Darwinism and the Religion of Scientific Materialism
By Linda Kimball (02/13/06)
Enrico Ferri (1856-1926), a prominent socialist of his day, was an Italian criminologist who for many years was the editor of Avanti, a socialist daily. Writing in “Socialism and Religious Beliefs,” he spoke of the all-important connection between Darwin’s theory and socialism: “I add that not only is Darwinism not contrary to socialism, but that it forms one of its fundamental scientific premises. As Virchow justly remarked, socialism is nothing else than the logical and vital outcome partly of Darwinism and partly of Spencerian evolution.” ( http://www.marxists.org/archive/ferri/1894/religion.htm )
Enrico frankly discussed how and why Darwinian socialism serves as an alternate religion: “socialism is joined to religious evolution and tends to substitute itself for religion because it desires precisely that humanity should have…its own ‘terrestrial paradise’ without having to wait for it in a ‘something beyond’…the socialist movement has numerous characteristics common…to primitive Christianity, notably its ardent faith in the ideal.” (ibid)
To wit: Darwinian socialism (Marx’s dialectical scientific materialism) is a secularized and distorted mirror image of the Christian teaching of divine providence. In as the Biblical model teaches that man and history are moving towards the Kingdom of God, scientific materialism preaches that man and history are evolving toward a terrestrial paradise created by Promethean humanists. The notion that both history and man are evolving upward through successive stages is what British philosopher Mary Midgley termed the “Escalator Myth.”
When speaking of scientific materialism’s creation account, Ferri candidly admitted: “modern positive science…has substituted the conception of natural causality for the conception of miracles and divinity.” (ibid) In other words, scientific materialists have reduced the personal Creator of the universe to the level of an impersonal animating force. It’s this ‘force’ into which Promethean materialists tap, thus using it as the source of both their power and authority.
David Horowitz had this to say about scientific materialism’s theology and creation account: “The victorious radicals had proclaimed a theology of Reason in which equality of condition was the natural and true order of creation. In their Genesis, the loss of equality was the ultimate source of mankind’s’ suffering and evil…The ownership of private property became a secular version of original sin. Redemption…was possible only through the Revolution that would abolish property and open the gates to the Socialist Eden---to paradise regained.” (“The Politics of Bad Faith” www.discoverthenetwork.com)
In the Promethean project, everything from the cosmos to all living things, culture, customs, etc. are subject to evolution. The cosmos, or ‘supreme being’ is alive and in a constant state of transformative change. In speaking of the cosmos, Lenin used explicitly religious terminology: “We may regard the material and cosmic world as the supreme being, as the cause of all causes, as the creator of heaven and earth.” (Vladimir Lenin as quoted in Francis Nigel Lee “Communism versus Creation,” pg. 28)
Even the convoluted double-speak so peculiar to the Left is itself founded upon the notion of evolution, which no doubt explains why truth is a stranger to them. Dialectics (or more correctly: speaking in tongues) is what they call their snake-oil rhetoric. In Trotsky’s words: “Vulgar thought operates with such concepts as capitalism, morals, freedom…etc. Dialectic thinking analyses all things and phenomena in their continuous change. Dialectics…teaches us to combine syllogisms in such a way as to bring our understanding closer to eternally changing reality.” (The ABC of Dialectics, Leon Trotsky, www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky)
As double-speak indicates a need for secrecy, it comes as no surprise that dialectical materialism is likewise a hotbed of Gnosticism. Christian Gnostics were people who, when they read Scripture, claimed an ability to receive ‘secret’ knowledge from it, knowable only to them. Hence, they were practitioners of ‘divination.’ Modern Gnostics on our USSC have claimed to receive secret knowledge through ‘auras, penumbras, and emanations” during their readings of our Constitution. Gnosticism, for obvious reasons, has a history of attracting megalomaniacs in search of secret knowledge to use as power over others. Frederick Engel’s reveals that dialectical materialism is rooted in Gnosticism when he says: “An exact representation of the universe, of its evolution, of the development of mankind, and of the reflection of this evolution in the minds of men, can…only be obtained by the methods of dialectics.” (The Making of Utopian Socialism,” Frederick Engel’s, www.marxists.org)
In the theology of scientific materialism, Judgment Day is the Day of Revolution. This is the day of redemption when, in the name of ‘Absolute Science! Amen!” the evil bourgeoisie (Conservatives, Christians, white males, all heterosexuals, George Bush, Rumsfeld, etc) will be damned. Likewise, all evil social institutions such as private property, traditional family, absolute moral laws, the Boy Scouts, Christianity, the concept of sin, and man’s created condition as either male or female will be demolished, thus allowing equality of condition to prevail. This is what the Left means when it rhapsodizes about ‘peace.’
In a brutal, but much deserved condemnation of Marx’s dialectical materialism, David Horowitz wrote: “In every revolutionary battle in this century, the Left has been a vanguard without a viable future to offer, whose only purpose was to destroy whatever civilization actually existed. Consider: If no one had believed Marx’s idea, there would have been no Bolshevik Revolution…Hitler would not have come to power; there would have been no cold war.” (The Politics of Bad Faith) Additionally, more than one-hundred million people would not have been slaughtered.
By the turn of the century, Marx’s idea (the religion of scientific materialism) had crossed the Atlantic where it then began to metastasize in America. It was not long before it began to bear rotten fruit. By 1932, William Z. Foster, head of the Communist Party USA stated: “Class ideologies…will give place to scientific materialist philosophy…the American Soviet government will…further the cultural revolution (by doing) the following: schools, colleges, universities will be coordinated…under the National Department of Education…studies will be revolutionized…cleansed of religious, patriotic…ideology…students will be taught…Marxian dialectical materialism; general ethics of the new socialist society. Science will become materialistic…God will be banished from laboratories as well as from schools.” (‘Toward Soviet America,” by William Z. Foster, 1932)
So now its America’s turn to be sacrificed upon the altar of Promethean narcissism, for having learned nothing from his corpse-littered past, bloody-handed Prometheus continues to doggedly pursue his fantasy of a terrestrial paradise—in the name of ‘Absolute Science! Amen!”
Copyright 2006 Linda Kimball
http://lindakimball.com/
Additional source: “How Now Shall We Live?” by Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcy
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