5._ Tendencies

In each level of emergence the creative action of the Spirit is manifested of characteristic form, and not like a conscious intention to go to the following level, neither to the last level, but as internal tendencies at that same level.
All previous knowledge of later levels is unattainable, safe like projection or extrapolation of the knowledge of previous levels.

Perhaps, located as we are in the human level, we pruned to recognize "a posteriori" the action of the Spirit, in the tendencies towards more and more complex organizations in the scope of the inanimate matter, in the impulse to constitute self-organized organisms and ecosystems in the scope of the alive beings, and in the improvement of the sensitive and nervous systems that lead to the conscience and the thought.

In the human scope, we think that we can discover it particularly present in the ethical tendencies, aesthetic and cognitives, that, appearing originally in each individual like forces of self-affirmation, self-realization and survival, are developed opening theirselves in the space and the time towards the rest of the reality and the future, towards their ideal limits: the good, the beauty and the truth, that only in God will reach complete accomplishment.

6._ Two visions

In this human level, that characterizes by the appearance of the self-conscience and the symbolic thought, it is logical to hope that conscience is taken --as we have done-- of the creative process, with its levels of emergence, and therefore of the presence and immanent activity of the spirit of God.

Nevertheless, we must admit that we have postulated the existence of God, like emergent definitive and final, only as a reasonable hypothesis. From here we have deduced the universal capacity to evolve towards God, the "spirit of God". Clear that a rigorous and skeptical thought does not have necessarily to accept this hypothesis.

In the first place, it can reject the concept of levels of emergence as ontologic realities. From a reductionist point of view, it can describe as real only the level most basic discernible, and as "mere epiphenomenons" the superior levels, that are thus limited to an "epistemologic" reality.

Then, even admitting the emergence process, it can think that its development does not progress towards a superior stage, but that runs erratically, randomly, or cyclicaly. It does not have why to accept an immanent tendency that defeats the hazard to control or to govern the process, giving it a trascendent purpose.

On the other hand, as all creative development implies a net cost of useful energy, that appears to be non-recoverable, and the total energy available would be finite, it thinks that an indefinite progress is impossible, that it will be arrived finally at the exhaustion, the "thermal death" or the dissolution of the universe in the nothing.

Of course, the present human knowledge is incomplete, and all their hypotheses and conclusions are debatable and provisional. However, it is a main and unrenounceable function of the thought doing these scientific hypotheses leaning in the reasoning and the experience, and not exclusively in intuitions or supposed illuminations.
We have already affirmed that the superior levels of emergency are completely unknowables for the reason and the experience, except, perhaps, as doubtful extrapolations. Therefore, it turns out to be at least admissible to deny all intrinsic purpose to the process of changes in Nature.

We recognize therefore an attitude which we call "of going", that sees (provisionally) in the power of change of the Nature, a limited characteristic, dominated by physical and statistical laws, devoid of purpose, or that admits a later purpose only like hypothesis not-scientist, more or less reasonable.

Nevertheless, we accept the other attitude, that we call "of return", that is the described one previously: the one that believes in a Last Newness, in a trascendent final emergent state --in God-- like purpose of the process of cosmic creation, and interprets the creative capacity of the Nature as the immanent spirit of God.
In addition, we maintain that both attitudes, although apparently opposed and irreconcilables, are assumibles, advisable, and mutually enriching, although never must mix, because this gives rise to lamentable errors and conflicts.

7._ Theism

Who believes in God, calls "going vision (to God)" to the fact to notice the creative capacity of the Nature and everything what it implies, while attributes to its own vision, that calls "of return (from God)" -or "of coming"-, recognizing that capacity as "spirit of God", immanent God to the Nature.

Creative capacity of the Nature <------> Spirit of God
(Vision of going) ---------------------(Vision of return)

And this does not mean, in no way, that the spirit of God is something external to the Nature, that is added to confer the creative capacity to her (what would correspond to a deist conception), but that, being truely immanent, the Spirit is inherent to the essence of the Nature so that is inseparable of her. For that reason we can fully identify saying that the nature has the creative capacity "by itself" with saying that has it "by virtue of the spirit of God". This corresponds to our conception theist, who maintains so much the true immanence as the true trascendence of God.

We know well that the deism is a conception of God that usually opposes to the mythical and anthropomorphic theism. The deism would be then the rational conception, illustrated, that conceives God like different from the forces of the Nature and the human people. He would be trascendent, immaterial, immutable and impassible; the God "of the philosophers".

Nevertheless, from our point of view, from our "emergentist theism", the philosophical deism and the mythical theism look like to each other much more of which usually it is believed. The deism is mythical in as much whatever supposes a relation or activity between the trascendence and the nature that does not reach to being a true immanence, like for example by way of "emanations", or like "immovable motor" or like "supernatural efficient agent". On the other hand, the mythical theism is deism also, in the measurement in which he is not truly immanentist, when it separates the activity of God of his inherence in the essence of the nature, and it conceives it like anthropomorphic external efficient cause.

Both conceptions, the philosophical deism and the anthropomorphic theism, have in common separating God of the nature, doing unintelligibles their mutual relations. The remedy seems to be in admitting the immanence of God, the inherence of God in the very essence of the nature, and that seems to lead to which it has been considered as another form of deism: the pantheism. Because it seems to imply resigning to all real distinction between God and the nature, which merely comes to be --as it has been said-- a "courteous atheism". (With reason compares Schopenhauer the pantheist with a prince that, to end the abusive differences between the nobility and the common people, solves to grant titles of nobility to all its subjects.)

In sum, we see the deism and the mythical theism as two forms --a philosophical one, the other ingenuous-anthropomorphic one-- of "deism", are to say of transcendentalism with absence of true immanence. And we see the pantheism like an immanentism that, when not conceiving tension towards the trascendence, falls simply in the atheism.

The solution is in recognizing both the true trascendence and the true immanence of God, and the continuous and acute tension and dynamism between them, that causes --and is manifested in-- the process of cosmic emergence. This is the "emergentist theism".

As well as our theism is against the deism, by his nontrue immanence, also is against to the pantheism and the panentheism, by his nontrue trascendence. In the pantheism there is no truly place for the creature, that would be merely an appearance of God, and in the deism there is no truly place for God, that would be only an appearance (or projection) of the creature (God "ad-hoc", "Deus ex-machina", "God of gaps", "miraclemongering" God, etc.). We think that in the hegelian panentheism there is an attempt valid to conciliate to the creature with God, by means of a dialectic one, but it seems to us that it needs the radicality of the emergentism to obtain it totally.

In order to affirm the trascendence from the immanence, we lean in the "emergence" that maintains the "emergentism". The concept of radical newness, implicit in the emergence, takes us to the real trascendence.

Immanence ------> Emergence ------> Trascendence

Pantheism--- Panentheism--------------------- Deism

_______________________ _______________________

V
Emergentist Theism

8._ A-Deism

The "anthropological turn" of Feuerbach was a critic of the deism that, without the support of a emergentist conception, derived to an atheism (rather an a-deism) humanist.

The hegelian panentheism, that corresponded to a “return” vision, was put under critic to conform it to a “going” vision, in Marx’s "putting it on the feet". Thus, the "dialectic spiritualism" became "dialectic materialism", and, with the feuerbachian humanism, "historical materialism".

A marxism soon transformed to make it cosmic and emergentist -- like the one of Ernst Bloch?--, although it continues being only a “going” vision, comes near to our theist conception, although this one includes in addition as something fundamental a “return” vision that implies the faith in God. Back to the hegelianism? No, because it maintains the emergentism -- dialectic a much more radical one-- and also accepts the vision "of going" like valid counterpoint.

On the other hand, Nietszche denied not only any conception of God, and any vision "of return" therefore (since God is present "until in the grammar"), but in addition he denied any progressive dialectics, any real possibility of progress, along with any objective measurement of this one.
He was consequent, because any progressive dialectics implies the possibility of the God theist (although not the one of the deist).
The concept of "death of God" has three degrees of meaning here:
1º._ End of the belief in the God of the deism. (A-deism).
2º._ End of any vision "of return". (A-apollineism).
3º. _End of the belief in any real possibility --or objective criterion-- of progress. (Nihilism).

We share the first degree with pleasure, and we are against the second, but recognizing the necessity of the visions "of going" with its scope of inviolable autonomy. However, when accepting as a basic fact the cosmic evolutionary process, and the creative capacity of the nature, attributing to it finality (although nonintention in all the levels), we reject its nihilism, even in “going” vision, and we believe in the real possibility of a progress that we can measure and carry out validly according to our cognitive criterion, ethical and aesthetic.

9._ Parmenism

Sometimes we use also the term "vision of return" in another sense, broad, but intimately related to previously mentioned. It is "the parmenid" conception, that attributes true reality only to the immutable and eternal being, being against thus to "the heraclid" conception that sees in the change the foundation of the reality.

From the inside of the evolutionary process, in the middle of the movement and happening of all things, "the heraclid" point of view, that also in this ample sense we call "going vision", is immediate and natural. Nevertheless, the human mentality, in its eagerness of order and stability, needs to construct permanent entities, to catch immutable substances, causes, essences, to provide a solid knowledge of the truth that hides after the appearances; thus it arrives at metaphysics, to the intelligible kingdom of the being, to the platonic world of the ideas.

From this "ideal world" it contemplates the "deceptive world" of the sensible appearance as if it was a prison, or a dark cavern, of which the human spirit needs to free itself. Both visions, the parmenid and the heraclid, the one "of return" and the one "of going", appear then like contradictories, still being both natural ones to the human mind; but its mixture or confusion leads to the paradox, the perplexity.

The vision of "parmenid, platonic, apollinean return", has been --and is-- fundamental in our culture; but its predominance, with its dualism that entails the contempt of the material --and of the body, therefore-- it has often taken to an incomplete conception of the human nature, to ballast the thought with unquestionable absolute ideas, and to prevent the empirical knowledge. Also it has lead to the deists conceptions, which separate God of the nature, except by "involuntary emanations" or supposed supernatural interventions.

Nevertheless, when being submitted this conception to critic to correct its errors and abuses, has also been rejected in its aspects indispensables for the human mentality, which has lead to the relativism, the nihilism, the indiscriminate license, and to the atheism.

We thought that our "vision of return" theist, which believes in the Being one and Trascendent one, but also in his immanence and his emergence, and which, without mixing itself with the "vision of going", even accept it like valid and like complementary, is the one that is more suitable for the human mentality.

On the other hand, it agrees to indicate that with the emergentism they are surpassed, to our opinion, as much the matter-spirit dualism as the materialistic or spiritualist monism. Each level of emergence determines a new aspect of the matter, or of the spirit that is its counterpart. Thus a species of emergent pluralism is defined, that goes beyond the monism suggested by the relative continuity of the process. That continuity is not really so, because each level trascends radically the previous ones. It can, then, be conceived the matter like aspects --immanents-- of the spirit, or the spirit like aspects --emergents-- of the matter.

Also let us indicate that the classic logic, with its static conception, founded in the principles of identity, not-contradiction, third exclused, and of "nothing is obtained from the nothing", must be surpassed by a new dynamic logic, based in the principle of happening of all things, the composition of opposites and the dialectic synthesis, and the creative spontaneous emergence of authentic newness. It seems to us that the static logic is of the dynamic one --like the Newtonian physics of the relativist one, like the euclidian geometry of the riemannian one--, a "valid local simplification", indispensable for practical effects, for the usual scope, --"to walk by home"--, but insufficient for the exact understanding of the totality.

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