On Excellence as Morality - Part 5

Evolution as Sculptor - Part 2

Teilhard states at the beginning of time, what we peotically call 'The Big bang', all matter in the universe was confined in a small node that suddenly burst ejecting everything that existed then, and the building blocks of everything that will ever exist, out into the void. An event that we have brazenly dated as having occurred 15 billion years ago. This event initiated the first stage of evolution that Teilhard calls Pre-life.

The characteristics of this stage can be described to those of us from New York as the Belt Parkway without lane markers or traffic laws, particles randomly colliding with other particles creating new particles. Eventually developing protons, neutrons and electrons. These combined in exceedingly more complex combinations to form the elements we’ve grouped into the Table of Elements.

These elements intermingled, intersected, and intermarried into even more complicated combinations called molecules. Ultimately progressing into the complex substance that we’ve identified as DNA. A DNA molecule is about 774,000 times more massive than hydrogen and contains about 1,161,000 more protons, neutrons, and electrons, equivalent to the size difference between an average human and a battleship. Very much more complex than hydrogen.

Teilhard’s focus is on complexity, for he equates complexity with advancement along the evolutionary continuum. For it is through this ever-growing complexity that nature cultivates the internal components of its various phenomena. Nature’s increment of development is the degree of complexity of the phenomenon in question. But the complexity’s growth, what he names complexification, has a structure or system about it.

According to Teilhard everything has an exterior aspect, their physical make-up, and an interior aspect. The more complex a phenomenon is, the more developed the interior aspect is. The process of evolution has been, and will continue to be, the growing of the interior aspect, the within of things, to the relative expense of the exterior aspect, the without of things. This is why we can all feel confident when we place ourselves at the top of the life form pecking order. There are creatures possessing far more developed physical attributes, the Without, but none that posses more developed intellectual, emotional, or intuitive aspects, the Within.

So as substances continued to become more complex within their chemical makeup the complexity of the interior aspect of these substances also increased in kind. But then something happened to those DNA molecules on earth. Their interior aspect of being took over their development. They came to life. Now the motor of evolution took an exit off the Belt Parkway and found itself in Darwin’s Theory on the Origin of Species. Now nature was rewarding a directed development instead of the luck of the draw for survival. Life forms could reproduce other relatively like life forms, but not perfect copies. It was those variations that gave nature the opportunity to test the emerging life forms and reward them for passing by allowing their complexification to continue. This then would sculpt the life form along its developmental path. Chinking away useless traits and allowing advantageous ones to survive. This is why you and I still have the base bone of that tail that is a long time gone from being needed.

How well each variation was able to advance was determined by how well each could overcome the various tests that nature threw at them had the added affect to force life to branch into different genera, for different climates, or for different food sources (i.e. Cheetah and Leopard). The pinnacle branch on that tree is the one we sit atop, the Hominid Branch.

But Teilhard suggests that we have sprouted an entirely new branch. We have crossed over beyond the second level of evolution and into a third level that he calls the evolution of Mind. All three levels are currently influencing our development, while all other life forms are only influenced by the first two.

We have a new set of reward and elimination criteria to contend with. But, before I get to that, I must offer the most key Teilhard precept that the goal of evolution is to produce God-like beings. He believes that if we can successfully maneuver through the trials and pitfalls to come we will advance toward the greater perfection that we call God.

But, we ain’t there yet. Nobody’s perfect. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. To err is human, to forgive divine.

So, how do we get from here to there? Teilhard and I will differ on this. He was a Geologist by trade and structured human evolution into strata that I believe focuses too much on environmental factors. It is from our interiors, motives and decisions, that we will prevail.