Before reading this illuminating article, I had heard of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. But all I knew was that he was a Jesuit cleric who lived in the early 20th century and who had somehow tried to reconcile Darwinism and Christianity.

However, according to the author of the above linked article, Matthew Ehret, Teilhard de Chardin’s role in shaping today’s discourses that are occupying and exercising minds is quite large. And he seems to have been one of the culprits responsible for the weakness of Christianity in the West today. For, as Ehret says in conclusion, it seems to have been Chardin’s conviction that “Christianity had to evolve with the times like any creature wishing to avoid extinction within a Darwinian fight for survival.”

Moreover, Chardin seems to have been a proponent of eugenics. I’ll get to that shortly. First, another thing I learnt is that Chardin seems to have been in the centre of contriving the Piltdown Man hoax and the “discovery” of the Peking Man, very likely a hoax as well.

Chardin’s support for eugenics was the logical consequence of believing in Darwinism. Writes Ehret:

“Replacing the concept of moral change (change for better or worse according to a universal standard of right vs wrong), Chardin introduces the idea of “quantitative complexity”. In fact, in his neo-Darwinian system, acts of evil become themselves acts of pure nature devoid of any moral judgement.”

Furthermore:

“If there is any doubt that Chardin saw himself as a new Moses carrying out a total insurgency against Christianity, let them simply read his letter to a friend in 1936 “What increasingly dominates my interest is the effort to establish within myself, and to diffuse around me, a new religion (let’s call it an improved Christianity if you like) whose personal God is no longer the great Neolithic landowner of times gone by, but the Soul of the world.”“

Chardin believed in an “Omega Point” as the final destiny of the human race. To achieve this aim, he thought eugenics should be employed. Here he is quoted by Ehret:

“For a complex of obscure reasons, our generation still regards with distrust all efforts proposed by science for controlling the machinery of heredity, of sex-determination and the development of the nervous systems. It is as if man had the right and power to interfere with all the channels in the world except those which make him himself. And yet it is eminently on this ground that we must try everything, to its conclusion.”

Ehret continues:

In 1951, Chardin re-amplified his call for a science and religion of eugenics:

“So far we have certainly allowed our race to develop at random, and we have given too little thought to the question of what medical and moral factors must replace the crude forces of natural selection should we suppress them. In the course of the coming centuries it is indispensable that a nobly human form of eugenics, on a standard worthy of our personalities, should be discovered and developed. Eugenics applied to individuals leads to eugenics applied to society.”

Chardin’s Omega Point here takes on ever greater meaning as the masquerade of “Christ consciousness” and “global love” is torn from the sweet veneer of his message and the full misanthropic eugenical fanaticism of a high priest in some dystopic scientific dictatorship can now be seen. Chardin’s close friendship with the founder of Transhumanism (and leading eugenicist) Sir Julian Huxley here takes on new meaning as well.

Ehret then connects Chardin to the present. He claims that Chardin’s ideas permeated the Catholic church:

Towards the end of his life, a friend asked him how he feels about his works still being banned from publication by the Church. He responded by saying “I have so many friends now, in good strategic positions, that I have no fear of the future. I have won the game.”

Ehret concludes:

When he died in 1955, Chardin’s works were still largely banned as heresy by the Vatican. His work continued to spread as a sort of Soviet-era samizdat recruiting ever more converts to his particular “new and improved Christianity”. The logic used by Chardin’s followers in support of this new cybernetics-brand of religion in opposition to the dogmatic traditionalists of the Vatican was that since the times were changing, so too must religion. The world of the nation state, industrial growth and individualism was a thing of the outdated conservative era. The post-nation-state world of collective planetary consciousness was upon us as society moved towards a mystical omega point. This faith meant that Christianity had to evolve with the times like any creature wishing to avoid extinction within a Darwinian fight for survival.

Over the ensuing decades, followers of Chardin played a major role in shaping the outcome of the Church’s decentralization and liberalization in the form of Vatican II launched by Pope John XXIII in 1962. These same networks concentrated in Ibero-America innovated a new form of doctrine called “Liberation Theology” with the logic that Marxism was the purest expression of Christ’s message and that all true Christians were obliged to take up La Revolutione against capitalism around the world during the dark days of the Cold War. When asked what should be done about the stagnant catholic Church, Chardin called for this new revolutionary Marxist-merger by saying “a good dip into Marxism might start things moving again.”

While Pope John Paul I and II tried to push back against this deconstruction of Christianity, a touch of poison and a couple of assassin’s bullets brought the Holy See quickly back into line, as the ground was set for a full Jesuit takeover of the Church and integration of Christianity into a new eugenics-driven religion.

The current Pope (Francis) is the first ever who is a Jesuit. He was elected after the previous Pope (Benedict XVI) was more or less forced from office in a move that for centuries had been unprecedented. Suspicions have been raised that the election of Francis resulted after his friends put unprecedented pressure on Benedict to resign. From the beginning of his papacy, he has consistently spoken in favour of policies that weaken decentralised structures and strengthen centralised power. I have no way of knowing his intentions, which may all be sincere. However, his policies all seem to aim at something akin to what his fellow Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin had in mind.

Ehret is promising a follow-up article: “These topics will be unpacked in a future article.”