Onward and upward through Faith

What did he mean when paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin spoke of a consciousness underpinning the direction of evolution? Could he have been talking of a compromise between the Cartesian split of domains of knowledge? Or was he, as a Roman Catholic priest, trying to describe some other aspect of creation?

As it turns out de Chardin was speaking of his version of the creation story and its impact on the human race. In his mind, consciousness imbued all of creation with a sense of energy or direction to evolution. He tried to expand upon Darwin’s idea in The Origin of the Species that discussed the movement of creation to ever more complex life forms. For Darwin there was a distinct energy to creation which allowed his theory to account for the “purpose” of evolution. It was no longer enough to document the fossil records and the speciation process he found in the isolated Galapogos Islands. Putting the two ideas together, along with his drawings and his data from observation, he made a strong argument for the constant “improvement” of the earth species into more complex and better adapted creatures.
De Chardin, as a paleontologist understood the importance of this gap in Darwin’s reasoning. Indeed, Darwin had made conclusions which seemed to point to an upward course of development, but he could not explain what was driving the process. Seeming cogent arguments invariably lead back to some source external to materialism as the underpinning force. Even today there is neither philosophical nor physical justification in materialism--based on recent discoveries in quantum--for linkage between an individual’s brain and the same individual’s consciousness. Even discussions of epiphenomena (secondary aspects) of the brain as a justification for consciousness seem incapable to objectively describing differences in consciousness; such as, dreaming, non-dreaming, daydreaming, and “paranormal phenomena”.
For Teilhard consciousness underlay this movement to higher and higher complexity and it was self-evident, or nearly so. One had only to look at the increasing levels of complexity in the materialistic arguments for creation of the universe to see the presence of a force driving evolution. Although there was no “Big Bang”, as we understand it today, when he was developing his theory our present knowledge supports much of his argument. In terms of creation it starts with temperature & something. Then as expansion occurs and temperatures drop the traditional process occurs: sub-atomic particles yield atoms, which yield molecules, which yield compounds, which yield etc. until the planets and the universe exist as we currently know them. This movement to complexity seemed guided to him, just as it did for Darwin.
However, de Chardin goes a step further. As a scientist, he recognized that, if there were indeed a direction to creation, it had to lead somewhere. As a priest, he recognized that the direction was to the Omega Point, the crowning point of creation. This point had two components. First humanity would continue to improve and evolve until we effectively ruled out war and discord as solutions. We would work together in a greater community not unlike the early Star Trek episodes which occurred after his death. The second part was that as this occurred Christ would return to lead the universe. And this would be the glory of this consciousness’s leading—a time of peace, caring, and glorification of the human occurring through the process of evolution being driven by divine guidance.