[Humans evolved to see designed order.  We perceive spontaneous orders “as if they were designed”.   We intuitively see instrumental causes and formal elements in nature as well as culture.

If you think about it, the act of “seeing design” gives us the illusion that we are observers of some subject, rather than subjects in some objective situation.  In terms of the nested form, “design” puts the situation of “us seeing” into context – and – “us seeing” situates “what we observe, that is, the subject”:

Design₃( us seeing₂( what we observe₁))

Instrumental causes & formal elements₃( us observing₂( the subject₁))

We innately view our world through the lens of design.  When we observe any actuality that slips back into the realm of possibility, we see failure.  We call these failures “evil”.

We look at the spontaneous orders of biology and observe metaphysical (failure based on limitations) and physical (challenges that lead to failure) evil.

Here “evil”, like the word “sin”, has the connotation of “missing the mark (that is, failing with respect to the point of the design)”.]

Summary of text [comment] page 45

[So why call failures in a spontaneous order “evil”?

What is evil about a system that comes into being on the basis of trying out combinations based on simple rules?

Each combination – configuration – is a formal trial within the order.  The longevity of any particular combination rests on instrumental causes and formal elements as well as the challenges that arise from the creature’s situation.

The failure of any type of configuration registers as a limitation, a failure of a formal element. Each success registers as a success of a formal element.

Every spontaneous order is anti-entropic.  It requires the expenditure of more energy than is retained by the system.  Every spontaneous order adapts to its circumstances more readily that any designed order.  Every spontaneous order accepts failure as part of itself….

…which is precisely what we do not do.  We do not accept “failure”.  We designate it as “evil”.  Why?]

[In each one of us, God designed “something that could be better” and “something that has worked before and will keep on working”, that is: virtue and freedom.

Animals never worry about these issues.  They do not know any better.  They simply participate in a spontaneous order and do not worry about it.   Doesn’t that sound like a parable?]

Summary of text [comment] page 45

[We are preserved, somehow, by the element that draws God to create each one of us: love.

God will judge, savor and love me in my exercise of freedom.  That exercise starts once I stop worrying about my continued existence, that is, my preservation.  That exercise starts the moment I take up my cross; that is, become responsible.]

Summary of text [comment] page 45

[At this point, we have encountered three resonant movements in widely separated passages: the cessation of God Recognizing Himself, the death of the spontaneous order in which we are embedded, and the eclipse of think^divine.

The movements all describe horrific evil, where actuality₂ ceases to emerge from the realm of possibility₁.  All describe a supernatural evil beyond the goods and evils of nature.  All describe the ultimate limitation.

Attaching this afterthought to the end of the Lord’s Prayer makes the prayer a work of monstrous, sublime beauty.  The poetic light of de Chardin pales in comparison to the theatrical fireworks of the Lord’s Prayer.

Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts.  Let us forgive the debts of others.  Um … what else? … oh, I know:

Deliver us from the cessation of You Recognizing Yourself, the complete annihilation of my society, and the total and utter loss of sanity.]

Summary of text [comment] page 45

[God will not even allow us this assurance, in the present, after the Fall.]

Summary of text [comment] page 45

[The presence of statistical variation (which de Chardin, for all practical purposes, used to explain the necessity of natural evil) means that we have another worry.

When we will slip from the realm of actuality to possibility, will the context remain true?

Consider our prayers:

First, we may ask God to “preserve us” (and suppress the obvious consequences that, if God were to preserve me, then more and more energy would be devoted to maintaining “me” and less and less energy would be available for other trials, thereby undermining the spontaneous order).

Second, we may ask God to “design something better” (that is, to “alter the rules of the game in our favor”, and suppress the obvious consequences of biased selection in a spontaneous order).

Third, we may ask God to “deliver us from evil”.

Now, this one is in the Lord’s Prayer, so I better not dismiss it.

The phrase “deliver us from evil” is placed after a very practical list. It comes almost as an afterthought.]

[Both nature (spontaneous order) and human efforts (designed order), will alter the formal elements in order to adapt to recurring (statistically frequent) instrumental failures.

Applying this to the realm of freedom and morality, (that is, the realm of virtue and sin, or perhaps, I should say, the realm of culture and designed orders) I sense that the challenge of evil (perceived as the occurrence of failure through instrumental causes or formal requirements, which are statistical) induces us to feel that we should change formal designs to prevent particular failures.

The statistical character of evil pushes us to become either control freaks, always designing a better system, or reactionaries, clinging to what works in a stubborn effort to keep everything intact.

Here, we encounter a “demand on God” that resembles the previously discussed “demand that God preserve us”.

In this demand, we fail to acknowledge that we are beings in a spontaneous order and, if God did literally preserve our homeostasis, metabolism and definition, other aspects of the spontaneous order would suffer.

In short, we ask for a cure.  We ask God to remove failure (evil) by intervention (instrumentally) or decree (formally).]

Summary of text [comment] page 45

I now return to page 45, where Schoonenberg accepts that “evil is a statistical necessity” for God’s creation and wonders whether it applies to the realm of freedom and morality, that is, to us.

[There are two types of statistical necessity.

One relates to instrumental causes.  Instrumental (dyadic) causea and effects build situations₂, such as those found in de Chardin’s interscoping nested forms.  Consider the workings of homeostasis₂, metabolism₂, and definition₂.

Statistical chances of instrumental failure account for why we slip from actuality back into possibility, through illness, poisoning and violence.

The other relates to formal requirements.  These explain our particular designs. Consider the designs of homeostasis₂, metabolism₂ and definition₂.

Often, we slip from actuality back into possibility with respect to some level of the interscoping forms because our particular design could endure only a certain statistical range of challenges.  Each one of us exhibits a slightly different design with its corresponding vulnerabilities.

Both types of failure are familiar to us.  These statistical necessities appear in the production and maintenance of all designed forms.]

[What did de Chardin see as our illusion?

We long to be above the participation.  We long to be like God.

Consider those who have arranged that they never slip back into Nothingness.  Consider Lenin and now, Chavez.  Their plasticized remains are on display for all to see.  They are preserved as demonic apparitions beneath glass facades.

Compare them to the famous Christian relics, which are preserved in equally beautiful, sublime and scary apparatuses.  The saints did not ask to be so preserved.  In a way, their admirers preserved their bodies against the wishes of the saints.

Relics are icons of a “remembering”.  They are our way of asking God to not forget this moment, or that moment, when the spontaneous order held this person of great gravity and intensity.

We cannot imagine that this moment, every moment, is God Recognizing Himself.   Even though we physically return to Nothingness, something remains.

God remains.]