Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Blessed Lives - Lecture 1 - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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• published: 06 Mar 2016
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THE CRISIS OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION: EVOLUTION Sunday, Feb 28, 2016 3 pm Reynolds Homestead Teilhard de Chardin (Te-yar duh Shar-dan) paleontologist, priest Darwin’s discovery of the Evolution of Life sent shock-waves of disbelief over the world, particularly over religious peoples. Uniformly rejected by all religions at the time, evolution is still condemned by Christian fundamentalists, virtually all Islamic cultures, and many other religious sects. Yet In the twenty-first century the evolutionary nature of life (like the quantum nature of the atom and the relativistic nature of space and time) is settled science—even as many religious schools, even in a developed country like America, teach their students that the natural world did not evolve. Into this turbulent time of discovery entered PierreTeilhard de Chardin, a Catholic priest and paleontologist (one who studies ancient fossils). de Chardin did not reject evolution, nor did he regard it as “only a theory” as some churchmen grudgingly did. To the contrary, de Chardin positively embraced evolution as a deep principle of the universe radiant in spirituality in which his own faith in Christ would be central. In this lecture we’ll learn why de Chardin is a seminal figure, how he worked out his philosophy and theology. His writings were initially suppressed by the Church and dismissed by some biologists as well (though major figures like, Julian Huxley and Theodosius Dobzhansky welcomed his thinking). We’ll learn why de Chardin endures with a positive contribution to the deepest questions of life, the universe, and our existence in it.