Teleology and religion

Human Evolution and perfection

The humanity is destined to reach its perfection.

Nowadays, the scientists do not dare to admit they are teleologists because it is something they can not demonstrate. In any case, there is nothing in place of that, and the place remains empty.” Cl. Bernard

Teleology: (C18: from New Latin teleologia, from Greek telos end + -logy) (Philosophy)  1. The doctrine that there is evidence of purpose or design in the universe, and esp. that this provides proof of the existence of a Designer  2. The belief that certain phenomena are best explained in terms of purpose rather than cause (Biology) the belief that natural phenomena have a predetermined purpose and are not determined by mechanical laws 

God or emptiness ? Sense or meaninglessness ?

Here are 3 theories:

• The world is submitted to a creative principle (god). This one is aware of its work and its purpose. In this case, human evolution takes place as it has to take place to affect this predetermined purpose.
• The world has no creative principle. The creation happens by chance and the human evolution has no sense except the one that we want to give it.
• There is a creative principle but it has no predetermined purpose to the universe which it created and the creatures which result from it. In that case, the man would have all the leisure to build his own destiny.

God and meaning

You certainly already understood that on this website we agree with the first theory. According to us, the world is the result of a creative principle, aware of its destiny; and its creatures cannot escape this destiny. From this point, we shall think about the sense of humanity and about the reasons which guides the man towards such a destiny.

God and the religion

The religion at the origin

The questioning about the fate of humanity is not new.

The efforts to solve this enigma occupy for a long time the spirit of philosophy. These efforts met their highest level with Emmanuel Kant and the philosophy of Enlightenments and then with George Wilhelm Friedrich Nietzsche.

However, the first one to give a universal answer to the question of the sense of the humanity, are the religions.

Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism

One of the first propositions, finalist and positivist, of the meaning of humanity is given to us, and certainly for the first time, by the Judaism. Definitely, for this religion, the humanity will come true with the arrival of the Messiah: When the messiah will come, the authenticity of the Torah and the existence of God will universally be recognized, and from this universal acceptance, will shine the light of the truth, the justice, the tolerance and the peace on the whole world.

This "positivism", planning the happy end of time, goes on and grows rich quite naturally with the Christianity and the Islam through the image of Apocalypse (the ultimate victory of powers of "good" on the powers of "evil" and the final institution of the kingdom of God on earth, in other words, the institution of the realm of the love, because God is love).

The concept of human progresstowards the perfection is also found in Asian spiritualities but under another approach.
Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism envisage the universe and the creation "in a cyclic way (it was also the faith of the ancient Greece). A golden age declines towards the chaos then restarts towards a golden age...

The vision is different but the principle has the same sense.

In fact, concerning these spiritualities, if the human evolution is included in a kind of eternal resumption from the golden age to the chaos and from the chaos to the golden age, it is definitely the golden âge (in other words, the perfection), that acts as ideal to be reached.

At least, linear or circular, for all the big spiritualities of the world, humanity evolves towards a point of perfection.

From religion to philosophy

From metaphor to science.

Quand l'eau courbe un bâton, ma raison le redresse : la raison décide en maîtresse. La Fontaine

If the reason of the world was the ruler, the world peace would already be our reality. But it is not the case. Instincts, drives, blind will, are still very often at the controls of our evolution.

However, beyond the human reality, the religions have already thought of our destiny in terms of peace, equality, brotherhood and universality. At the end of time, the lamb will lie down beside the lion and the young children will play in the nest of the cobra. (Isaiah 11: 6). In other words, the man will not be any more a wolf for another man, the abuse of the dominant on the dominated will end, and the whole of humans will finally have carried out their unity.

However, if most of intuitive religious (from any religion) discovered the big enigma of this world, the metaphoric nature of their explanations lost some influence as the scientific pragmatism emerged.

The spiritual intuitions consequently demanded, in a certain way, to be enlightened with the light of the reason and of the science.

The philosophy arose from this necessity. The wish to explain rationally the mythological intuitions is at the origin of the philosopher. The intention to rationalize the irrational and the spiritual is at the origin of the philosophic work.

From the Milesians to the Epicureans, the Greek philosophers wanted to explain rationally the cosmogony, the mythology and the mystic experiences (Plato, the Banquet, for example).

In the same way, until the 18th century, the Jewish, Christian and Moslem philosophers enlightened the metaphors of the sacred books. They tried then to explain God in an ontological way, which is by starting from God himself.

From the age of Enlightenment, the big philosophers changed their point of departure. To prove the existence of God, certain philosophers like Kant and later Hegel, decided to start from material phenomena, from phenomenal world and not any more from God himself.

By enlightening the world until the limits of the knowable realities, these thinkers aimed at bringing to light what was beyond... The material put itself in the service of the immaterial, the physics in the service of the metaphysics.
Among these last philosophers, some of them like Kant and Hegel really offered their life to the question of the historic destiny of the man.

Towards the big point of convergence

Helped by their phenomenal intelligence, their logical and intuitive capacities and the scientific discoveries of their time, these geniuses succeeded in demonstrating in a most rational possible way, the sense of humanity.

Their conclusions are identical to those of the religions: the humanity evolves towards a positive and spiritual realization. It is only the choice of the words to denote this purpose that is different.

Therefore, any teleological reflection aims at establishing a link between the world of the phenomena (the universe such as it appears to us) and the principle at the origin of this universe.
It is also the purpose followed by our philosophy.
We aim at discovering the connection between the visible matter and the immaterial form of this one (waves or invisible elementary particles). To simplify, it is basically a question of making the connection between the creative principle and its creation, between god and its creatures... In other words, every philosopher of the history, every metaphysician, aims at proving the unprovable: the existence of god.

Millions of thinkers and mystic (very often in the biggest exaltation) worked until exhaustion on this mission of Don Quixote, without ever succeeding in resolving it.

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