Quote:
Originally Posted by driveway
The notion of "the light of evolution" came originally from the Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who wrote:
"(Evolution) is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must follow — this is what evolution is."
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In light of what Teilhard de Chardin actually believed, I'm not sure his compliment to evolution here is much of a compliment. He viewed humanity as some kind of culmination of the evolution of the universe. He thought that all of reality works under some kind of teleological evolutionary directive, and personally, I think he's guilty of one of the most common misinterpretations of evolution -- that it has some kind of goal, or point. Which it does not.
Teilhard de Chardin is an interesting study but he is a far thing from a credible scientist.