Teleological Determinism:  A Blasphemous Crime Against Humanity

by Dr. Robert D. Crane    

  “Global Judaism as a next stage in the evolution of human consciousness.”  This is the heading of part of a course announced on July 10, 2006, at Bait Tikkun in California by Rabbi Michael Lerner, who is one of the leading intellectuals and spiritual guides in the world today. 

  This heading would seem to suggest the influence of teleological determinism, which consists in the human dream of usurping control from God over the future.  This basic premise of all modern utopian movements is best articulated by Shariati for Muslims and Teilhard de Chardin for Christians.  Both of them have had compassionate intentions in response to the cruelties of the polytheism known among its Neo-Con supporters as democratic capitalism.  The common basic premise of De Chardin, Shari’ati, and Lerner, however, will backfire because it threatens to replace the worship of God as the ultimate with the worship of man who is to become god. 

  This seminal premise is part of a polytheistic syndrome from which many others inevitably emerge, both utopian and catastrophist.  Together they produce such monstrosities as Communism in Russia, Political Zionism and Nazism in Germany, and Neo-Conservatism in America. 

  Polytheisms by definition constitute the worship, either consciously or unconsciously, of anything other than God as the ultimate.  In Islamic terminology they are known as shirk al khafi or hidden polytheism.  They are particularly dangerous precisely because they are hidden.  More than a hundred can be identified as premises of twentieth century thought.  They can be grouped into as few as seven discrete categories, one of which is teleological determinism.  All of them at their root are secular in nature, though their supporters might vehemently deny this fact. 

  All manifestations of teleological determinism that vest power in man to control his own destiny constitute or at least lead to demonic perversions of both natural law and divine revelation.  They all bring retribution that affects both the guilty and the innocent alike.  This is why such polytheisms, despite the good intentions of their perpetrators, are not merely blasphemous but crimes against humanity.