Weasel words – can anyone better this? (Main Forum)

by ray(O) , Toowong, Sunday, November 08, 2009, 13:29 (93 days ago)

I haven’t had to worry about weasel words until now that is. Thanks to Nicholas though this has changed. In a post he referred to a weasel words dictionary.

So I undertook a crash course on what is a weasel word. Thanks mainly to Wikipedia and the search results of Google, I now know all about weasel words.

Armed with this knowledge I was determined to find some weasel words. I started with Catholica. To my relief I could not find too many. There was a lot of satire, coarse language, ridicule of the actions of the Church in Rome and some of our clergy, but these are not weasel words.

So where would be a good place to look for weasel words? In the past, a number of Catholica contributors who form the heart of the Catholica discussion board have made some unkind references to a couple of other discussion boards. These weren’t weasel words either, inflammatory yes, but not weasel words.

And guess what? Within a few minutes of reading some of the posts on those boards I came across this beauty. Someone had posted a review of a book written about Pierre Teilhard de Chardin of all people. To quote from that review:-

This book is, as it claims, a thorough analysis and refutation of the teachings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Correct me if I am wrong, but the only non-weasel words/expressions in this sentence are “book” and “Pierre Teilhard de Chardin”.

I thought perhaps I should make bold all those expressions of weasel words. I quickly came to the realisation that I would have to make the whole article bold. And that would defeat my purpose.

I also thought of “parsing” it as well adding appropriate comments, but once again I discovered that I would have to parse every sentence. Parsing is not a form of using weasel words either!!!!

These sentences are a classic in weasel words (in my humble opinion):-

In the telling, Teilhard's thoughts become much better organized by Smith than they ever were in Teilhard's own mind, and, as their content is gradually presented and weighed, one clearly sees their true place both in the reality of Smith's framework and in the fantasy of Teilhard's. Whoever wants a concise idea of what de Chardin really said and of what it really means can do no better than to read Smith's masterful analysis of Teilhard's vision of the world.

In other words, there is no need to read the works of Teilhard, Just read the book by Mr Smith and you will fully appreciate ALL of Teilhard’s own works. Well almost:-

Smith has read almost all of the available published works of Teilhard

The reviewer has done more injustice to Smith than what he thinks he has to Teilhard. Who would want to read a book by such a pompous idiot as Smith? All thanks to the reviewer.

All thanks to weasel words.

By the way, the “reviewer” is a Mr John F. McCarthy. Has anyone heard of him?

There is another expression I have come across lately: - ad hominem. I tried to get a concise definition of this phrase means, but I am still not sure. It seems to be beyond definition. Maybe I am a bit slow.

For our “ad hominem” experts, could this review be considered ad hominem in places?

Has anyone else have a good weasel word passage?

Here is the review. I won’t say “enjoy”.

If this isn’t a good example of weasel words, then I stand corrected.

Wolfgang Smith, Teilhardism and the New Religion
ISBN 0895553155 (Tan Books: Rockford, Illinois, 1988), 250 pp. softbound.

reviewed by John F. McCarthy

This book is, as it claims, a thorough analysis and refutation of the teachings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Composed by a physicist and mathematician who has also studied deeply into philosophy and theology, it brings to bear upon Teilhard's writings the exacting scrutiny of a scientist and the comprehensive overview of an educated believer.

Smith has read almost all of the available published works of Teilhard. He quotes from them with precision as he analyzes their content. For instance, as he tells us early on (14) that "for Teilhard, not only is evolution a fact: it is the all-important fact," he quotes here and elsewhere from Teilhard to prove his observation. In the telling, Teilhard's thoughts become much better organized by Smith than they ever were in Teilhard's own mind, and, as their content is gradually presented and weighed, one clearly sees their true place both in the reality of Smith's framework and in the fantasy of Teilhard's. Whoever wants a concise idea of what de Chardin really said and of what it really means can do no better than to read Smith's masterful analysis of Teilhard's vision of the world.

Dr. Smith is, among other things, an expert on geometrical spaces. It is intriguing to witness how he handles, in mathematical terms, the unscientific geometrical notions in Teilhard's view of the cosmos: that Heaven is neither 'above' nor 'within,' but ahead of us in time (34); that "it is the nature of Matter, when raised corpuscularly to a very high degree of complexity, to become centered and interiorized" (49); that the 'Omega Point' is the ultimate term of cosmogenesis and coincides in reality with Christ (80); that in the evolving universe God is not conceivable (either structurally or dynamically) except insofar as he coincides with ... the center of convergence of cosmogenesis, ... a God who is functionally and totally 'Omega'" (118); that "creation, incarnation and redemption are not facts which can be localized [Teilhard's emphasis] at a given point of time and space" (123).

When Smith tells us (19) that there is "no evidence at all" for the transformist hypothesis in which Teilhard so firmly believed, he is speaking as a scientist and on the basis of the most up-to-date scientific data. And he shows us (22-23) that the transformist dream is based on faith alone, as de Chardin admitted and as recent discoveries in biology are demonstrating ever more clearly.

Teilhard's aim was to found a new Christianity (23). By visualizing Heaven as a development that is neither above us nor within us but only ahead of us in time, Teilhard was able to transpose and falsify virtually every traditional Christian conception, beginning with the idea of man (34-35). As a scientist, Smith finds that Teilhard speaks only in metaphors: "take away the metaphors and there is no theory left. What is lacking in Teilhard's doctrine are scientific definitions, scientific concepts" (58).

Thus, to Teilhard the pseudoscientist, the notions of creation and development, while they are separated in Scholastic thought, "are seen to be constantly fused, combined together" (Christianity and Evolution, 23). As a scientist and mathematician, Smith shows this reflection of Teilhard to be unscientific. "Is it possible to conceive of a single, omnipresent Point? Now, as every mathematician will readily understand, it is not only possible, but quite easy to do so; what is needed (if we may be excused for the use of technical jargon) is a 'vertical dimension,' orthogonal to space-time, and an extended metric which is degenerate in that vertical direction" (72, 97).

Smith finds that Teilhard's notion of a gravitationally convergent universe is scientifically obsolete (81); it contradicts the law of entropy (84). Teilhard's notion of Christ as standing at the Omega Point is a misunderstanding of velocity vectors (95-96). Teilhard's notion of history, based on his unscientific "Law of Complexity," "has in effect cut down our field of vision to dimensions of smallness never before attained: to a single one-dimensional continuum, so to speak, coordinatized by a postulated 'parameter of complexity.'" The difficulty is that Teilhard presents as mathematical and scientific what is not a mathematical or scientific notion of 'complexity': "in mathematical parlance, it is not a variable taking values in an ordered set" (167-168).

From the start, Teilhard's celebrated Omega Point "was nothing more than a quasi-theological notion, masquerading in scientific dress" (109). Teilhard rather openly admitted that he was preaching a form of pantheism (see, for example, Christianity and Evolution, 171), and Smith shows (111-112) that his theory could be nothing else. Teilhard insisted that God can be defined only as a "Center of centers" (Human Energy, 168), and Smith points out (116) that "after all, a center (whether of centers or of anything else) cannot be conceived apart from the system whose center it is."

It is illuminating to hear from Wolfgang Smith the physicist what is wrong with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's notion of matter, and to hear from Wolfgang Smith the mathematician what is wrong with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's notion of the Omega Point and how Teilhard cleverly but falsely shifted the axis of spiritual contemplation from the 'above' to the 'ahead' (70). We go on to discover that for Teilhard, not only does God, the "center of convergence of cosmogenesis," metamorphize the world, but the world also inevitably and to the same degree "endomorphizes" God. "At this point the Teilhardian God ceased to be simply 'the Evolver,' and became at least in part a product or resultant of the evolutive process" (107). Ultimately, for Teilhard, "it is Christ who is saved by Evolution" (118, quoting The Heart of the Matter, 92). Deep down, Teilhard's faith was only in this world: "If as a result of some interior revolution, I were to lose in succession my faith in Christ, my faith in a personal God, and my faith in spirit, I feel that I should continue to believe invincibly in the world. The world (its value, its infallibility and its goodness) - that, when all is said and done, is the first, the last, and the only thing in which I believe" (Smith, 129, quoting Christianity and Evolution, 99).

Teilhard's supposedly scientific evolutionary synthesis reduces to a shambles under Smith's penetrating analysis, but what comes out even more graphically is the personal tragedy of Teilhard de Chardin himself. This religious priest deluded himself into thinking that Evolution could replace authentic Christianity. We learn from Smith's presentation that de Chardin believed totally in the world and totally in the evolution of the world as the one absolute fact and reality. For Teilhard, Adam and Eve are just unhistorical "images of mankind pressing on towards God" and "the idea of the Fall is no more than an attempt to explain evil in a fixed universe" (138). He tried to eliminate the historical reality of Original Sin by imagining it to be "a survival of obsolete static views" in the presence of "our new evolutionary way of thinking." In his evaluation, Original Sin "clips the wings of hope" and "drags us back inexorably into the overpowering darkness of reparation and expiation" (Smith, 138, quoting Christianity and Evolution, 70-80). In saying this, Teilhard was actually taking away hope in the merits of Christ and refusing the work of reparation and expiation.

So by his Omega Point did Teilhard exclude the task of striving upwards towards God and Heaven. He rejected the Christian concept of Revelation (120) and denied that the Incarnation and the Redemption are historical facts (123). He superficially excluded the reality of evil spirits and yet, with a not untypical inconsistency, claimed that even "evil spiritual powers" are the "living instruments" of Christ (184-185).

Evil spirits are, or course, either Satan himself or the living instruments of Satan, who tempt men with the forbidden fruit of sin. Teilhard was not immune to their trickery. He found access to nuclear energy to be "overwhelming and intoxicating" and the key to the ultimate forces of life: "In exploding the atom we took our first bite at the fruit of the great discovery, and this was enough for a taste to enter our mouths that can never be washed away" (194, quoting The Future of Mankind, 149-151). Again he speaks of scientific discovery as "the divine taste of its fruit" (163, quoting Human Energy, 165). Teilhard seems to have forgotten entirely the elevating force of love for God; he tells us that love, "which I understand here in the strict sense of 'passion,' ... is nevertheless well known to be the inspirer of genius, the arts and all poetry" (170, quoting Human Energy, 129).

Teilhard deified evolution and turned it into a religious cult (219) wherein there was no place for humility or detachment (221). Even the spirituality of the saints was offensive to him: "For the neo-humanists we all are now, this soon produces an atmosphere which we find unbreathable, and it must be changed" (224, quoting Christianity and Evolution, 217). He proclaimed instead that "a religion of the earth is being mobilized against the religion of heaven" (208, quoting Science and Christ, 120). In a letter to Léontine Zanta he wrote: "As you already know, what dominates my interest and my preoccupations is the effort to establish in myself and to spread around a new religion (you may call it a better Christianity) in which the personal God ceases to be the great neolithic proprietor of former times, in order to become the soul of the world; our religious and cultural stage calls for this" (210, quoting Lettres à Léontine Zanta, 127).

Perhaps this final quotation tells everything about the life of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the system of thought he propounded. Dr. Smith (229-230) describes a "Faustian experience" that Teilhard seems to have undergone in the early years of his priesthood and which he presented in an essay entitled "The Spiritual Power of Matter." In the experience he meets a superhuman being, "equivocal, turbid, the combined essence of all evil and all goodness," who says to him: "Now I am established on you for life or for death. ... He who has once seen me can never forget me: he must either damn himself with me or save me with himself." Teilhard seems to have told us that he, unfortunately, opened his heart and his destiny to this daemon (The Heart of the Matter, 68).

The tragedy of Teilhard de Chardin extends also, of course, to the wider circle of his followers and admirers within and without the Church, who, in the words of Walter Kasper (Jesus the Christ, 17-18), have felt that he offered in our own century "a particularly inspired version" of the Logos approach to Christology. But who or what inspired the work of Teilhard de Chardin? As Smith points out (119-120), Teilhard had entirely rejected the New Testament Logos in favor of "the neo-Logos of modern philosophy - the evolutive principle of a universe in movement" (Christianity and Evolution, 180-181). Teilhard the scientist turned out to be a brazen deceiver, as is most clearly exemplified in the hoax of the Piltdown Man, which he helped to perpetrate. Teilhard the theologian opened his mind to an inviting anti-theology which presented (he thought) the key to life, not in the Holy Spirit, "the Lord and Giver of life" (Nicene Creed), but in the secrets of matter and of nuclear energy. Teilhard the artist unfolded the poetry of his imaginary cosmos ostensibly under the inspiration of erotic love, as he himself implicitly declares where he says that passion is "the inspirer of genius, the arts and all poetry" (Human Energy, 129). Then the Holy Spirit did not inspire him, and his followers could keep this in mind as they reflect on his ideas.

Renowned pursuer of a scholarly illusion,
He embraced this sinful world with passion and confusion,
Exchanged the facts of faith for a fancy microscopic,
And conceived a cosmic daydream that evolved into its topic.

Such could be a fitting epitaph on the life and work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a writer, (a priest, a religious), the founder of a new religion.

together in the Faith of Christ

Ray