with all cultures and all people, after the fall?

An End To Dualities

An end to dualities means an end to separating the physical from the metaphysical (we would rather say “tranrational”), but unlike modern science we do not eject the metaphysical, and unlike religion we do not virtually eject the physical. We include the physical and metaphysical in one whole, one evolutionary continuum, from the simple all the way to Godhood. The spiritual is material and the material is spiritual in evolution.

False Dualities

Conservatives have said that the material order rests upon the spiritual world, but this is a false duality. The material is spiritual and the spiritual is material.

The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) attaches science to religious aims and has not detached science or detached religion. Two Paths lead to, A. the Inward Soul and B. the Outward God, both Paths are affirmed in ECC. There is no duality here.

We must recover the religious order to survive. And the choice is not between a “Savage God” and a "Civilized God." ECC is not merely reviving paganism, we are reinvigorating the Civilized God of Perennial Religion.

Kin, Cult and Conservatism

The missing element

Russell Kirk, and a few others, (Dawson, Voegelin, Toynbee) pulled a bit of a fast one when they proposed that once a people join a cult for worship (religion), then, out of this the human community grows. Biology, genetics, kin and race are the first element out of which the cult and community grow. Perhaps this fast one was understandable, given the bias against discussing the genetic origin of social behavior following World War II. Much courage would have been necessary. Even Edward Wilson, the brilliant father of Sociobiology from Harvard University, who is not a racist, was dosed with water for suggesting such a thing.

Yes, culture arises from religious ties, but before that culture arises from kin- bonding. The reality is that dwelling together in relative peace usually relates to genetic similarities. The biological origin of much of social behavior should not be ignored. The achievements of our civilization stem from this as well as from religion.

Could this “fast one,” placed at the base of modern conservatism, explain why conservatism and the culture are not reviving? With Revitalized Conservatism this missing, vital, biological aspect of human nature is finally addressed through the Evolutionary Outward Path, synthesizing it with the Traditional Involutionary Inward Path of Religion.

The Idolatry of Denotation

“Supernatural divine influence” is said to not come from any “object,” but this is when God is defined as only the “Father,” which is a definition, a denotation. When God or Godhood is seen as a Supreme Object of Supreme Divine influence, then indeed “supernatural divine influence” can come from Supreme Objects.

The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) separates the intellectual form or definition of God from the ruling power of the world—as mystics have often done--but we do not “worship the dead letter,” the Idolatry of Denotation. This worship, this idolatry, has created an aversion, or more seriously, a Great Spiritual Blockade against everything material, and against positive theology.

Even so, there is a place for this “idolatry” in the Involutionary Inward Path of ECC, which works in harmony with the Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood.

A Very Great Sin

If sin is---to use a phrase by traditionalist Ananda Coomaraswamy---“a departure from the order of the end,” then The Great Spiritual Blockade of material evolution to Godhood by traditional religion, diverting human actions toward the Soul-Within alone, has been a very great sin. The Inward Path leads to the Soul, a great goal in itself, but the Outward Path of evolution to Godhood has been left out of religion, and that is where the great sin has occurred.

Instinct and Culture

Defining ordered evolution

It is overdo time to synthesize instinct and culture, which to this day Conservatism says is the distinction between man and animals. The Ideal of the Instincts, driven by the Will to Godhood, or the Spirit, leads to Godhood, for man or animals.

Culture changes as natural selection moves forward, but instinct requires ordered evolution to maintain positive changes. Ordered evolution affirms Conservatism.

Revitalized Conservatism defines ordered evolution in the following virtues and ethics of the Evolutionary Christian Church:
The Involutionary Inward Path, virtues: (Traditional Christianity) Prudence, justice, courage, temperance (Greek), faith, hope and charity (Christian).
The Evolutionary Outward Path, ethics ( Beyondism): Development, group solidarity, diversity, individualism, plus, intelligence, truth and beauty.

The goal of the Involutionary Virtues is to understand and see the Soul-Within, the goal of the Evolutionary Ethics is to evolve to God, activated by the Spirit.

Ordered Evolution

On Redeeming Conservatism

We take seriously Russell Kirk's (also T. S. Eliot) advice to find imaginative ways to renew our proscriptive freedoms and our inherited moral and constitutional order. Kirk thought the culture can be renewed only if the religion (cult) is renewed. This is a central concern of the Theoevolutionary Church (TC), although our “renewal” is a Revitalized Conservatism which Kirk would probably find too radical. Evolution is not an impersonal force of destiny or history, it is guided by the Spirit and the Soul, ultimately leading to God.

We do not want the conservative legacy to seem like a burden to this age, as it now does. We understand that Conservatism is a foundation, not a burden. We describe the balance between “Order and Evolution” rather than “Order and Freedom.” “Ordered Evolution” is the term we use.

A Future Less Fearful

The Theoevolutionary Church cannot be described as merely converting our religious belief into an instrument of social transformation, as secularizing religion has done, or was trying to do before it simply gave up on religion; we affirm the sacred nature of evolution which grounds our religious belief.

The doom and gloom of Conservatism at the prospect of the future, harkening up Orwell's “1984” and Huxley's “Brave New World” need not be such doom and gloom. To read the great modern Conservative writers, with their brilliant descriptions of the death wish of modern life, has tended to lead to stagnant traditionalism, rather than ordered evolution. Young people are not attracted to stagnation.

Ordered Evolution is the Conservative/futurist balance which can make the future less fearful. Our hope is that even in the “depths of calamity” (Kirk) on the ruins of Western Civilization a foundation can be laid for a greatness going into the future.

We cannot entirely foresee the future, historical determinism can be undone by evolution. But future evolution need not be severed from the order if the Conservatism of human nature—now affirmed by sociobiology-- is the ground of future evolution, as it is in TC. The Involutionary Inward Path of Traditional Religion is the anchoring structure of the Evolutionary Outward Path, as we proceed with Ordered Conservative Evolution.

Defining Philosophy

We embrace the old definition of philosophy as theology, ontology, biology, and wisdom regarding how to live.

How The Holy Ghost Can Be Love

Dante thought of the Holy Ghost as “love.”  Without invoking the Tantra, this can be true in relation to the Spirit being the Zenith of the Soul, the Seed of the Kosmic Beginning, which helps activate evolution through survival and reproduction to evolve all the way to Godhood.

The Best of Both Truth and Objects

Truth can exist outside our human minds yet not exist as an object. This sort of truth can be respected but should not be worshiped as the only supreme goal. God's mind can know Absolute Truth (we cannot) yet even with God, Truth is not a living object, it is both inside and outside God's mind, only God can think Absolute Truth or know It. Absolute Truth can be known and thought of by God but it is pure definition to Godhood the Object, as it is, or will be to us.

Higher Truths may be known in the mind of Angels and with Penultimate Gods who live on the evolutionary continuum, where truth still remains “nothing,” it is nonexistent definition, not alive, not an object. We seek to evolve to the Supreme Object, first, and only then know the Supreme Truth.

A clear, sensible essay on our economic problems

"...On the consumer end, “normal” was a death wish, “shop ’til you drop” – an obsessive compulsion by the profligate many to spend money they didn’t have but had to borrow...If it was an economic Pearl Harbor, the enemies were Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, A.I.G., Countrywide, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Bear Stearns, and all the other banks, brokerages, speculators, insurance companies, hedge funds and leverage buyout specialists that had launched the sneak attack on the American economy..."

The rest of the article here, "Looking Back on the Greatest Depression" by Gerald Celente

Nature First, Definition Second

Godhood As The Good Object

God is not defined as “Good” only because the Idea says God is Good, Godhood is first the Supreme Object, or Objects, at the Zenith of Evolution, and only with this is God truly defined as Good. The Supreme Object is Good before It is defined as such by or as the idea, contrary to Plato and much of philosophical history.

Nature First, Definition Second

When we say “according to nature” we mean “as things behave” and not as Plato seems to think “as things should behave.” Nature comes first, and the ideas and definitions come second. Ideas are a product of nature but they require a living Object to think the idea, and a Supreme Object to think a supreme idea.

Definitions

Godhood is not invisible, only the definition of God is invisible. Confounding these leads to the Great Spiritual Blockade against the world, and against material and supermaterial evolution toward Godhood.

God Is Within The Cosmos

Metaphysics usually thinks things are beyond space, time and change. Earlier religions had the Gods involved in the Kosmos even as they changed the Kosmos. Zarathustra was one of the first if not the first to say that God was both within the Cosmos and beyond the Cosmos. But many thinkers were describing this "outside" or "beyond" aspect of God as merely a definition, an idea, a form, a definition, or an equation. Other religions and philosophies followed.

Even "time" is within the Cosmos because when photons are traveling the speed of light, time seems to stop. We take the earlier position that Godhood is within the Cosmos, as a Supreme Living Object, or Objects, not outside the Cosmos.

In the Evolutionary Christian Church "outside the Cosmos" is a definition, an equation representing, for example, the Father in the Trinity. We might ask, did Zarathustra and Plato more or less think of the "Father" and God this way?

Zoroastrian discusses some of these things.

On The Gnostics

One does not “become a God” and “perfect the universe” through only Gnosis, or knowledge, while existing as a human, any more than the Inward Path leads to Actual Godhood. Attaining the Soul-Within, the goal of Traditional Religions---also the Involutionary Inward Path in the Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC)---is a very worthy goal, but it is not Godhood.

To attain Godhood we must take the Evolutionary Outward Path of material-spiritual evolution–-along with the Soul activated by the Spirit—to Godhood. These are the Two Paths in ECC.

On the Kundalini

From the perspective of the Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC), turning one direction in the Kundalini of Hinduism---and also seen in the esoteric wisdom in Orthodox Judaism---takes you to the Soul, and turning the other direction takes you to the Spirit. In EC the Soul-Goal is of the Involutionary Inward Path, the Spirit-Goal is of the Evolutionary Outward Path.

The direction of the Spirit is not “downward” to sexual desire and “upward” through the Chakras to spiritual insight, as the above organizations suggest, this creates the Great Spiritual Blockade against the evolution of the material world to Godhood, because the mind seeks the Soul, which is the Zenith of the Body, and not Godhood.

The Soul is of the Body, of the Mind, and is the Zenith of the Mind, whereas the Spirit is the Seed of the Kosmic Beginning, the Will to Godhood, the Activator of the Body-Mind-Soul to Godhood in Evolution.

The hope is for the Soul-Mind to help balance and guide the Spirit, and not extirpate the Spirit. The Spirit knows where it wants to go—to Godhood—but it can use Soul-Mind guidance along the path of evolution to God. The Soul is the rider of the Spirit steed. And the Spirit can have the Grace of God.

Religion has concentrated almost solely on the Soul and not the Spirit and this has been the main cause of many problems.

Why Isn't the Inward Path Called the Path of the Spirit?

Why isn't the Inward Path called the Path of the Spirit and the Outward Path called the Path of the Soul, since the Soul-Mind is the highest aspect of the body?

Because the Inward Path is Involutionary, seeking the Soul-Mind-Within at the expense of the body, or by restricting the senses of the body in order to see the Soul-Within.

The Outward Path is the Path of material-supermaterial evolution, and even though it is activated by the Spirit-Within---not the Soul---it is the outside path of the evolution of the body, along with the Soul-Mind, to Godhood in the outside cosmos.

The First and Second Force

The Balance of Soul Truth and Spirit Truth

Truth is of the Mind (Soul) and of the Will to Godhood (Spirit). The Inward Path seeks Soul Truth, the Outward Path seeks Spirit Truth. Traditional Religion has sought Soul Truth, usually by blocking (mostly unconsciously) Spirit Truth.

Soul Truth is of the body, as the Soul is the Zenith of the Mind. Spirit Truth is of God, the Will to Godhood in man, activating the Body, including the Soul, to Godhood.

The Spirit is the First Force, the Soul is the Second Force. Both need to work in harmony, led by the Spirit but guided by the Soul. This is the balance sought in EC.

Traditional Religion seeks and meditates upon the Soul, EC meditates upon the Soul as well as the Spirit. “Seeking the Truth” is generally sought in the Soul-Mind, but deeper than Soul-Mind is Spirit-Truth, God's Truth, which is beyond the human mind, yet also in man, existing in the Supreme Object that is God and sought by the Spirit within man.

The enlightened Soul-Mind sees the Truth of the Spirit and conforms to it.

Awake

"Reflect: is not the dreamer, sleeping or waking, one who likens dissimilar things, who puts the copy in the place of the real object? I should certainly say that such an one was dreaming. But take the case of the other, who recognizes the existence of absolute beauty and is able to distinguish the Idea from the objects which participate in the Idea, neither putting the objects in the place of the Idea nor the Idea in the place of the objects—is he a dreamer, or is he awake?" from World Wisdom

- Plato (Republic, 476 C)

Comment: He is awake. But the Idea is far less than the Living Object itself, contrary to Plato.

The reason of a man

The reason of a man living on earth, while useful and sometimes dazzling, will often deny the reality of evolution attaining Godhood. But this has nothing to do with reality, it is like an atom denying the existence of the world.

Economic Patriotism Sweeping the Nation

"Pushed by the United Steelworkers and the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a sense of economic patriotism is sweeping the nation and materializing in the form of “buy American” resolutions being passed in every level of government across America...” more here at Economy In Crisis. 

On the anthropic principle

Primary and secondary beginnings

Was the Universe created in order to produce beings like ourselves?

The “anthropic principle” is “the collective name for several ways of asserting that physical and chemical theories, especially astrophysics and cosmology, need to take into account that there is life on Earth, and that one form of that life, Homo sapiens has attained sapience," the only kind of universe humans can occupy is one that is similar to the current one. (Wikipedia)

Somewhat contrary to this theory, the universe was created, not merely in order to produce beings, but in order to produce beings who would evolve to Godhood. Evolution to God is the primary intent and pattern, beings are produced secondary to and for this sacred path. Why? Ask God.

Spirit heart, Soul mind

The Spirit relates to the symbol of the heart, the Soul to the mind. This is seen in the following statement from Pat Buchanan: “...Rooted people love the things of the heart: God, country, family and faith. The weapons of the mind have been given to us, they believe, to defend the things of the heart.” The Mind or Soul (Inward Path) helps guide the Spirit (Outward Path) to God.

The Will Itself and Music

Music can be advanced, using advanced mathematical and emotional patterns, but it is still only sound. Contrary to Schopenhauer, music is essentially primitive. Sound is less evolved than the Body-Object.

Human evolution leads the Supreme Will to Godhood, not music, the human being as an object is closer to the Will than anything else on earth, including music.

The Will is the Spirit-Within, and its goal is Godhood. Yes, the Will has a goal. It is not a directionless or beastly power. The higher evolved in the Kosmos are therefore closer to the Will-to-Godhood. God is the Will Itself, at the Zenith of Evolution, finally realizing Its goal.

The Will To Godhood

Evolution helps define the Will to Godhood, the Spirit-Will, which is the agent—both rational and irrational—depending on the ability of the mind or Soul to grasp it—and evolution constantly develops through changes, material and spiritual changes, always raising itself—like the dialectic—to higher forms, with starts, stops, and sideways twists, all the way to Godhood.

One cannot be “free” from the Will to Godhood in some imagined “spiritual freedom,” or in atheism, because Will is Life Itself. Death may free one's Soul (the Zenith of the Body) from this Will, yet the Will lives on in offspring, because the Will to Godhood is the central activation to Godhood, via material survival, reproduction and evolution. True “freedom” from The Will To Godhood, or from evolution, comes not from killing or extirpating this Will, but from fulfilling this Will, by finally attaining Godhood at the Zenith of Evolution.

Our task is to understand the biological-spiritual direction of the Will to Godhood, which is the central concern of the Order of the Outward Path, working with science ( eg. sociobiology, eugenics, genetics) and religion (the traditional Involutionary Inward Path.)

In the Will to Godhood there is a lack of relativism that climbs (evolves) to the Goal-Zenith of evolution, which is Godhood. This is a teleological end, not a wait-to-see-the-outcome end. But since we have not evolved enough to know the precise way to evolve to God, we must study life, evolution, natural selection, etc. to find answers, while working with Perennial Religion, which has claimed to know, more or less, the God we are evolving to. Here is where the Evolutionary Christian Church combines the Involutionary Inward Path of Traditional Religion with the Evolutionary Outward Path of science.

God has “immutable laws” but they are deeply contained in the dialectic-like changes of evolution's Will to Godhood.

Is Ethnic Federalism A Viable Idea?

Ethnic Federalism is a term that needs serious exploration as a principle on which America and Europe could organize, but also Africa, Arabia, China and other states as well.

This is a way to pursue peace between states and people, based on an ethnic and linguistic federalism. People do not want to be taken over by any form of imperialism, whether racial, capitalist or socialist imperialism, or any “ism” hidden under the guise of universalism or internationalism.

Ethnic states, small homelands, have a natural identity; homogeneity is stability. Ethnic federalism can strengthen communities and offer a return to the sources of real life, traditional life.

This does not mean aggressive nationalism. When people love their own land and their own people they are able to understand how to love foreign people, they can affirm the right to differences, which can replace all the negative forms of imperialism. This is not racist ideology, this keeps differences from disappearing, this is a refuge against racial imperialism.

Ethnic Federalism is not necessarily a new concept of society, but it opens up new ways of dealing with our modern world. It seems to me that the United States already has a federal division of states, and even a Constitutional framework, which could legally harmonize with ethnic federalism; this might truly be a way to calm the growing tensions in this country, as it could be in other countries.

(Here is an article from Euro-Synergies related to this subject, which may require translation.)

Defining God and Trusting God

“Trusting God” depends very much on how one defines God. If you define God as “only” the God Within, which is really or Spirit-Within, then you will trust in a limited--however great--view of God.

If you trust the God of the Kosmos as being the Zenith of the evolution of the Spirit-Within, guiding the material world to Godhood, then you are putting your trust in a God far beyond the Soul-Within, although the Soul, having reason, can help guide the Spirit.

Evolution to God creates a less involuted person, a less passive person than the person solely devoted to the Soul-Within. To reach God we need both the Inward Knowledge of the Soul-Within and the Outward Knowledge of the evolution of the Spirit To God.

Enlightened Man

The “Enlightened Man” is not only one who has realized or become one with the Soul-Within, as we have been told by the Involutionary Gurus. The Enlightened Man has seen the Spirit as, above all, the activator of future evolution to Godhood. That is, Godhood is not merely uniting through involution with the Soul-Within, Godhood is arrival at the goal and zenith of evolution in the Kosmos, through the Evolutionary Outward Path of material evolution, activated by the Spirit.

The Spirit and the Soul-Within

The Involutionary Inward Path contacts the Soul, which is the Zenith of the Mind in the body. Scientists have found that in meditation it is the prefrontal cortex of the brain that is experiencing union with the All, not the limbic system, where such things as sexual arousal in reproduction take place.

The Zenith of the Spirit-Within is the Will to Godhood, and it needs to be working in harmony with the Body-Mind-Soul. The Spirit is guided by the Soul, and the Soul is activated by the Spirit. The Spirit-Within is the Will to Godhood of survival and reproduction. But this Spirit requires the Zenith of the Body, the Mind-Soul, and Its abilities to reason etc, to help develop sacred evolutionary reproduction and not merely profane devolutionary reproduction, which can happen when the Spirit is unguided by the Soul-Mind.

The Spirit alone, without the Mind-Soul is merely unguided Prana, Dionysian bioenergy, which can lead to devolutionary reproduction without the guidance of the Mind-Soul. The Soul, alone, without the Spirit-Within (Will to Godhood) can lead to static bliss at best, or merely bliss addiction with no Will to evolve further to Godhood. At worst, it is the complete neglect of the body and the Spirit-Within.

The Soul-Within is not God or Godhood but is a guide to Godhood. The Soul, which is the Zenith of the Mind, is activated to evolve to Godhood by the Spirit, which is the Will to Godhood. The Soul is the goal of the Involutionary Inward Path, and Godhood is the goal of the Spirit in the Evolutionary Outward Path. One could say that the Spirit is the Spark of the Soul.

We do not deny the goals and insights of the Inward Path to the Soul, we include them. But we insist that the greater insight of the Spirit-Within is the evolution of the Spirit-Within and the Soul-Within to Godhood through material evolution, affirmed in the Evolutionary Outward Path.

Is the Theoevolutionary Church A Science?

The Theoevolutionary Church is a religion and a science, synthesizing both, claiming both. Each side ideally keeps the other from arrogance or presumptuous bias. We do not wish to manipulate either science or religion to serve TC. We descend from both religion and science.

Why Pure Science Is Not Enough

Unlike pure science we can pre-state the way the world evolves, and we can also predict it as well. The natural laws, for us, are sufficient to describe the pattern of evolution, natural selection is not even lawless, and God is more than merely the “creativity” of the universe. We can even suggest what causes the Kosmos to evolve.

We do still need the agent God, and He can still be a fully natural God. The material evolves to Godhood.

Reason and science are important, but they remain insufficient. We need to use emotion, intuition, imagination, and yes, revelation and oracles to understand the Kosmos. And courage, too, is vital, because the universe does evolve in a linear way, with reversals and turns as well, but this means there is a higher and a lower order of complexity and consciousness, which may not fit politically correct versions of an egalitarian world; scientists and humanists in general have been inexcusably weak (biased) in this area.

The Politically Correct Evolution of Technology

The emergence of a new form of life through technology and cultural evolution has become the politically correct way to bypass human evolution, that is, let machines evolve, not humans (see the “Singularity Institute For Artificial Intelligence”) This is a tragic mistake. We can have both, we must have both. God is not a machine of technology, God is a natural object at the Zenith of Biological-Spiritual evolution, and we, life, must evolve to Godhood, along with our technology.

Human Nature Outlawed

Nature and Human Nature is simply outlawed, bypast, in many laws and positions put forward by the Liberal Humanists and Socialists. This is absurd and would be dismissed as absurd if it were not so damaging to our culture and civilization.

Revitalized Conservatism affirms real human nature, which is where the true harmony occurs with people and nature, although this does not preclude such things as competition, resentment; even hierarchy, if anything, it applauds these natural things.

"A trip where the journey is not half the fun..."

..."These foreign policy failures and military defeats — or even more embarrassing “victories” — become just two of a larger series of crises, including the economic crisis (depression followed by runaway inflation), foreign exchange crisis (collapse of the dollar), political crisis (no one in the Establishment knows what to do, but the Establishment offers the voters no alternative to itself), energy crisis, etc. Together, these discrete crises snowball into a systemic crisis, which is what happens when the outside world demands greater change than the political system permits. At that point, the political system collapses and is replaced by something else. In the old days, it meant a change of dynasty. What might it mean today? My guess is a radical devolution, at the conclusion of which life is once again local.

That would be, on the whole, a happy outcome. But I fear this will be a trip where the journey is not half the fun..."

"On War #300: Retrospective" By William S. Lind, April 15, 2009

More of the grim article here

On Gender

Defining gender seems to be up in the air today, but it need not be. Sociobiology defined gender by looking back at the Paleolithic, which evolved the very same gender qualities we have today. Gender is defined very clearly as being Traditional, all the rest is noise and propaganda for various causes.

Conservatives and Libertarians

Basically, Libertarians put economics above the community, Conservatives put community above economics. There are variations in this, such as, “Conservative Libertarians” and “Libertarian Anarchists,” but the difference between Libertarians and Conservatives is defined by where they place their values and morals regarding community and economics.

Economic production can only be considered a means to a higher end. In the Evolutionary Christian Church the highest end is our evolution to Godhood and all that this requires. Free Enterprise has been a marvelous dynamic for creating wealth, and it must be affirmed, but it must also be subordinated to the community; yet not so subordinate as to destroy incentive, as happened with Communism. Light subordination of economics, as in Light Federalism, is the healthy balance between economics and the needs of the community.

The Evolutionary Christian Church is the religion of the future

With the Involutionary Inward Path each people will have its version of the Perennial Religion, which will bring the long dreamed of ecumenism. With the Evolutionary Outward Path each nation, each people will affirm its own history, its own separate development and evolution. Each people will be a people of God on the evolutionary path to Godhood.

The Decline of Serious Music : A Review of “Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts,” from American Masters, PBS Wed 4-08-09

The musical decline of serious music since 1945 led us to Philip Glass, as music began to lack a sense of tone, key, centering, and lack a place to return to. (See “Can There Be Great Composers Any More," by Webster Young.)  Glass seems to be trying to bring tonal music back, but he has not.

Composers rejected the historical retelling of past ages. They said “to hell with the past.” This attitude is reflected in all revolutionary movements, including political movements. In revolutionary movements each person is on their own, they can't refine previous techniques. This is important because our present achievements are as much the result of past achievements as personal genius. Mozart did not invent most of the features of his music, he improved on the work of past composers.

A conservative, or neoclassicist builds on the past. His work is a culmination of what went before. He does not need to create a mini-revolution and be innovative in all ways. The ancient classical ideals involved beauty and harmony, clarity of form, nobility of subject, and meaningfulness. Meaningless beauty is not classical. The concern that the work be only original rather than asking how beautiful the work is, has created mediocre works, because all past musical tradition has not been involved in the work.

The “new” is not rejected in neoclassical music, as the revolutionaries falsely claim to advance themselves, the old should have a grain of the new but not a whole field of untested grain. In modern music and modern art the new is a destruction of the old. So why would composers (or any kind of revolutionary) wish to destroy? Why not develop old forms rather than discard them? Why destroy old forms when destroying them only alienates audiences and ruins the economics of serious music?

We cannot really know the psychology of individual revolutionaries, but we can see patterns and general traits. The key to understanding Philip Glass seems to reside in his stated belief that if you don't like his music, don't listen to it, he could care less. Glass is syncretistic, fusing widely different forms, he has attempted to combine the melody and rhythm of Hindu music with the melody and harmony of Western music; but he ended up rejecting Western harmony for a monotonous version of Eastern melody and rhythm.

Often individual modernists are simply not a part of the old neoclassical culture. Often the modernists simply have no talent for neoclassical music. Often modernists have problems with authority in general. Often modernists are egocentric, or megalomaniacal. Or often modernists display all of these traits. Philip Glass is defined in all of these categories.

Certainly a return to neoclassicism will one day be strongly fueled by the usurpation of this inferior clique. We need artists and critics to begin to speak out against this usurpation.

The Protectionists Were Right

The Protectionists Were Right - On the Idiocy of Interdependency and Export-Driven Economies by Kent Welton, essay here at Economy In Crisis.

Our Differences With New Age Involution

The New Age and the Wilberian perspective calls for change in the “Memetic and Psychic” aspects of the human population, which places the New Age in the Involutionary Inward Path of Traditional Religion. The new human species they call for, e.g. “homo noeticus (EnlightenedNext 2008) physically resembles Homo Sapiens but has a “marked increase in consciousness.” This is defined as “evolution.” But it is really involution.

The Evolutionary Christian Church calls for more than the conscious evolution (really involution) which defines the ancient Inward Path. We seek to combine the Inward Path of Involution with the Outward Path of Evolution. The coming species will evolve far beyond the human species, and far beyond increased human consciousness. God-Consciousness is not human-consciousness. We can reach the Soul-Within through religious disciplines involving the Inward Path, but this must not be mistaken for God or Godhood. This grave mistake creates a Great Spiritual Blockade against the evolution to Godhood.

Mediation of the Divine Plan

Evolution is the scientific version of both the human alchemy of the Kabbalah and Hegelian concepts of mediation, which can now be mediated through the Evolutionary Christian Church. We will evolve to Godhood through mediated evolution. We can harness the energies of left, right, science, and religion, for evolution. Evolution used to be a matter of chance, now it can be a matter of choice.

However, affirming Conservatism, we evolve forward while looking back to see what was possible for humans in the past. We recognize the Divine Plan that guides humanity and the Kosmos. We don't neglect history but we don't neglect the future either.

What Our Philosophy Offers

The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) provides a new conceptual framework for understanding and interpreting human society. The old theoretical tools are no longer valid, ECC presents a new guide, a new power system, new concepts, a new future, and a new synthesis.

Unlike revolutionary philosophies, ECC purposefully does not liquidate the past world views of either tradition or modernism, we reconcile and synthesize them in a Revitalized Conservatism. This keeps EC from becoming only more “opium for the intellectuals” (Raymond Aron). ECC is based in the reality of natural science along with Perennial Religion.

We do not affirm the anarchic libertarianism that grew out of the modern French philosophical rejection of all authority and power. Our master is Godhood, and the Spirit-Within and the Soul-Within life which activates and guides life, working along with natural selection, evolving all the way to Godhood.

We avoid the tyranny that often comes from the “Hegelian Dream” (Bernard Levi) of truth coming into the world, by affirming Conservatism, small steps of change in a Revitalized Conservatism which still embraces evolution. This conservatism keeps us away from the will to tyranny that infects most structures of power. We therefore do not agree that the ECC contains only the “seeds of totalitarianism” (Gluckmann). All material systems do not become Stalinism or Hitlerism.

And we do not speak of the tyranny of reason or the oppressiveness of science, we require all the reason and science available to understand the Evolutionary Outward Path to God, which works in conjunction with the Involutionary Inward Path to the Soul-Within. We are not afraid of power as the new anarchic libertarians seem to be, we sublimate power to evolve to God.

We are, however, still a “school in the making,” we are one of the first--if not the first--traditional religious theologies to fully embrace sociobiology and futurism in the path toward Godhood. Our gurus are not Marx, Foucault or Solzhenitsyn, but Jesus Christ, Raymond Cattell, Edward O. Wilson, and of course Darwin.

If the truth of a theological and philosophical system is it's realization in the world and in history, then the truth of theological materialism and the ECC is yet to be fully realized. We do not want to be only a “terror of theory,” yet we do not deny the ideal that we want to attain Godhood at evolution's zenith. We think we offer a new theology-philosophy that is more than merely opposition to old ideas, we offer a new movement with sound, coherent ideas or our own, which involves all systems.

(This essay is a response to “The Poverty of the New Philosophy") by Fatos Tarifa, Modern Age, Summer, 2008)

The Spirit-Within Is Not Trapped

The Spirit-Within is not trapped, as was covertly and overtly suggested by both the Gnostics and Traditional Religion. The Spirit-Within is with us to help, to guide, to activate and give life to our Soul-Body, it is our contact with the True God of the Kosmos. The Spirit-Within evolves with us to Godhood, where it attains its Supreme Goal.

The Grand Reconciliation

Adjusting to the framework of reality

Religion needs to fit into the deep framework of evolution, which defines God's world. However, a Conservative will not force culture into reality but will take smaller steps in this direction. Our task is to resuscitate and include traditional religion in the wake of evolution and modern science which have all but abandoned religion.

The Evolutionary Christian Church keeps the framework of traditional religion within the Involutionary Inward Path and moves or reconciles this framework into the framework of evolution in the Evolutionary Outward Path. We reach Godhood this way, by managing tradition and counter-tradition, counter-revolution and revolution, left and right, in and out, science and religion.

Religion and science are not evil toxins that must be insulated from one another, they need to fit into the same framework.