TST Material-Spiritual Framework: A Philosophy of Spirituality

The Material-Spiritual Framework categorizes spiritual traditions by two features: framework status and spiritual orientation. A tradition functions as a rational framework when its organizing structure remains grounded within the Grand Rational Framework; otherwise, it functions as a speculative framework. Each tradition is also categorized as agnostic, non-theistic, or theistic according to its orientation toward the supernatural. Broad religious families may contain several distinct traditions and are therefore classified at the narrowest coherent level. The paper also examines how individuals relate to spiritual traditions through worldview pragmatism and the epistemic classification of individual claims. Worldview pragmatism operates as a person’s first lens and may be empirical, rational, or irrational according to how that person generally calibrates belief. Every claim, whether contained within an adopted tradition or formed outside one, must then be evaluated independently against reality through the Idea of Ideas as empirical, rational, or irrational. Irrational is a category, not an insult, and has two subtypes: speculative and disproven. This layered approach distinguishes the status of a tradition from the status of its individual claims and from the posture of the person evaluating them. It avoids treating entire traditions as simply true or false, while also refusing to shield their claims from scrutiny. Personal and cultural interpretations may remain within an individual worldview, but claims presented as descriptions of shared material reality become answerable to the public truth systems, to science, law, and journalism.