Teilhard’s Noosphere - To Jews “boasting about the LAW [of Judaism] and then ignoring it,” Paul said, “you bring God into contempt. It is YOUR fault that the Name of GOD is blasphemed amongst the Gentiles” (Rom.2:23-24). Misrepresentation has plagued human progress from the beginning. In 1864 - observing what the MARXISTS had made of his MARXISM – Karl MARX remarked, “Thank God – I’m not a MARXIST!” Likewise – discovering what the Americans had made of his PSYCHO-ANALYSIS, Freud said, “America is gigantic – a gigantic mistake!”[1]

Moving on, I deplore what certain “experts” have made of Teilhard’s “Noo-sphere.” Fascinated from infancy with all the “forms” of matter – culminating in “Forma Christi”[2] – Teilhard learned that Eduard Suess had described Earth’s surface as concentric litho-, hydro-, atmo- and bio-spheres of solid, liquid, gaseous and “living” or reproductive forms of matter. Likewise about 1925 - with Edouard Le Roy and Vladimir Vernadsky - Teilhard described our brains potentially linked together as a global “NOO-SPHERE” of reflective or “thinking” forms of matter. Indeed, in the whole of the known universe our genes and the brains that stem therefrom [now over 6 billion] are unmatched in molecular complexity and reflective competence. By way of our brains [if we choose to use them] we are collectively able to gain reflective IN-SIGHT into the inner form or INFORMATION of everything – even the depths of God (1 Cor.2:10) – and to ascend to the heights of cosmic SUPER-VISION, putting all things under our feet (Ps.8:6; Eph.1:22; 1 Cor.15:26; Heb.2:8).

Teilhard’s NOO-SPHERE is not just a “matter” of philosophy. His NOO-SPHERE is real matter, consisting of our brains [now over 6 billion] potentially linked together by a world-wide-web or internet of communications media able to function around the world and beyond at the speed of light [nearly 300,000 km per second].[3]
[1] Bruno Bettelheim 1983 “Freud and Man’s Soul.”
[2] Pierre Teilhard SJ 1918 “Forma Christi” pp.249-269 in “Writings in Time of War” Collins 1968
[3] Samson & Pitt 1999 “The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader”

I would agree Roch, a fundamental delusion is our sense of separation from the world we are “ in,” including our separation from other people. Physicist, David Bohm stated metaphysically, "Deep down the consciousness of mankind is one. This is a virtual certainty because even in the vacuum matter is one; and if we don't see this, it's because we are blinding ourselves to it." If, by adopting an apocalyptic eschatology as our view instead of a more prophetic perspective, we'll become self-delusional, self-important and arrogant. Apocalyptic thinking is usually about all the evil people “out there” beyond what we can control. McCarthyism or the 'red under the bed' are certainly good modern examples of an extreme witch-hunt.

Some emphasis can be made on the argument given by Gregory of Nyssa - " that since evil has no real existence, its "relative" existence will be completely annihilated at the end of time". Divine judgement, according to Gregory, is not to punish the sinners. Instead, it "operates by separating good from evil and pulling the soul towards the fellowship of blessedness." Eschatology is a difficult area of theological thought - it tries to reveal something of the future, often in a language and understanding we cannot fathom. The problem of evil cannot be ignored unless as inferred, mankind will simply, through process of evolution, become 'perfect'.We mustn't confuse the metaphysical with science , for as David Bohm concurs," our "objective reality" is largely a construct of thought, and not recognizing this leads us to endless circles of self-deception - in science as well as in life in general." We have minds, but we are not our minds.

Bohm also mentioned the dangers we face as a society and the changes we will have to make in our thinking in order to have a future. He said we need a more holistic approach to the ecological problem and must find something else in life besides economic growth. I have full empathy with this view but the struggle for an holistic approach will certainly not come naturally.

Jesus was only concerned with teaching people The Golden Rule:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule

He understood this was the way to peace. The Gospels describe a society oppressed and any deconstruction of the story reveals who the oppressors are. The irony is, it was 'religious' people who engineered the death of Jesus. Jesus' ultimate gift to the world was to show how self-proclaimed religious types hold people back from creating Heaven on Earth

relda, Roch,
“McCarthyism or the 'red under the bed' are certainly good modern examples of an extreme witch-hunt.“

I think these are two different things. The first one means persecution of individuals (of a very mild form, compared to what I had experienced in Czechoslovakia during those years: e.g. my uncle, a postgrad student in 1950 - caught translating a prayer book from French - was sentenced as a “Vatican spy” to 9 years in jail, most of it spent in uranium mines). The second one means fears that turned out to be unsubstantiated. Let us hope our fears of a nuclear or climate catastrophe will turn out to be equally unsubstantiated.

David Bohm is perhaps best known as the author of a quantum theory interpretation (Bohm interpretation, a so called a non-local hidden variable deterministic theory) the strongest competitor of the more standard Copenhagen interpretation. Perhaps his sacrifice of locality to preserve the strict determinism (using an extra variable with no apparent physical meaning) had led him to embrace oriental mysticism/metaphysics in his interpretation of physics and his philospphy. In this he resembles the more popular Fritjof Capra (author of e.g. “The Tao of Physics“) although he, to my knowledge, prefers the Copenhagen version. This, I think, distinguishes both of them (Bohm a Jew, Capra an ex-Christian) from Teilhard, whose mystic interpretation of Western science does not lead him outside his Western metaphysical tradition, though in a certain sense Teilhard is also “non-localist”.

For me, a theological layman, one of the crucial characteristics of Christianity, and indirectly of our Western tradition, is Jesus’ promise made not to a community, nation or any “non-local” (impersonal) entity but to an individual, the repentant criminal: “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.“ (Luke 23:43).

Progress? – In his “Creator of Heaven and Earth” Peter Sellick said, “The Judeo/Christian tradition contains no information about the origin of the material world.” He concluded – “If the Christian God did not create the physical world, what does He create? In the first creation story God calls the world into being. John’s gospel … talks about the Word of God which he identifies with Jesus. Jesus in turn calls his disciples into a new way of being. As Bonhoeffer was fond of saying, “When Jesus calls a man he bids him come and die.” This is a calling that puts to death the old man and calls the new out of his grave. While this is on the personal level we must remember that the history of Israel does not begin properly with the creation but with the call of Abraham to leave his home. Thus the call of God creates a new history. The creative work of God is not to do with setting the universal constants or igniting the big bang but in calling individuals and nations into a life freed from the “elemental powers of the universe” - of enslavement, death and decay…”

Waiting to be hanged in 1945, Bonhoeffer [39] also asked, “Who am I?” Informed from within, he concluded, “Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God – I am Thine!”

Far from containing “no information about the origin of the material world” – the key concept in the Judeo-Christian tradition is INFORMATION. 90 years ago Pierre Teilhard said, “The word that comes nearest to defining the universal influx of Jesus Christ – the centre of the universe – is INFORMATION.” Indeed, “The whole history of the universe is that of its progressive INFORMATION by Christ.”[1]

Humans are able to be INFORMED not only from the PAST and the PRESENT [the world OUTSIDE] but also from the FUTURE or world WITHIN us. “I have food to eat, “Jesus said, “that the world knows nothing about!”(Jn.4:32; Mt.4:4; Dt.8:3).

[1] Teilhard 1918 “Forma Christi” pp.253-4, 266 in “Writings in Time of War” 196

Roch
"The whole history of the universe is that of its progressive INFORMATION by Christ."[1]

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit:

How things were and why? How things are and why? How things could be and why?