American biophysicist Harold Morowitz’s 2002 take on the connections between Teilhard’s 1936 theories and Gibbs free energy. [7] |
See main: Father Merrin; Human thermodynamic filmsTeilhard, a physical chemist and a priest, the epitome of a mind rankled with two competing belief systems, served the basis of the character of Father Merrin, in the best seller 1971 book The Exorcist (and followup 1973 film); and parts of the plot were themed on Teilhard’s theory of evil (or the existence of Satan) in the world possibly being Lucifer [or matter-energy spirit] working out his [or its] salvation through the process of physical evolution ending in Teilhard’s omega point theory. The following opening quote from the book version of The Exorcist is said to capture the theoretical aspects of Blatty’s mindset: [5]
Teilhard, as one who grapples with good and evil theology in the context of mind from matter and energy science, served the basis of the character Father Merrin in the 1971 book-turned film The Exorcist. |
"Matter is Lucifer crawling itself back to God"
(Matter [is] Lucifer upward groping back to his God)
'In the novel, the coda was needed to put a button on what the novel was all about -- Kinderman's rescue of God's goodness via his theory of "The Angel," which hypothesized that the fall of man was premundane; that before the Big Bang, mankind was a single angelic being who fell from grace and was given his transformation into the material universe as a means of salvation wherein his legion of fragmented personalities would spiritually evolve ("Can there be a moral act without at least the possibility of pain?") back into the original single angelic being, back into himself, a process foreshadowed on the opening page of The Exorcist ("that matter was Lucifer upward groping back to his God").'
See main: Human moleculeIn the scheme of the universe, according to Teilhard, the case that interests us most is the “problem of man”. In particular, Teilhard states, “the existence of an ascendant movement in the universe has been revealed to us by the study of paleontology.” He then asks “where is man to be situated in this line of progress?”
“In terms of our modern neoanthropocentricity, man, both diminished and enlarged, becomes the head (terrestrial) of a universe that is in the process of psychic transformation—man, the last-formed, most complex and most conscious of ‘molecules’.” [2]
Teilhard headstone at the Jesuit cemetery in Hyde Park, New York. |