Pierre
Teilhard Chardin and the future of human evolution
1.
Introduction
In
Christian theology, one of the most pertinent questions which have remained
mysterious is the issue of creation. The origin of the world and the human
being as put in the Bible has been incomprehensible in a concrete point of
view. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is one of the theologians who have reflected
on the interaction of science and religion in this big question of creation.
Before
the world was made, he chose us, chose us in Christ, to be holy and spotless,
and to live through love in his presence, determining that we should become his
adopted sons, through Jesus Christ. (Eph. I, 4-5). These powerful words of St.
Paul in his first letter to the Ephesians, I think, best characterize the
spirit of Teilhard the Chardin, his idea of man and man's place in the
universe, and of the common goals of humanity.
His
works combine faith in human effort and in human progress with faith in God. It
is a spirituality that finds God in and through the world; a spirituality which
is based in the theology of Christ as the center of the universe[1].
We acknowledge that Teilhard’s thoughts are very complicated and that it is not
easy to present all his ideas as much as evolution is concerned. In this paper,
we have taken as task to present, in the limits of our capacity, the
understanding of the future of evolution in the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin.
Recognizing
the immensity and the complexity of the theme we have chosen in his thought, we
would like to focus on his conception of evolution, his understanding of human intelligence and
cosmic intelligence and lastly on his Christian theory the Omega Point.
2.
The development of Teilhard’ s conception of
evolution
If, as the result of some interior
revolution, I were to lose in succession my faith in Christ, my faith in
personal God, and my faith in the Spirit, I feel that I should continue to
believe invincibly in the world. The world (its value, its infallibility and
its goodness) that, when all is said and done, is the first, the last and the
only thing in which I believe. It is by this faith that I live. And it is to
this faith that at the moment of death, rising above all doubts, I shall
surrender myself.[2]
What
is evolution for Teilhard de Chardin? It seems that, for him evolution is not
what ordinary people think habitually. Evolution is not the gradual
transformation of fish to reptiles, reptiles to mammals, and so on. In his magnum opus, Teilhard writes:
"Is evolution a theory, a system or a hypothesis? It is much more: it is a
general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow
and which they must satisfy henceforth if they are to be thinkable and true.
Evolution is a light illuminating all facts, a curve that all lines must follow.
Evolution is a current to which matter takes the form of increasingly complex
organisms...The consciousness of each of us is evolution looking at itself and
reflecting upon itself[3].
Converting
everything to evolution, Teilhard de Chardin tries to prove that life didn't
emerge by accident, but was a product of evolution. And man has his own place
in the evolution of the universe. First of all, universe is not static. That
is, there is no permanence in it. Everything is in the constant process of change,
and a particular kind of change - evolution. He says: “everything that up to
then we regarded and treated as points in our cosmological constructions became
instantaneous sections of indefinite temporal fibers. To our opened eyes each
element of things is henceforth extended backwards and tends to be continued
forwards. In this new perspective the world appears like a mass in process of
transformation[4].
How
did man come to be, asks de Chardin. And the only plausible conclusion he can
make is that human being is a link in a chain of evolution. As a
paleontologist, biologist, and philosopher, he says that the best we can say
about the advent of life is that life properly speaking begins with the cell.
And that, in accordance with our theoretical anticipation of the reality of a
pre-life, some natural function really does link the mega-molecular to the
micro-organic both in the sequence of their appearance and in their present
existence.[5]
In other words, man came into being in the world just like any other species of
life. The cell is the natural granule of life in the same way as the atom is
the natural granule of simple elemental matter.[6]
In
his development of the theory of evolution de Chardin situates the human
evolution in the realm of spirituality. He talks of evolution of spiritual
state which is unlimited, progressing to higher and higher states. Personality
is one of the stages in the evolution of the spirit. Its goal is monocentrism -
being conscious of being One with the All, and actual unification of all
conscious entities into One Whole. This is the true goal of human soul - union
into One with the All. Teilhard points out, that we are always in the presence
of the All, which is the sum total of all conscious energies of the universe.
All the conscious energies of the universe are directed towards the common goal
– evolution.[7]
His
theory culminates in the state of being ourselves. In the mind of Teilhard, to
be fully ourselves is in the opposite direction, in the direction of
convergence with all the rest, that we must advance towards the “other”. The
peak of ourselves, the acme of our originality, is not our individuality but
our person; and according to the evolutionary structure of the world, we can
only find our person by uniting together. There is no mind without synthesis;
the element only becomes personal when it universalizes itself.[8]
This understanding of the evolution of human being leads
him to the notion that man is not the center of the universe as once we thought
in our simplicity, but something much more wonderful--the arrow pointing the
way to the final unification of the world in terms of life. Man alone
constitutes the last-born, the freshest, the most complicated, the most subtle
of all the successive layers of life....The universe has always been in motion
and at this moment continues to be in motion. What makes the world in which we
live specifically modern is our discovery in it and around it of
evolution....Thus in all probability, between our modern earth and the ultimate
earth, there stretches an immense period, characterized not by a slowing-down
but a speeding up and by the definitive florescence of the forces of evolution
along the line of the human shoot."[9]
Throughout
this process, there have been critical starting points which account for the
uniqueness of both life over matter and the human being as a person with an
immortal soul over all other life forms. Unlike Thomas Huxley, Ernst Haeckel
and Charles Darwin, Teilhard claimed that the human being is separated from the
great apes (orangutan, chimpanzee, and gorilla). Obviously, for the Jesuit
priest, the process of evolution has not been a continuum: from time to time,
evolution has crossed critical thresholds resulting in the emergence of
qualitatively different manifestations of matter as greater consciousness or
spirit. Unlike all other forms of life, he believed that the human being has an
immortal soul.[10]
"Man is, in appearance, a 'species,' no more than a twig, an
offshoot from the branch of the primates--but one that we find to be endowed
with absolutely prodigious biological properties”[11]
For
Teilhard, all physical and spiritual matter existed from the beginning in an
embryonic state. There is only one creative act of God, which is still
happening and will always continue to happen. Such a view reflects the concept
of God exercising an all-pervading control of the world, in effect a constant
state of intervention. Teilhard's position is a matter of faith rather than of
science. While he is a critic of the static world-view, and an advocate of a
more dynamic view of the world, he contradicts this attitude by the adoption of
faith position which is essentially based on a static world view. [12]
3. Human intelligence and its amplification
into a cosmic intelligence
Going
back to the historical background of this notion of human and cosmic
intelligences, de Chardin situates this in the period of enlightenment where
the scientific inquiry became the controlling human preoccupation. Men looked
at the earth in its physical reality and projected new theories of how it
functioned. The celestial bodies were scrutinized more intently, and all of
this led o an awareness that the human mind was advancing.[13]
In this
line, Teilhard is one of the first to articulate transhumanist themes. Transhumanists
advocate the ethical use of technology for human enhancement. Teilhard's
writing likewise argues for the ethical application of technology in order to
advance humanity beyond the limitations of natural biology. Teilhard explicitly
argues for the use of both bio-technologies (e.g., genetic engineering) and
intelligence technologies, and develops several other themes often found in
transhumanist writings. He discusses the emergence of a global
computation-communication system. He advocates the development of an
egalitarian global society. He was almost certainly the first to discuss the
acceleration of technological progress to a kind of Singularity in which human
intelligence will become super-intelligence. He discusses the spread of human
intelligence into the universe and its amplification into a
cosmic-intelligence.[14]
For
Teilhard, we no longer have the functional initiation techniques whereby the
vision and values of earlier generations were transmitted to succeeding
generations. There is an abiding need to assist a succeeding generation to
fulfill its proper role in the ongoing adventure of the earth process. There is
a need for the program to aid the young to identify themselves in the
comprehensive dimensions of space and time.[15]
We are, at the very moment, passing through a change of age. The age of
industry, of electricity, and of machine where the future will decide what is
the best name to describe the era we are entering. Now, words are meaningless.
What matters is the certainty of the future; the evidence that at the coast of
what we do, life is taking as step, and a decisive step in us and in our
environment.
Like a
son who has grown up, we are discovering that something is developing in the
world by means of us, perhaps at our expense. And what is more serious still is
that we have become aware that, in the great game that is being played, we are
the players as well as being the cards and the stakes. Nothing can go on if we
leave the table. What is the minimum requirements to be fulfilled before we can
say that the road is open is that we should be assured the space and the
chances to fulfill ourselves, that is to say, to progress still we arrive at
the ultimate limits of ourselves. [16]
Teilhard’s
call to build the future and to inspire the energies for that future is an
essential part of the educational vision needed in our time. As Thomas Berry
has noted, we will be unable to make the necessary changes without a clear
analysis of the global challenges faced by human community and without a sufficiently
comprehensive historical and geological context, namely a planetary
perspective.[17]
As
educators, we are challenged to motivate the next generation of students to go
beyond the technological trance of a consumer society toward creating mutually
beneficial human-Earth relations. This requires an understanding of Earth’s
evolution within the context of the universe story. It calls us to see our role
at a critical moment in history as a determining factor in the future course of
evolution itself. We are a planetary species that can move toward the
enhancement of life or its radical diminishment for future generations.[18]
4. Teilhard’ s Christian Theory of the Omega
Point
We have seen and admired
with Teilhard de Chardin that evolution is an ascent towards consciousness,
where the evolving being should culminate forwards in some sort of supreme
consciousness, containing the highest degree, the perfection of our
consciousness. To understand this difficult theory, one should first understand
what he says about the Ego and the All. For Teilhard, every
consciousness has three fold properties:
·
Every consciousness centers everything
partially upon itself
·
Every consciousness is able to center itself
upon itself constantly
·
Every consciousness is able to be into association
with all the other consciousness in order to form a super-centration.[19]
Trying to avoid all confusions which can
arise if one conceives this super-centration as the fusion of all
consciousnesses into one like a drop of water in an ocean or like a dissolving
gain of salt in water, Teilhard leads his thought in the the line of summation
of consciousnesses. For him, the Ego consciousness does not lose its outline,
on the contrary, the more other it become in conjunction, the more it
finds itself as self. Thus it would be a mistake to represent Omega to
ourselves simply as a center born of the fusion of elements which it collects,
or annihilating them in itself. By its structure, the Omega can only be a
distinct Center radiating at the core of a system of centers; a grouping in
which personalization of the All and personalizations of elements reach their
maximum.[20]
This is how Teilhard develops an Omega
Point Theory (OPT) which claims that the universe is evolving towards a godlike
final state. He says: “evolution moves inexorably toward our conception of God,
albeit never reaching this ideal”. For him, the cosmogenetic process has both
purpose and meaning because it is moving toward an ultimate goal, which he
terms Omega. In this respect his version of creation story once again
diverges from Darwinian account by incorporating eschatological elements from
the Christian tradition. It is only at the end that creation will attain
completeness. Teilhard presents the already long history of complexification of
matter and consciousness of spirit as evidence of the purposeful pertaining
present in the evolutionary movement and as proof of final meaningfulness.[21]
In addition to this, the energy that moves
the cosmogenetic towards the Omega Point is love. He says: “Expressed in terms
of internal energy, the cosmic function of Omega consists in initiating an
maintaining within its radius the unanimity of the world. But could it exercise
this action if not in some sort of loving and lovable aspects at his every
moment? The Omega could never even so much as equilibrate the play of human
attractions and repulsion f it did not act with equal force, that is to say
with the same stuff of proximity in love.[22]
De Chardin takes his understanding of love
from the Gospel. “We know for certain, from our Lord's own words that we must
love our neighbor as ourselves.” for him, it is impossible to love others
without moving nearer to them and to Christ. He is convinced that love is the
strongest, most universal, and most mysterious of cosmic energies. The cosmic
energy of love is, in essence, the attraction of each element of the universe
toward the Omega. “The cosmic sense is a love; it cannot be something else. It
is a love because it is directed to a unique and complementary object of a
personal nature. It must be a love for its role is to dominate by bringing
everything to fulfillment.[23]
For Teilhard, the ongoing spiritual evolution of our
species is moving toward an Omega Point as the end-goal or divine destiny of
human evolution on this planet. His theism maintains that God-Omega is one,
personal, actual and transcendent. In the last analysis, the God-Omega and the
human Omega Point will become united in a mystical synthesis of spiritual
unity. From his own convictions, the Omega Point is autonomous, transcendent
and somehow divine. It is God himself. He says: “Omega is not, in this view, a
simple future point of convergence but a now-existing God. We can see now that
the universe makes evolutionary progress because it is drawn by a transcendent
God.”[24]
Grounded in agapology and centrology, Teilhard's
interpretation of evolution claims that the human layer of consciousness
engulfing our earth is becoming a collective brain and heart that will, in the
future as a single mind of persons, detach itself from this planet and,
transcending space and time, be immersed in God-Omega; the end-goal of
evolution is a final creative synthesis of humankind with the universal
God-Omega. It is a movement in both directions forward and upward to
reach a mystical union with God-Omega (the beginning and end of cosmic
evolution).
At this point Teilhard founds his understanding of
Christianity. He focuses on finding the true religion which will incorporate
the evolutionary movement. For him, Christianity appears as a central phylum of
human evolution and as conscious of finding itself in intimate relation with a
spiritual and transcendent pole of universal convergence.[25]
He understands the Christian God not as a center, fusing and dissolving
whatever reaches him, but, as a focus of personalization. He is like love which
brings two beings together where one does not absorb the other, but rather, is
united to produce a more fulfilling relationship between two separate entities
attracted by its power. The essence
of Christianity, as Teilhard points out, is a belief in the unification of the
world in God by the Incarnation. This is the basic idea of the Gospels.
5. Conclusion
We have many reasons
to read the works of Teilhard de Chardin. He founds his ideas in the Christian
theology from creation to the Pascal mystery. Constructing his thought about
Christian evolution he takes the line of Aristotle. Aristotle, some
three hundred years before Christ, noted the fact that everything which existed
in the world was contingent, that is, it depended on something else for its
existence. From the contingent nature of everything in the world he argued that
there had to be a non-contingent or self-existent entity, a God, to account for
those contingent things. While God could not create another god, He could
initiate a process which could possibly lead to the self-creation of such an
entity. [26]
Taking him as transhumanist, he develops
ideas within a Christian context. Teilhard shows how one might develop a
Christian transhumanism. Although some may be inclined to react
negatively to any mention of Christianity, he is convinced that transhumanism
and Christianity are not essentially enemies. They share some common themes. He
argues that Christ is at work in evolution, that Christ is at work in
technology, and that the work of Christ ultimately aims at the perfection of
human biology.
So far, peak of
evolution is what Teilhard calls a reflective thought - human consciousness.
And the process of evolution is far from being over. So, what kind of union
would it be? Teilhard maintains that the ultimate union of all consciousness
into super-consciousness is a union by differentiation, where the whole does
not destroy, but emphasizes the elements it swallows. This is the only kind of union
that is possible. The union between mankind and God is the goal of evolution,
the necessary outcome of the evolution of what Teilhard calls the spirit of the
earth - collective consciousness of mankind. The goal of each human soul is to
overcome the resistance of material plurality and to unite the spirit of the
earth to God, into One[27]
The study of Teilhard
builds bridges to liberal and progressive forms of Christianity. Teilhard
believed that science and technology have positive roles to play in building
the City of God in this world. A study of Teilhard’ s work may help
transhumanists to explore the ways that transhumanism can obtain support from
Christian millenarianism. Teilhard believed that everyone has a right to enter
the kingdom of heaven – it isn’t reserved for any special sexual, racial, or
economic elite. A study of Teilhard’s writings can help transhumanism embrace a
deep conception of social justice and expand its conception of social concern.
A study of Teilhard can help transhumanists make beneficial conceptual, and
even political, connections to progressive Christian institutions.
While Aristotle was
able to argue from the world up to God, he was unable to argue his way back
down again from God to the world. God had to be perfect, but the world was
obviously imperfect. Why would a perfect God make an imperfect world? Aristotle
could not find a satisfactory explanation for our imperfect world.
There is a possible
resolution to this problem.. Such a process of self-creation would have to be largely
free from Divine interference, and would have to have the potential to lead to
the production of an entity similar to God.
He was the first to
understand the universe as an evolutionary process of ever increasing
complexity and ever increasing consciousness, moving from Alpha, the beginning,
to Omega, the final consummation. But he also saw matter as always imbued with
spirit, which emerged from time to time through certain thresholds.
Role of morality, for
Teilhard, is to compel the individual to free his autonomy and personality to
the uttermost. The goal of religion is to make sure the progress of life goes
on, the evolution continues. Since the progress of science, it's becoming more
and more obvious that, I'm quoting, to be alpha and omega, Christ must, without
losing his precise humanity, become co-extensive with the physical expanse of
time and space. In him, personality expands (or rather centers itself) till it
becomes universal (91). This is the true God of mankind, this is the God for Teilhard,
the God of progress, of evolution, God-unifying principle.[28]
[1] Robert
L. FARICY, Teilhard de Chardin’s theology of the Christian in the world
(New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), p. 33.
[2] Pierre
Teilhard Chardin, “How I believe”, in Chrstianity and Evoluton (New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), p. 99.
[3] Robert
L. FARICY, Teilhard de Chardin’s theology of the Christian in the world
(New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), pp. 36-37.
[4] Teilhard
de Chardin Pierre, The phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper Torch book,
1965), p. 47.
[5] Idem,
p. 83.
[6] Teilhard
de Chardin Pierre, The phenomenon of Man, p. 79.
[8] Teilhard
de Chardin Pierre, The phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper Torch book,
1965), p. 263.
[10] Kelly
Anthony B. (1999A) The Process of the Cosmos USA Dissertation.com
http://www.dissertation.com/library/ 1120605a.htm
[11] Teilhard
de Chardin Pierre, Man's Place in Nature: The Human Zoological Group
(New York: Harper & Row, 1966), pp. 15, 25.
[12] Kopp
Joseph V. (1964) Teilhard de Chardin Explained Cork, Mercier Press;
http://www.quodlibet.net
[13] Arthur
Fabel and Donald St John (eds), Teilhard in the 21st Century. The Emerging
Spirit of Earth (New York: Maryknoll, 2003), p. 79.
[15] Arthur
Fabel and Donald St John (eds), Teilhard in the 21st Century. The Emerging
Spirit of Earth (New York: Maryknoll, 2003), pp. 86-87.
[16] Teilhard
de Chardin Pierre, The phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper Torch book,
1965), pp. 230-231.
[17] Thomas
Berry, The Dream of the Earth (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1988),
p. 18.
[18] Arthur
Fabel and Donald St John (eds), Teilhard in the 21st Century. The Emerging
Spirit of Earth (New York: Maryknoll, 2003), pp. 89-90.
[19] Teilhard
de Chardin Pierre, The phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper Torch book,
1965), p. 259.
[20] Teilhard
de Chardin Pierre, The phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper Torch book,
1965), p. 262.
[21] Arthur
Fabel and Donald St John (eds), Teilhard in the 21st Century. The Emerging
Spirit of Earth (New York: Maryknoll, 2003), p. 29.
[23] Robert
L. FARICY, Teilhard de Chardin’s theology of the Christian in the world
(New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), pp. 185-187.
[24] Robert
L. FARICY, Teilhard de Chardin’s theology of the Christian in the world
(New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), p. 78.
[25] Robert
L. FARICY, Teilhard de Chardin’s theology of the Christian in the world
(New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967), p. 82.
[26]
Anthony B Kelly, Aristotle, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Explanation of the
World Quodlibet Journal: Volume 2 Number 1, January 2000
[27] Helmut
de. Memories of Teilhard de Chardin. Trans. J. M. Brownjohn. New York: Harper
and Row, 1964.
[28] Teilhard
de Chardin, Pierre. Hymn of the Universe. Trans. S. Bartholomew. New York:
Harper and Row, 1965.
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