The four-pillar historical continuity

The Theoevolutionary Church contains a four-pillar historical continuity: affirming the Primal Materia of the pagan world, the Inward Path of the Middle Ages, the belief in human progress of the Enlightenment, and the futurism of evolving in the Outward Path to Godhood in the cosmos.

Resolving the Tragedy: The Return to the Source

God has been thought of as beyond the “limits” of materialism, there is always this great debasing of materialism, and along with this debasing comes the Great Spiritual Blockade against material evolution to Godhood. This is a tragic theological error because it is through material and supermaterial evolution that we evolve to Godhood.

We never overcome representationalism even if we can temporarily lose all representation in the vision of the Soul. God is not beyond representation, God is the Supreme Object, whereas the Soul is the ridding of objects from the mind.

This explains the difference between the Involutionary Inward Path to the Soul Within and the Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood.

The mind is driven to go beyond reason to intellectual intuition, and here metaphysics ends in the beatific vision. But this is not the end. Intuition and the mind also return to the Primal Source, to the supermaterial Spirit-Will, based in matter, and activating the material world to evolve to Godhood.

The Zenith of the Mind is the beatific vision of the Soul, but the Zenith of the Soul is the return to the Source, the dynamism of the Spirit-Will, which activates life to evolve to Godhood.

We can come out from under the dark, anti-material, withering of life and get on with the cosmic task of  materially and supermaterially evolving to Godhood, while at the same time affirming the first inward, non-material, vision of God. This can resolve the tragedy of the irreconcilable and catastrophic conflict between spiritualism and materialism, paganism and the Revealed Religions, religion and science.

Philosophers and intellectuals have had too much influence

I think philosophers and intellectuals have had too much influence in asking the question: what is the meaning of life? Too many of them have made claims that the world is only a dream, and that the exterior world is not real, and that the world has no rational meaning.

Non-philosophers are not as mixed up about these things, they do not walk into these intellectual mazes. They know the world is real and not a dream. They know that we are here to raise families and live our lives with as much happiness as we can find.

Non-philosophers are less sure about the bigger question: asking the meaning of life beyond survival and reproduction success. But people do seem to have an innate need, or an innate sense, that there is meaning and purpose to the world.

People then usually affirm a deterministic view, such as a God-origin to the world, or in modern times another deterministic view, the scientific origin of the world via a big-bang, etc. This usually satisfies people so they can get on with living their lives.

The Evolutionary Church (EC) tends to affirm the non-philosophers view that the world is real and that we are here to raise our families successfully. As to the larger picture, EC affirms both the religious and scientific worldviews: there is a big-bang type origin to the cosmos (or perhaps a kind of powerful electromagnetic dynamic), but then the purpose of life in the cosmos is to evolve to Godhood.

Now it is true that I ground this view in serious philosophy and theology (and science), but I enter theology and philosophy to find a way out of the artificial intellectual mazes and into the normal light. But perhaps that is what they all say, perhaps it is a rationalization. People have to choose what makes sense to them.

Toward an evolutionary social contract

Our lives have cosmic meaning, we are part of life evolving to Godhood in the cosmos. The divine is within us as the Spirit-Will, activating life to evolve to Godhood, which keeps us in touch with the cosmic whole. We are the measure of the cosmos in this sense. We can realize that we are a microcosmic reflection of macrocosmic nature.

We are part of nature's natural law which runs through the whole cosmos. We have the capacity, or “freedom,” to be in harmony with the divine Spirit-Will within, or to do nothing contrary to it, which activates us to evolve to Godhood. We have not much control over nature, or our fate, but we can have self-control regarding the divine activation of the Spirit-Within us.

When we realize that others have the same Spirit-Will, and the same fate in this sense, we can rationally attune ourselves to others. We are all of us subject to the same laws of nature, the same activation of the Spirit-Will, even though different people respond differently to their divine nature, and many are not even aware of their divine nature.

The evolutionary social contract can bond a world of evolving small states, with all their variety and ethnic distinctiveness. This is a contract that can be defended against those who irrationally seek supremacy and imperialism, and those who make revolution against the social contract of many small states. It is the community of small states and not any individual state that wins.  Light federalism can protect the individual states, and the Church can help guide evolution.

With this religious realization, all states can affirm the higher purpose of evolving to Godhood, which is best realized in thousands of small independent states. This is a rational understanding of the world, and of human nature, and a rational social contract. War is not evolutionary, it stops evolution, it ends the great rise of evolution in all its variety. We need peace to continue our evolution to Godhood, and paradoxically, peace can be defended, even in war if need be, to restore the evolutionary social contract. War is irrational and peace is rational for this reason.

(This was my response to an excellent essay by Prof. Donald Kuspit, “The Noble Death in Western Visual Art,” in “American Arts,” Summer, 2011)

When conservative ethical values are destroyed

Conservatism needs change and evolution, a status quo society is not growing and developing and can be debilitating. But we must be very careful with change, because ethics were largely evolved to help the group survive by promoting such things as mutual love and self-sacrifice. When these ethics are destroyed the group is destroyed.

Have you seen the television comedies this season? I am not a prude but the shows are full of the most explicit sexual descriptions and vile hedonism, in prime time. A nation is not just made up of political units it is also biological units, and as conservative values are destroyed, which help groups survive, the biological units are also destroyed.

Cattell pointed out the differences in the morality levels of groups can be measured by such things as homicide rates, venereal disease, low alcoholism, fewer illegitimate births, absence of the licensing of prostitution etc. The groups with higher morality rates, promoting such things as mutual love and self-sacrifice, have the better chance for survival. 

But prime time television is promoting the lowest morality levels and therefore is destroying not only conservatives but all groups in America. Who is doing this, and why?

The remedy? To avoid this destruction it seems most practical to devolve to smaller states and local groups---which was intended by the original Constitution of the United States---where higher levels of morality in groups can be maintained and bonded, whereas a universal stage has various competing groups and agendas with various levels of morality.

Expanding Religion From The Inward Path To The Outward Path

There is more to religion than the Inward Path

Only in the Involutionary Inward Path do the metaphysics of the mind and reason go beyond thenselves and enter the mysticism (intellectus) of the Soul (see “Heidegger and Aquinas” by Caputo).  This is defined as union with God and it is essentially the goal of the Revealed Religions.

In the Inward Path, God is described as not an object but a presence, a vision that envelops one in the Soul. This was the goal not only of the great St. Thomas Aquinas, this is also the goal of the Eastern religions, but put in culturally different terms.

There is more to metaphysics and religion than the Inward Path to the Soul and the God Within. It is the Evolutionary Outward Path that brings life to the Supreme Object Godhood and not "merely" to the non-object vision of God in the Soul. This is the message of the Twofold Path, this is the basic philosophy of theological materialism in the Theoevolutionary Church We evolve through material and supermaterial evolution to the God first seen in the  inward vision of God in the Soul.

At the Zenith of the Soul is the Spirit-Will which is not satisfied with the mere enveloping vision of God.  The Spirit-Will seeks to activate life and evolution all the way to the Supreme Object Godhood in cosmic evolution.

It is time to unblock the Great Spiritual Blockade of the Inward Path while yet including this first vision of God in the Twofold Path.  This is the religion of the future and the past.

Beyond the Stoics

It is rational as well as moral to follow material evolution to supermaterial Godhood, activated by the Spirit-Will. This is not much different than compliance with the laws of physics. Nature is in this sense the judge of human behavior.

We cannot perfectly accommodate the laws of evolution but we can do our best to accommodate them. We conduct our lives to satisfy the natural laws and not merely our individual whims. Both external and internal events are dominated by the Spirit-Will, or the Will To Godhood, which activates all life in conjunction with natural evolution which shapes life from without.

This is a stoic view of life and human nature, as the Spirit-Will is beyond our complete control, but unlike the stoics who thought we are the playthings of the Gods, or fate, we have the divine goal of evolving to Godhood in the cosmos. We can control our actions through values and morals which are in harmony with the natural laws and with the activation of life to Godhood.  This defines a partial "free will," not a complete free will---the large rock rolling down the mountain can take different paths, but it is rolling down the mountain in any case. 

Groups and Evolution

In evolution, natural selection is applied to both individuals in groups, and between groups, just as evolution works on biology as well as culture in a feedback loop. Individuals do not successfully survive without a group, and so the evolution of groups become paramount in selection. Ethics largely grew out of this arrangement, advancing the behavior that helped the group survive, such as mutual love and even self-sacrifice. This is all part of human nature developed long ago during the Hunter-Gatherer period of human history (and before ). We still retain this very same human nature. Social organizations that deny or try to go against this basic human nature do not last for long. Survival and lack of survival are sure signs of success and failure.

The attitude of Theoevolutionary Church toward the evolution of individuals and groups is like a benevolent, libertarian guide, affirming the idea of groups developing with their own independence and personalities, for example, living in small independent localities and states, with the Church available to help and guide the variety of people, as the whole moves toward Godhood in evolution. All available research and knowledge from sociobiology, genetics, religion etc. are utilized.

As it turns out the original Constitution of the United States can be applied here because it gives great independence to small states and localities while protecting the whole with a light federalism. The protecting of the whole keeps in check any actual war breaking out within what Cattell called healthy “cooperative competition” between the groups. War is not evolutionary, it is a halt in evolution. This political set up could work with Europe of a thousand states, or a China of two thousand states, which has been suggested. This harmonizes with human nature rather than trying to fight against it, or block it. The religion of Theoevolutionary Church makes sacred the evolution which has brought us from the simple to the complex, as we all evolve to Godhood, all groups, all races, all states, in natural variety. This is the religion of the future. 

The Shadows of Objects

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

Absolutizing of rational categories (as Hegel did) and absolutizing of objects leads to the same thing: not non-material higher definitions, but supermaterial objects, with the Supreme Object or Being as the Supreme Absolute Object in all categories.

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

The consummation of intelligence is not the beatific vision All by itself outside a material body, it lives in the mind of the object having the vision. Godhood is the Absolute Mind in the Absolute Body and not merely a Mind. Godhood is not beyond form and structure, Godhood is Absolute Supermaterial Form and Structure. There is no need to put up a Great Spiritual Blockade against the material world if Godhood is seen as the Supermateriality that we evolve to from the material world.

Thought and being belong together, as St. Thomas seems to be saying, but the Being of St. Thomas is nevertheless the same non-material, non-object being as before, and the God of St. Thomas is not a Supreme Supermaterial Object. We are not able to fully conceptualize Godhood at this stage in our evolving intelligence but this does not mean that Godhood is therefore non-conceptualizable. It takes a God to accurately conceptualize a God, and when this is done it is a Mind conceptualizing within a Body, not a non-material body-less mind.

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

Hypothesis on why the complete pull-out of U.S. troops from Iraq this year

I usually don't get involved in this sort of present-time political maneuverings, but this hypothesis was just too interesting not to share with you.

The latest political calculation of President Obama and his handlers (could he be clueless?) helps him in two ways: by pulling out of Iraq, Obama offers something to his liberal base, who have not liked his war policies, but it also gives him more of the Jewish vote. 

How does it give him more of the Jewish vote? When the U.S.  leaves Iraq, Iran will take over, or can at least be made to be seen taking over, which will then allow Israel to attack Iran, with the support of Obama. This support of Israel, especially when the rest of the world will not support the attack on Iran, will get Obama back on track with the Jewish vote. The big media will support him in this support of an Israeli-Iran war.

It would have been a better cover if the Israeli Lobby had loudly objected to the U. S. pullout from Iraq, but we have not seen this, which is one of the clues in this hypothesis.

Obama is desperate because it increasingly looks like he will be a one-term president.  Will it work for Obama and Israel?  Arrogance has brought down even great heroes and great nations.  But boldness or chutzpah also often wins.

Answering Buchanan

Yes Pat, America is disintegrating, “breaking down along fault lines of politics, race, ethnicity, culture and faith; centrifugal forces in society have now become the dominant force.” ( Buchanan essay here) But rather than fight it, or mourn it, our true Constitution can handle this fearful change.

We can apply our real Constitution and give the power back to the states and regions, let them exist with true variety and independence, all protected (and I mean protected) by a light federalism. The future is bringing a country that does not look the same as it did when we were one country of the same ancestors, speaking the same language, or professing the same religion. History, life and evolution move along.

We have been blessed with a Constitution that can affirm these inevitable changes.  Can we?  Out of the ashes of the falling superpower can rise a nation of truly independent states. Although this is a big change it is not a "secession" to fear, it is a return to variety, health and power, a more natural way for all of us to live.

A religion even Nietzsche might believe in

Someone said, to be outside nature is to be an outsider in all things. Nietzsche was more or less saying this too. This insight led to the definition and rejection of religion as being non-life oriented.

Indeed, the Involutionary Inward Path of the Revealed Religions is non-life oriented, because it seeks the God-Within, the Father-Within, which can only be reached by blocking all the material desires. This is mystical truth of all the Revealed Religions.

Nevertheless, the Father-Within was the precursor God, the God first seen by the mystics of the Revealed Religions. This pointed the way to understanding the Outward Godhood reached through material-supermaterial evolution, which is represented by the Evolutionary Outward Path in Theoevolutionary Church (TC).

Both Paths are included in the Twofold Path of TC. This offers an answer to Nietzsche, and to science, by bringing back religion in a way that, perhaps, even they could believe in.

Four general scientific assumptions in the faith of ECC

We know there are many acts of faith in the Revealed Religions, but Raymond Cattell remarked on the fact that science too has its faith or assumptions : It has to deny Berkeley's claim that the external world is a dream (thus also countering the later and still existing relativity of existentialism); And science accepts Descartes argument for the external world being a reality: Also Cattell's Beyondism requires the assumption that evolution exists as a central fact within the universe, and Beyondism commits itself to this principle.

The Theoevolutionary Church (TC) goes beyond Beyondism with the assumption, or faith, that life is evolving to Godhood. This brings science back to religion. TC believes that the Inward Virtual God seen in the Revealed Religions was a precursor to the Outward Godhood evolved to in the cosmos.

These are general principles and a general faith, there will be more exact science coming in the future, and also arriving with the evolution of higher intelligence.  But with these assumptions and this faith accepted, all kinds of things in both science and religion fall into place.

This brings TC within the conservative dynamic. The emotional beliefs of the Revealed Religions can be sustained in the Twofold Path, such as the faith in future life, and the traditional stability of small states and family life can offer stability for favorable upward-going genetic advances---war and revolution often greatly hinder successful survival and reproduction. Ordered Evolution and Revitalized Conservatism is our synthesis or answer to both science and religion.   

Living Objects Evolve To Supreme Objects As Godhood

Assuming that the experience St. Thomas had the last three months of his life was mystical, when he is said to have seen all his writings as so much “straw”---and assuming this is not explained profanely as Thomas having a stroke, since he died three months later---I see this experience as Thomas attaining the goal of the Involutionary Inward Path, which is reaching the Father-Within, the God-Within. And this was not unique to Thomas and the West, mystics in the East have also attained this condition.

But Godhood is not merely “experiencing” God,  this is not merely a beatific vision, not merely a “union” that is seen or known while one is still human. Real Godhood does not “pass beyond the sphere of representational thinking” (Caputo), although at this stage in our evolution it is difficult to represent God. St. Thomas was seeing, as other mystics have seen, the Soul-Within, the Father-Within, at the zenith of the human mind. But this is not Godhood.

Godhood is a Supreme Living Object attained through the evolution of the material-supermaterial world. This is the Evolutionary Outward Path. We can use reason, metaphysics and science as a ladder to help us attain Godhood, but Godhood will not be attained or seen by these intellectual things alone. We become a Supreme Living Object which can be represented as a living Object, although only a God could accurately do so.

The essence of metaphysics is not a vision but an evolved object. As a living Object, or Objects, Godhood transcends reason, but It does not transcend objects, living objects evolve to Supreme Objects. Absolute Reason exits within the living Object Mind of Godhood. 

Life-affirming new creations are needed for old musical forms

The hard bop blues of, say, Art Blakey make you feel better than the more sentimental adagios of  Miles Davis which can make you feel even bluer. After a glass of wine who can beat Diane Krall's "Quiet Nights?"

Classical composers were usually composing for a world of aristocrats, which is why the music could be so excellent, but that is not our world today. Bach is eternal, but we need serious modern composers. Atonal music has been a damaging farce, like much of modern art---hundreds of years of Western music was stopped. Wagner's classical-romantic ethos needed to be extended in tonal not atonal Western forms rather than destroyed following the World Wars. “Twilight of the Gods”? Why not another birth? (see "Can There be Great Composers Anymore?")

Rock? Mostly goalless anarchy, or pure hedonism. Hip Hop? It's base is violent anti-white black racism. Country music? White boys trying to hold on to some dignity in a world that denigrates them, but usually lost in Celtic drunkenness. Folk and ethnic revival? Holds promise but hides totally in the past.

Modern life-affirming new creations are needed for all these old musical forms.  

TC, Beyondism, and Science

The Theoevolutionary Church (TC) follows the rational path, but also moves into unempirical areas, as Hegel and others did. Yet we hope later that empirical facts validate the intellectual intuition and mysticism of TC. This mysticism defines TC more legitimately as a religion than Beyondism, the excellent religion from science of the great Raymond Cattell.

I agree with Cattell that science can help mold spiritual values, but unlike the stricter science of Beyondism, we do affirm a form of “progressivism” in evolution. Life is evolving to Godhood, and with this unempirical statement we do not wait to see the results of evolution--success or failure-- before we define a goal to evolution.  But we certainly apply the more scientific and natural pragmatism as well.

Cattell's hope for evolution is to avoid stagnation which creates obsolescence, this could be called his base for Beyondism, minus the unempirical religious goal of life evolving to Godhood.

It it true that the direction of evolution must remain approximate—even science usually can only deal in probabilities. We can say that we, and evolution, are on the path to Godhood and that we seek higher intelligence, higher consciousness, and more beauty, but these will require more precise science. As Cattell points out, even medicine is seen as an art, but the benefit of working with imprecise goals in medicine can be far better than without medicine.

However, we don't forget, during the ongoing process of scientific developments in sociobiology, that Godhood is the goal of our evolution, and that Godhood is the divine place where we reach the Absolutes of intelligence, consciousness, beauty and power.

Unlike Beyondism we are attached to the Revealed Religions in retaining the Involutionary Inward Path to the God-Within---this Twofold Path gives us a conservative base. We add the Evolutionary Outward Path of evolution to Godhood, which was first seen inwardly in the Revealed Religions. This seems to give us a better psychological position to advance than Beyondism, as well as providing the order of conservatism that  allows us to better retain any positive mutations and advances in evolution---we call this Ordered Evolution.

Meanwhile a social organization needs to be built so that we can move beyond temperamentally individualistic thinkers.

We can face stark realism, can't we?

Speaking of really stark realism, Buchanan's new book caused me to go back and read the following entry of January 2008 from this blog .

"Predictions of James Lovelock and Guillaume Faye...and solutions."

Sacred Balance

Balance is a vital part of the Twofold Path, a balance between the preservation of religious and cultural heritage, and evolution. This defines Ordered Evolution and Revitalized Conservatism in the Theoevolutionary Church (TC).

The two people who influenced me most intellectually were Russell Kirk and Raymond Cattell. Kirk showed me the importance of order and classical conservatism, and Cattell taught me the importance of evolution and sociobiology.

Intellectual intuition provided the synthesis of these things, blending them into the religious philosophy. The TC provided the alternative to the despair and relativity of modern culture, and to the decline and fall of religion. This religion does not withdraw from the world, on the contrary, it sees an evolving material world as the only vehicle to evolve to supermaterial Godhood, the God first seen virtually and inwardly by the Revealed Religions.

We see a glorious future for mankind

There have been a few gloomy blog posts here lately, for example, Buchanan's new book on the suicide of the West, and several  bad economic warnings regarding globalism. This is somewhat unusual for this blog, which is usually forward looking and positive. But I deal in realism, and studies have shown that most people are unrealistically optimistic, it helped people survive. However, sometimes realism is necessary, especially during times of crises.

During times of decline people often go back to the past, with nostalgia, or old folk forms, old traditions are reconstituted. The present and future are left out. Some live only in the present. Some escape to the future and reject everything else. As globalism degenerates, many people are going back to their roots, back to smaller nations and states, embracing their own traditions, their own people. This can be good in many ways, but living only in the past or only in the present can also be the result of nihilism, when people see no future and believe in nothing they escape to the past, or escape into art, or escape to whatever. This is what concerned Nietzsche ( his birthday today), even as he could affirm only relative truths himself.

Here is beauty of the worldview presented in this blog: while we are relentlessly realistic (not pessimistic or optimistic) about the world, we see a glorious future for mankind---we are evolving to Godhood in the cosmos. Yet we affirm the past and present in the Twofold Path. This is the sacred way out of decline and nihilism. The material joins the spiritual in supermaterial evolution to Godhood. Evolution works well with small states and localism, which people prefer any way, to retain positive advances. The future needs the past in Ordered Evolution, and with Revitalized Conservatism.  This is a future we can believe in.

Desire is not evil

Desire is rooted in the sacred instinct of the activation to evolve to Godhood, which defines the Spirit-Will. Consciousness processes this desire or instinct, and higher consciousness affirms and attempts to be in harmony with this drive. The higher the consciousness, and the higher the intelligence, the more we will know of the drive of the Spirit-Will, and we will know how to reach the goal of the Spirit-Will, which is Godhood. The Spirit-Will activates life from within toward evolutionary survival and reproduction, and evolution then shapes life from outside.

This is why it is so dangerous to see desire as merely lower than the mind, lower than reason, and it is especially damaging to try to block or stop all desire, as many religions do, thinking that this is all that is required to be enlightened. There is profane desire, which is devolutionary, and sacred desire which is evolutionary.

The Inward Path to the Soul Within of the Revealed Religions is reached by ridding the body of all desire, it should be thought of as a virtual state simulating Godhood. True Godhood is reached only by fulfilling sacred drives in the Outward Path, not blocking them with various forms of logic, or bodily subjugation. The Twofold Path puts the two paths in there proper place, allowing Ordered Evolution, bringing the new into the old in a Revitalized Conservatism.