The Phenomenon of Man

I finished The Phenomenon of Man, by Teihard de Chardin recently. A book that, in truth, I probably only fully understood 40-60 percent of. The reason for this is two fold, first Jesuit logic may work well for Jesuits, but I’m a Lutheran, clarity above logic! Second, while Anthropology is my science of choice Chardin, a biologist/palaeontologist, knows too many specific things for me to get it all, it is a very technical work.
So real quick who is Chardin? Aa French Jesuit as well as a scientist. Most of his work was only published after his death (1955) as the Catholic Church believed his ideas to be heresy. In The Phenomenon of Man he tries to unify Catholic thought with the theory of evolution. It’s an astounding feat. The two most impressive (not necessarily good, but impressive) bits were
1. His pronouncement that science and empiricism is flawed because it can only calculates the outside of things. He argues that if you look at man as just a phenomena, that is if you look at man empirically/objectively, you can simply deconstruct the hell out of it and we are just so many nuts and bolts, so many odd movements, nothing more. Yet! Yet! A third time I say Yet, as Teilhard is human he recognizes that more goes on in a human than is observable, and therefore he makes the leap and says, what about the rest of the world? Does not the ape have a within? Yes? Does not the fish have a within? Yes? Does not the microbe have a within? Yes? Does not the mountains and rocks themselves have a within? When I read this my heart jumped some when I thought of Romans 8 where the world/universe itself is groaning in expectation of the revelation of God’s Children. Also, as it is Palm Sunday didn't Jesus say the Stones themselves would speak of his enterance into Jerusalem?
2. Chardin’s second impressive bit is the bit that caused my previous caveat about the word impressive. Chardin sees the whole universe thing heading (consciously, because it after all has a within) towards a certain point. First there was pre-life, and then came life. When you might ask, Chardin responds, "can we draw (a line) between ‘living’ protoplasm and ‘dead’ proteins?" Basically that life was innate within non-life, that this change was a gradual thing, and that you can’t pinpoint when pre-life became life. Fastforward a bunch then came human-ish things, they only became fully human when they got scrunched together and began to perceive itself etc. Anyway at some point humans reached a point where they can effect their own destiny, that is they can point their evolution in a specific direction. This is where things get interesting, Chardin advocates eugenics. This is where Christianity comes in. He sees Christ’s entering the world as creating an almost subspecies of human, that is Christians, and the traits of Christians/Christ should be selected to catapult the human race into a new level of being. (he has seen Nazism and sees it as a warping of a genuinely good thing).
There are tons of other issues in Teilhard’s philosophy, the Noosphere (in my head this seems like an onzone layer of human thought)/the difference between individuality and personality (actually this is worth a mention, our personality only fully comes out in relationships)/Christian panthism (basically one maintains their own integrity within the system of relationship with all others in the love of God instead of loosing their personality as a drop of water in an ocean).
Peace,
Chris