- Published: September 14, 2022
- Updated: September 14, 2022
- University / College: Queen's University Belfast
- Language: English
- Downloads: 11
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit priest who also researched paleontology. Thus, many of his texts are oriented towards the conciliation between the scientific, earthly worldview and the Christian one. This discussion is one of the principle subjects that he discusses in “ The Heart of the Problem”, one of the chapters in The Future of Man. There, he expresses that in his opinion, the de-Christianization that Western civilization has suffered since the XVIIth century is mainly due to a perceived rupture between religious transcendence and both science and neo-humanism, which are more focused on Earth and Nature. The main debate is between a theory that has faith in the Earth, where modern science, anthropogenesis, Marxism, communism, the ultra-human and neo-humanism all fit in, as opposed to one that posits its faith in God, the divine, ascension, another world and sacrifice.
However, Teilhard de Chardin proposes that these differences are being overestimated and that one may combine both of these tendencies to compose a fortified theory that may benefit and combine them in society. Christian theology is especially appropriate to conjoin itself with the study of the Earth, as it believes that God sent His son, who was also Him, there. On the other hand, he argues that neo-humanism also has faith, but in the World; they reject an indifferent God, but believe in another that integrates what has been learned through science about the enormity of the cosmos. He proposes that both of these dispositions may work together in a renounce of the self for a superior cause, benefitting civilization.