[Editor’s Note: this is the sixth article in Sir Raymond de Souza’s Teilhard de Chardin series. Here are links to the first five –
Let us see in what terms Fr. Teilhard de Chardin introduces us to evolution, so that we may evaluate well the transposition he made, unsustainably, from paleontology to metaphysics.
What is evolution? Teilhard responds:
“One theory, one system, one hypothesis, Evolution?… No: more than this, a general condition that must henceforth be fulfilled, in order to be thinkable and true, all theories, all hypotheses, all systems. A light illuminating all facts, a curve that must assume all traces: this is what Evolution is” (“Le Phénomène Humain“, Les Edition du Seuil, Paris, 1955, p. 242).
In short, an uncontestable dogma!
A work published later expresses even more categorically the scope of the extrapolation made in the theory of evolution: “Let us therefore put an end once again to the naïve conception, now entirely superseded, of the ‘hypothesis-Evolution’. (…) What it represents, in fact, is a new and general dimension of the Universe, thus affecting the totality of the elements and relations of the Universe. (…) The expression in our spirit of the passage from the world in the state of Cosmos to the state of Cosmogenesis” (“La Vision du Passé“, Les Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1957, p. 348).
All this our Jesuit author affirms at the same time that he declares, peremptorily, that he wishes to limit himself to the study of scientific phenomena, avoiding all recourse to metaphysics! It was absolute fanaticism.
Now, the evolutionism defended by Fr. Teilhard was not accepted as a scientific theory even by evolutionists themselves. This is the case of the eminent French biologist Jean Rostand, who states in an article published in the “Figaro Littéraire” of Paris, on September 23, 1965:
“It is undeniable that Teilhard’s transformism is outside science, insofar as, purely conjectural, it escapes any attempt at verification and cannot lead to any experimental enterprise; insofar as it appeals to mysterious energies that we have no means of unveiling (déceler), and on which we have no action” (apud La Pensée Catholique, 1965, no 98, p. 66).
And even more, it should be noted that classical evolutionary theory itself, under the protection of Teilhardian generalizations, no longer plays today with the “missing links” supposedly found by the fanatics of transformism. Oscar Kühn, director of the Institute of Biology at the University of Tübingen, and one of the leaders of the German school of biology, draws from this the logical conclusion that every serious and loyal man of science should draw:
“We do not know a single fact, nor a single consequence deduced with rigor from the logic of facts, that allows us to prove the evolution of species. We also do not want to dispute that there may be an evolution (history of descent). We admit phylogeny as a hypothesis, fully aware that we cannot demonstrate it in all rigor, and that the existence and characters of the living being can never be conceived as the outcome of a necessary process (like logical and mathematical facts)”(in “Sur quelques questions fondamentales de la biologie d’aujourd’hui”, in La Pensée Catholique, 1954, no31, p. 71).
It would be tedious to multiply here the testimonies of authorized scientists in the same sense. It is enough to show that, at best, the whole system proposed by Fr. Teilhard is based on a mere hypothesis that, even in a mitigated form, cannot resist scientific criticism; as for him, a mere hypothesis has assumed the unquestionable value of a metaphysical truth!
Teilhard’s conception of the universe
Because of his unshakable belief in universal evolution, Teilhard did not limit himself to the interpretation of material phenomena whose traces are buried under the dust of time. He wanted to reach the deeper reality that underlies everything that is observed in the universe! His evolutionary conception of the universe is always presented as of a scientific nature, where there is room even for truths of a supernatural order, as long as they are seen from the angle of his evolutionist “dogma”.
The Whole Universe is supposed to be an Evolution
The range of the Teilhardian evolutionary process is boundless, embracing all spiritual and material realities of the universe. In the publicity leaflet entitled “Comment je crois” (“How I believe”), Fr. Teilhard says categorically: “I believe that the Universe is an Evolution. I believe that Evolution is heading towards the Spirit. I believe that the Spirit rises in the personal. I believe that the supreme person is the Universal Christ”(sic!) (apud “Teilhard de Chardin o la Religión de la Evolución“, p. 27).
Raw material of the universe
The raw material of the universe, designated by the word “Weltstoff“, or “Fabric of the Universe”, supposedly contains within itself all realities, both those of a material order (“le hors des choses“) and those of a psychic order (“le dedans des choses“): “… the original Matter is something more than the seething of particles so wonderfully analyzed by Modern Physics. ” (Le Phenomène Humain, p. 53).
In another text we find a more explicit formulation: “There is no concrete Matter and Spirit; but there is only Matter that becomes Spirit. There is neither Spirit nor Matter in the world: the Fabric of the Universe is Spirit-Matter. No substance more than this could give the human molecule” (“L’Energie Humaine“, Les Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1962, p.73).
Major stages and mutations of the “Weltstoff”
In the Teilhardian evolutionary system, he expounds the various fundamental stages of the “Weltstoff” (designated by terms with the suffix sfera), and the mutations that produce these stages (designation suffix: genesis). Although the last stage and its mutation are not clearly defined in the system, we mention them for the sake of consistency.
■ 1 – Cosmosphere: It is the stage of the universe’s evolution corresponding to cosmic realities without typical vital manifestations. There was only a great multiplicity of minerals in the universe. The mutation that produces it he calls cosmogenesis.
■ 2 – Biosphere: It is distinguished by presenting typical vital manifestations. The minerals would produce live beings, beginning with microscopic molecules and, after passing through all stages of evolution, ending in mammals. It would be achieved through biogenesis.
■ 3 – Noosphere: Marked by the appearance of man, endowed with reflex consciousness. At this stage, the grouping is no longer of biological structures, but the groupings of the “grains of thought” themselves, begin to occur. Here we see the remarkable fact that evolution itself becomes the object of man’s knowledge, who then begins to command it. The corresponding mutation he calls noo-genesis. At the end of this process, all men, after passing through various phases of socialization and collectivization, would come to constitute a superhuman whole, with which the phase of what he calls pleromization or mega-synthesis would be completed.
■ 4 – Christosphere: Defined by the appearance of a perfected phylum, with the advent of Christ (sic!), which would have given the definitive impulse to the completion of evolution. The incorporation of all beings in Christ would be the Christogenesis, or Pleromization, which would be producing the Cosmic Christ.
■ 5 — Theosphere: Final stage in which the Christic Collective Whole immerses itself in God. In some way there would thus be a Theogenesis.
(“From paleontology to metaphysics”, a history of an extrapolation, by Giocondo Mario Vita in the monthly paper Catolicismo n. 183 – March 1966).
One hundred percent pagan, unscientific and gnostic vision of the universe! His Eminence Gerhard Cardinal Müller, who was replaced by Pope Francis as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2017, compared Fr. Teilhard’s conscious evolution to pagan Gnosticism, saying it “does not offer anything which will nourish religious life.” (quoted by Heidi Schlumpf in National Catholic Reporter, January 27, 2018).
No wonder that the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office “exhorts all Ordinaries and Superiors of religious institutes, rectors of seminaries and presidents of universities to defend the minds, especially those of the young, against the dangers of the works of Father Teilhard de Chardin and his disciples “.
One last quotation from the neo-pagan Jesuit to confirm his apostasy from the Christian faith, his belief in the universal divinity:
“If, in consequence of some interior turnaround, I were to lose, successively, my faith in Christ, my faith in a personal God, my faith in the Spirit, it seems to me that I would continue to believe in the world. The world (the value, the infallibility, and the goodness of the world), such is, in ultimate analysis, the first and only thing in which I believe. It is for this faith that I live, and it I this faith that – I feel it – at the moment of my death, above all doubts, I will abandon myself … The faith confused in a One and infallible world, I will abandon myself, wherever it may lead me” (Comment je vois, 1934, quoted in “Catolicismo”, São Paulo, Brazil, December 1962).
Leave a Reply