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Friday, December 10, 2010

The Enlightenment and the cult of 'Scientism'.

Replacing reason with 'Faith' in the cult.

by StFerdIII

 



The Enlightenment supposedly dethroned the religious occult and ushered in an era of 'rationality' and 'progress'. None of this is really true of course. Modern science, innovation, technological application and political-economic improvements had already been on a long and extraordinarily interesting 1000-year journey before the 'Rational Enlightenment' declared itself. The main thrust of this era, purveyed by its self-interested, and self-declared 'geniuses', was to divorce religion and superstition from the pursuit of truth and liberty. In that vein the 'intellectuals' of the Enlightenment had to declaim against the medieval world, inventing the nonsense that it was a 'dark age'. This is also certainly a myth. It was the Enlightenment after all that birthed witch hunts, the Inquisition, secularism and which hypocritically justified and supported 'enlightened' despots, divine right rule, and the sordid Communism of the French Revolution which resulted in Napoleon, who in many ways, was a precursor of Hitler. The 'Rational epoch' also brought back slavery which was outlawed in Christian Europe circa 800 AD and which resulted in the transhipment of 9.5 million Blacks to Brazil, Ecuador and the West Indies, and some 500.000 to the USA. None of this was 'Enlightened', nor can any of it be blamed on Church occultism.

The danger with 'Scientism' as elucidated by the Enlightenment non-thinkers as I prefer to call them, was aptly stated in 1977 by Italian historian, Augusto di Noce who wrote that the scientific management of society would result in a totalitarianism. Noce called it, 'a war against all forms of knowing that are not deemed as scientific'. Science and reason would thus become instruments of ideology protected by privileged power-bearers. The irony is obvious. The Enlightenment, which supposedly was a revolt against the superstition and power of the church, is directly responsible for establishing what it was attacking – a cult managed by an elite who would enforce 'the right way of thinking and believing.'

Far from defending the Christian ideals of natural law rights, reason, rational debate and a belief that the human was unique and thus had a singular responsibility to improve this world and live by normative moral constructs and objective reason, the Enlightenment went in the opposite direction. Utilitarianism, or personal pleasure with no restrictions became popular [Rousseau, Bentham]. The creation of the perfect Utopian society, inhabited by the 'perfect man' became another common obsession [Saint Simon, Owen], which created a deranged focus on using state power to 'mold' children, people and the average citizen to do what 'was in the best interests of society'. Education, the media, and governmental power would thus coercively reform the individual so they could participate in a rational society of perfection.

Following this 'rationalist approach' socialism, communism and Marxism developed 'scientific' approaches to managing and understanding the political-economy. Hegelianism, Marxism, dialectical materialism, stage theory, class warfare and declarations of how the world really worked, rallied around this supposedly 'scientific' theory of world affairs. None of it was rational. Certainly very little of it was intelligent. By denying the long history of Christianity and the important role that faith plays in reason, the Enlightenment opened up a vacuum into which any swaggering theory of power with clarity and 'science' attached to it would enter. The effects have been shattering.

Much of the derivative from Enlightenment thought was simply gibberish laced with virulent racist strains of anti-Semiticism and profoundly inane anti-Christian bigotry. None of the Enlightenment's geniuses did any real research in the Medieval world of course, nor did they understand the thousands of inventions within the political-economic and social spheres which were developed over from 500 to 1500 AD and which made the 17th century so reasonably comfortable to live in, compared to previous epochs. The irrationality and hubris of these men is rather astounding. It would be as if today, some 'genius' declared that the era between 1500 and 1900 was a 'Dark Age' full of nothing but pain, superstition, occultism, illiteracy, dirt, darkness and ignorance. This is what occurred during the 17th century. All eras previous to this were simply branded 'backwards'. How occultist and how bigoted.

Noce's 1977 declaration is thus prescient, but also quite obvious when viewing Western development in the 18th and 19th centuries. If an era dethrones man from his central place in the cosmos, and violently attacks faith as 'irrational', and scorns any expression of non-scientific belief, than surely a new cult is being thrust onto society to replace the old order and the target of vituperative hate. Why wouldn't 'science and rationality' be used for political and power-mongering ends? The great expansion of state power in the past 110 years is a testimony to the fact that the state has replaced Judeo-Christian culture as the cult of power. Every single Marxist, Socialist or Fascist obsession has always been supported by 'reasoned and impartial scientific opinion and facts'. When such 'facts' are analyzed we of course find the opposite. The rational and objective study of data rarely if ever supports the drivel that the lovers of state power are issuing forth as propaganda, parading in the disguise of impartiality.

Hitlerism was premised on Marxist and Socialist dialecticism, encased in pagan Norse and Teutonic theology and racism. The Nazis always used 'facts' to push forward their occultist ideas and the communalisation of German life. They also engaged in dialectical stage theory making it appear that Nazi Marxism was the inevitable next step for German 'greatness'. By 1939 the Nazis controlled some 80% of the German economy and 100% of German politics. Each step of this national-socialization was buttressed by supposed rational and factual presentations.

The same was true of Russian Fascism or Communism. Tortured Leninist-Stalinist 'facts' were issued to the Russian population to support the takeover of the Russian political-economy by the Bolshevik cult. Stage theory inevitability, the collapse of Capitalism, the inexorable takeover of production by the proletariat, and the certainty of world revolution, were displayed as rational facts supported by the scientism of Communist theology. God was thus supplanted by Lenin – the great genius of scientific socialism.

We see the same nonsense in Eco-Fascism. Globaloney theories which are nothing else other than lies, are strenuously declared by the cult, to be facts. The 'facts' of GlobaloneyWarming include lost data sets, corrupt databases, algorithms which produce the 'right' answer, selective temperature readings, the ignoring of inconvenient variables such as El Nino or Solar flares, or past epochs which had far colder temperatures and lower Co2 output; and the rewriting history so the Medieval Little Ice age simply disappears. This is then repackaged as 'settled science' and any who deign to enquire or investigate are attacked with a viciousness which is simply and ironically medieval in its ruthlessness, totality and intolerance.

Progressives and Leftards pride themselves on being the most rational, compassionate and irreligious of people. Thus secularist socialism and statism, is now conflated with 'being smart'. All religious people – excepting Muslims of course – are thus demonized as 'dumb' and irrational. Ergo any ideology or movement that is not part of this progressive 'scientism', must be demolished – with the exception of Islam which is itself a political cult of power and gross intolerance.

But isn't it ironic that these same people – the progressive secular socialist and Marxist -- use religious fervour and pre-modern techniques to silence their critics and propagandize their cult? Progressive socialists and statists become delirious in their denunciations of Church intolerance, its supposed [and very mythical] animus to capital formation and reason, the Inquisition, or Witch burnings [the last two happened in the 'Enlightenment' period which further confuses the Leftards]. But they make the same declarations against anyone opposing state power, Marxism, Islam, or Globaloney Warming. Ironically therefore, the modern socialist has become the intolerant, irrational, cult member that the Enlightenment tried to eradicate!

Further we can ask this. Isn't science and elevating reason above all else just a form of totalitarianism ? Isn't the God of Science as much an act of faith as the God Yahweh or the Trinity of Christ ? Science can't explain everything. Everyone must surely know this. And surely most intelligent people know that science arose out of the Christian and Judaic ideal of reason and rationality. How then can 'scientism' be reasonable when the very foundations of that rationality have been removed? These are questions that the secular Marxists would never even bother to contemplate, further confirming the analysis that scientism is little more than a cult.