evolving to a higher power? Whoopie

I thought Teilhard de Chardin was censored because of his ideas that men were evolving to a higher power, i.e. that the ultimate aim of God making mankind was to evolve to a superman.

And no, he was not censored for investigating evolution, which has been accepted as a possible mechanism for God to make the world since the days of St Augustine. (Darwin's tweak, that the evolution was "blind" and based only on laws of chance not divine plan, is rejected by the church).

But apparently his original censorship was that he denied original sin according to this Wikipedia link

One should expect a man who was in World War I as a stretcher bearer and excavated in China would see there is indeed a flaw in mankind, which the church calls "original sin", that is a weakness that allows men to choose to do evil, even sometimes over his "will" (i.e. from emotions or because of weakness to stand up to outside pressure, which was Eve's problem).

But never mind.

this is his real idea that was rejected by the church, but has wormed it's way into the "trendier than thou" theologians and has made the new agers love him: again from Wikipedia.

From 1930–1931, Teilhard stayed in France and in the United States. During a conference in Paris, Teilhard stated: "For the observers of the Future, the greatest event will be the sudden appearance of a collective humane conscience and a human work to make."

if this sounds familiar, it is because the polyester suited new age nuns who defy the pope arranged for their leadership meeting to have Ms Marx who is pushing the same idea address their meeting.

She calls it "Conscious evolution", where if you send her money she would help you to evolve to a higher power when the world enters the next phase of evolution, which occurred two years ago but never mind. This has resulted in the nuns pursuing organic farms and creation spirituality, which sees no original sin either, and the Tablet defends the nuns, ignoring the fact that one result of these leaders pughing newfangled ideas is that there are few Catholic schools or hospitals any more, that few Catholics under the age of 40 know or understand the teachings of basic Christianity, and that the average Catholic objects to their hard earned money funding the nuns running around to conferences pushing heresy and pretending they are farmers by running eco farms. (our family runs an organic farm, but unlike them, we have to make a profit).

This trendy idea means the point of God making man is not because he loves ordinary people who are dirty and have kids, but because these superficial folks are beside the point: His aim is to have men evolve to a superman, and all those ordinary folks are just cannon fodder who are the garbage to be discarded by those who have evolved.

And where does Jesus come into all of this? Anyone?


The new agers love him. After all, if the aim of God's creation is to evolve to be a superman, you don't have to worry about all those primitive rules. (This idea is a variation of gnosticism by the way: That posits the person with secret knowledge, or the most intelligent, equates to greatness. Holiness is not an issue, since mystical experience is equated to holiness. Uh, no, that's not true in Christianity or even in Hinduism,, but never mind.)

This was all the fad in the 1960s when I went to college, but tell you the truth I could not make head nor tail of the book. I'm not much into mysticism, who belly button gaze while people are suffering nearby. Heh, just give them an aspirin, will you?

well, anyway, Instapundit links to an article that claims that Charles Dawson was the guy behind the fake hominoid find the Piltdown man.

Piltdown Man, if it weren’t a hoax, would indeed have been a big find. Dawson knew, as De Groote and colleagues note, that “the British scientific community was anticipating in a missing link between apes and humans: a large brain, an ape-like face and jaws, and heavily fossilized materials that indicated great antiquity.” Dawson quite simply gave scientists the evidence that they wanted.

honesty in science is a big thing, but scientists are alas human too.

But anyway, one of the lesser known facts is that guess who was part of that discovery? Yes, our friend Pierre. again from Wikipedia:

 In June 1912 he formed part of the original digging team, with Arthur Smith Woodward andCharles Dawson at the Piltdown site, after the discovery of the first fragments of the (fraudulent) "Piltdown Man", with some even suggesting he participated in the hoax.^[1][2] 

he later went on to help with other digs, including that of the Peking man, a fossil that has also disappeard, albeit unlike Piltdown man, is consistent with other finds of homo erect
So what can one conclude?