The Chardin Collective

“We may, perhaps, imagine that the creation was finished long ago. But that would be quite wrong. It continues still more magnificently, and at the highest levels of the world.” – Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The Chardin Collective was established in 2024, as a creative research initiative aimed at exploring contemporary issues within ongoing creation-evolution dialogue, aiming to offer a critical, comprehensive, and faithful perspective that goes beyond the simple “science-vs-religion” outlook often adopted in the arena. We recognized a gap in existing resources on young-Earth creationism: many of them were superficial, biased towards specific philosophical paradigms like naturalism, or archaic monuments to past debates, posing significant challenges for contemporary use. We saw a need that would require an ambitious response and decided to make solving it our primary endeavor, with the aim of building a structure that might eventually serve as a go-to resource for those interested in this debate.

A Word on our Namesake

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was a French Catholic priest, Jesuit, theologian, scientist, and philosopher who spent the majority of his life working to integrate faith and science, particularly through his reflections on evolution. Specializing as a paleontologist, he participated in several significant fossil discoveries, most notably the excavation and classification of Peking Man, the exceptionally well-preserved remains of a subspecies of Homo erectus in China. His paleontological work heavily influenced his theological vision, which grew to aim singularly at reconciling the traditional Catholic theology of Creation with the insights of evolutionary biology that emerged during his lifetime.

At the heart of Chardin’s outlook was the belief that evolution is not merely a biological process, but reflective of a cosmic and spiritual process whereby God created the universe and draws it into greater complexity, consciousness, and unity in Christ. He developed a model of this convergence known as “The Omega Point”, representing the culmination of evolution as the means by which God brings all creation into deeper communion with himself – the fulfillment of His purpose in creating the world and the creatures that inhabit it. These ideas were articulated in his most influential works, The Phenomenon of Man and The Divine Milieu, emphasizing the idea that human beings were not separate from nature, but were an integral part of its evolutionary journey tasked with a special role in understanding the universe and helping to shape it in God’s image. For Chardin, the human vocation was to collaborate with the divine by bringing the potential of the goodness that could be out of the realm of potential, and actualizing it as part of the ongoing process of creation, elevating the physical sciences and the spiritual walk of the Christian faith to heights that justly emphasized their importance.

Chardin and the Chardin Collective

The Chardin Collective draws deeply from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s ability to bridge that gap between scientific and theological exploration/reflection. Like Chardin, the Collective seeks to affirm the compatibility of evolution and the Catholic faith, encouraging faithful yet critical analysis of models – like young-Earth creationism – that reject mainstream scientific understandings of the natural world. By examining young-Earth creationism through charitable dialogue, we want to uphold an open dignity of both faith and reason, promoting a vision of collaboration and harmony rather than conflict. We aim to embody Chardin’s unique outlook by engaging in dialogue and analysis that honors both the scientific and theological dimensions of creation. This includes:

• Critical Inquiry – Chardin was unafraid to ask difficult questions and revise assumptions. The Collective mirrors this by critically evaluating young-Earth models, and faithfully holding their advocates accountable to open questions.

• Integration of Knowledge – In the same manner that Chardin sought to integrate his insights into the paleontological and biological worlds with his faith, the Collective aims to synthesize a robust model of evolutionary creation that does not compromise on scientific or theological realities.

• Faithful Witness – Chardin’s life demonstrates a commitment to complete obedience and faithfulness to the Church while exploring new intellectual horizons. The Collective shares this commitment – while we are not an apostolate or apologetics ministry by any means, we strive to present an approach to creation that is faithful to Catholic tradition while addressing contemporary scientific, theological, and cultural questions.

What are we up to? Current projects (updated March 2025)

One of the reasons we call ourselves a “collective”, other than the fact that we are very open to collaboration and submissions from anyone looking to help our work, is that we serve as a type of central hub for a number of projects that have enough content to honestly be considered independent sites. All of these projects are housed under the Chardin Collective to make their content more accessible and streamlined. These include:

• ORIGINAL RESEARCH – Research papers that focus on specific issues in the creation/evolution sphere, contributed by our members and readers.

• THE CREATION COLLECTANEA – An ambitious and massive index that seeks to respond to all claims raised by young-Earth models that do not reflect scientific or theological accuracy.

• PALEODRAGONOLOGY – A creative index that takes a deep-dive into the claims of young-Earth advocates regarding late surviving dinosaurs, human encounters with them, and the idea that human-dinosaur interactions serve as the basis for dragon mythology.

• THE SHADOW – A project that looks at various “bad actors” in young-Earth creationism (such as Kent Hovind, Carl Baugh, etc.) that give it a worse name that it might otherwise have, and analyzes their actions as separate from more mainstream young-Earth advocates.

• CREATIONISM ACROSS AMERICA – While many people think Ken Ham owns the only Creation Museum in the country, it turns out the U.S. is peppered with them! CAA is the place to find detailed catalogs and video tours of over 20 of the most popular creation museums (once we’re able to visit them all).

• CURATED BOOKSTORE – A list of recommended reading regarding origins discussions, updated monthly. We are also currently working on a library of creation-science books separated by subject for our young-Earth readers and those who want to know more about creation-science issues from the source.

• A.I. INTEGRATION – As the content on the Collective accumulates, we plan to plug it all into a ChatGPT-4o based LLM to make accessing the information we provide across our various projects as streamlined and efficient as possible.

By building these projects from the ground up over the next several years, we hope to address a broad spectrum of issues related to the creation/evolution controversy in a spirit of faithful communication, academic rigor, and public education. Our primary goal, above all else, is to democratize expertise in creation/evolution issues, whether your learning style is reading our written content, using our YouTube video library, or using our eventual creation/evolution-LLM.