original Italian text by by Giorgio Agamben
translated for The Saker Blog by Gulab Bara
posted by permission of the author
original article here: https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-la-medicina-come-religione
It is now plainly evident that science has become the religion of our times, the one that humans believe they believe in. In the modern west, three great systems of faith have coexisted, and to some extent continue to coexist—Christianity, capitalism, and science. In the history of modernity, these three “religions” have intersected a number of times, occasionally coming into conflict before reconciling in one way or another, gradually finding a kind of peaceable and sensible coexistence, if not a real and proper alliance in the name of common interest.
What is new is, that without us noticing, an underlying and implacable conflict has been reignited between science and the other two religions. The victorious outcomes of this conflict for science are today right under our eyes and noses, conditioning every aspect of our existence in unprecedented fashion. Unlike previous conflicts, this one does not concern theory and general principles, but rather religious practice, so to speak. In fact, like every religion, science organizes itself in different forms and levels to establish a structured order. At the theoretical level, science features a subtle and rigorous dogma, while at the practical level there is a corresponding religious sphere that is extremely broad and detailed. This sphere coincides with what we call “technology.”
It is unsurprising that the central role in this new religious war is played by medicine, a field of science that is relatively undogmatic and strongly pragmatic, concerned directly with the living body of human beings. Let’s try to define the essential characteristics of this triumphant religious faith, with which we must increasingly come to terms.
- The first characteristic is that medicine, like capitalism, has no need of any special dogma; it limits itself to borrowing its fundamental concepts from biology. Unlike biology, however, it organizes these concepts in a gnostic-manichean sense, i.e., in accordance with an exaggerated dualistic opposition. There exists an “evil” power or principle, which is disease, whose specific agents are bacteria and viruses. At the same time, there exists a “good” force or principle. But this opposing principle is not health, but rather healing, delivered by doctors through medical treatment. As in every gnostic faith, the two principles are clearly separate, but in the real world they can contaminate each other. The power of good, or a doctor that wields that power, can make mistakes and conspire unwittingly with the enemy, without invalidating the dualism and the necessity of the religious practice by means of which the principle of good battles that of evil. Significantly, the “theologians” that are defining the battle strategy are the representatives of a branch of science, virology, that does not occupy a clear space of its own, instead sitting at the boundary between biology and medicine.
- Up to now, the religious practice of medicine has been episodic and of limited duration, like other forms of religious worship, but unexpectedly the current phenomenon has become permanent and omnipresent. It is no longer just a matter of taking some medication or undergoing a medical examination or surgical procedure whenever necessary. Our whole lives must become the objects of an uninterrupted religious observance. The enemy, the virus, is ever-present. It must be combated incessantly, without any prospect of a ceasefire. Although similar totalitarian tendencies have marked the Christian religion, these affected limited individuals, most notably monks who opted to devote their whole lives to prayer. The religion of medicine takes this Pauline principle and completely inverts it, however. Whereas monks would assemble to pray in their monasteries, our new religion must be practiced apart, at a distance, though just as earnestly.
- Religious practice is no longer voluntary, subject solely to sanctions of a spiritual nature. It must be rendered obligatory by laws and decrees. The collusion between religion and secular power is nothing new, of course. What is totally new, though, is the exclusive concern with the observance of religious practice rather than the profession of dogmas, as was the case with Christian heretics. The secular power must be vigilant to ensure that the religion of medicine, at this point in time a lifelong faith, is promptly observed in every detail. It is immediately evident that we are dealing with a religious practice and not a scientific, rational need. The most frequent cause of death in this country by far is cardiovascular disease. It is well known that its mortality can be easily reduced by healthier living and eating. Yet, no doctor ever considered it necessary to resort to legal measures to compel patients to follow a prescribed lifestyle and diet, to decree what people eat and how they should live, transforming the whole of existence into a set of mandatory healthcare requirements. But it is precisely this that has been done, and at least for now, people have accepted it, as if it were an obvious thing to renounce one’s freedom of movement, work, friendships, loves, social relations, religious faith, and political creeds.
Here, we see how the other great religions of the west, the religion of Christ and the religion of money, have ceded their supremacy to medicine and science, seemingly without resistance. The Catholic Church has disavowed its principles, pure and simple, forgetting that the saint from which the current pontiff takes his name embraced lepers, that an essential element of compassion is to minister to the sick, and that the holy sacraments can only be administered in person. For its part, capitalism, even if with some reluctance, has accepted previously unimaginable losses of productivity, likely hoping to eventually find some accord with the new dominant religion, which seems open to some compromise on this point. XXX
- The religion of medicine appears to have unreservedly taken over the function of eschatology, a field of theology that Christianity abandoned long ago. Capitalism had already secularized the theological paradigm of salvation to eliminate the idea of “end time,” substituting it with a permanent state of crisis, without redemption or end. The concept of “crisis” originates with medicine. In the Hippocratic Corpus, krisis indicated the moment when the physician decided if the patient would survive the illness. Theologians later appropriated the term to refer to the Final Judgement on the final day of the world. Reflecting on the extraordinary situation we now face, we might conclude that the medical religion has merged the perpetual crisis of capitalism with the Christian idea of end time. The result is a sense of apocalypse and an unremitting urgency to make extreme decisions. The end is hastened and deferred in turns, in an unrelenting attempt to manage the crisis, without ever resolving it once and for all. It is the religion of a world that feels that it is nearing the end, yet that remains incapable, like the Hippocratic physician, of deciding if it will survive or die.
- Like capitalism (but unlike Christianity), the religion of medicine offers no prospect of salvation or redemption. In contrast, the healing at which it aims can only ever be temporary, since the force of evil, the virus, can never be completely eliminated. It mutates continually, assuming new forms, ever more risky it is presumed. As its etymology suggests, “epidemic” is above all a political concept (in Greek demos means people or population; polemos epidemios in Homer refers to civil war), which fits with the fact that it has become the new landscape of global politics, or perhaps “non-politics.” Indeed, the current epidemic may represent that global civil war that some astute political scientists have claimed has taken the place of traditional world wars. Are all the nations and peoples of the world in a protracted war with themselves, because the invisible and elusive enemy they are grappling with lies within them?
Just as at other critical junctures in history, philosophers will need to engage in debate and dispute with religion; this time not with Christianity, but rather with science, or at least that part of it that has assumed the guise of a religion. I’m not sure if we will see a return to the burning and blacklisting, but as already evident, the views of those who seek the truth and refuse to accept the dominant fictions will undoubtedly be excluded from public discourse, or met with accusations of purveying fake news (news, not ideas, because news is more important than reality). As in every emergency, real or simulated, the ignorant will smear the sages and scoundrels will seek to profit from the misfortunes that they themselves have provoked. All this has already happened and will go on happening, but those who bear witness to the truth will continue to do so, since no one can bear witness for the witness.
Giorgio Agamben
May 2, 2020
At least science is testable and falsifiable. Religion is not. There is no comparison between the two.
The new religion is that of anti-religion. But the churches of California are opening en masse against the Demon-rat governor, gruesome Newsom….tomorrow. Trump supports them. The epidemic thought form is to break the bonds of human solidarity i.e. the “other” is a nameless threat. thereby embodies a threat which .a virus of death from mistrust and pseudo science is its vector.
We, social creatures, die in isolation or become mad….watch the USA go more mad than ever. So much for your science!
All you have succeeded in saying is that science and religion are different. Science deals in beliefs (they call it knowledge but all scientific theories are contingent and corrigible). Religion OTOH deals in faith. Scientism doesn’t understand what that is.
One can put it like this: what gets a scientist out of bed in the morning is not any belief or knowledge, but faith that with a brand new day he can discover new and wonderful facts about the world. And that is true even if he is closet Mammonite fixated on his next grant by delivering to the government exactly what it wants to hear.
Theoretically correct, Bob, but you fail to take into account that science is conducted by human beings with their various fallibilities. It has been truly said that science advances one funeral at a time.
We live in an age when people claiming to be experts dictate to their worshippers what constitutes proven infallible truth, while scientists whose research findings are at odds with the needs of the financial backers of said experts are forced out of their paid work and publicly villified. The author thinks this time we won’t see an Inquisition, but given human nature, I’m not so sure. Frightened people find culprits, and they don’t proceed very rationally with that.
And if their “tests” are a fraud to extort and coerce people? AIDS has been a colossal fraud, and Covid looks like a more ambitious repeat. Neill DeGrasse Tyson asks “do you science, bro?”, Perhaps “scienceing” is a good word for the self serving pseudoscientific cons that seem to pass for medicine.
#don’tsciencemeNeill
I think the so-far unspoken fear they are trying to exploit is that COVID might turn out to be airborne AIDS.
If the testing and experimentation is not carried out with the correct scientific method and peer reviewed, then it is cannot be called science. For those who do not understand the actual science, there are neutral experts across the world who do understand and will take down dubious bad actors who claim to be scientists. To doubt all science on the basis of Internet cranks is pure follow. Remind me again how many diseases religion has cured in its thousands year reign?
An excellent and enlightening study here which shows that the corononovovirus has spawned a new religion:
https://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2020/05/18/against-the-corona-panic-part-xii-an-anthropological-study-into-the-corona-cult-pro-panic-hardliners-and-the-media-succeeded-in-erecting-a-virus-centered-apocalypse-cult-as-state-religion-and-in/
No wonder I’ve been feeling like I’m living in a fundamentalist religious state.
(with apologies to “Hail” if he frequents here, hope you don’t mind me tooting your horn)
That is a good analysis and totally new to me though I’ve been starting to make the analogy myself.
The Japanese (where I live) have been taken in by it–what country hasn’t aside from Sweden? It has led to hostility out of fear, but not the hysteria I hear from America. I see people here are beginning to quietly acknowledge that the danger was grossly exaggerated, especially when they hear of the economic devastation in America, the effects of which they will not escape.
An interesting theses, thanks for posting this.
I dont disagree with the principle – that there have been observable three dominant “forces for belief”, but perhaps I can offer another perspective .
I wonder how many others can recall from a childhood long long ago, in a galaxy far far away, because it was pre-digital electronic and wireless, a little gadget kids used to play with.
It was called a kaleidoscope. You looked down a rolled metal tube to a larger tube divided into 8ths, contained coloured glass bits, which was turnable. The 8 parts were highly polished, thus the coloured bits in one part which reflected around the inside the of tube, gave a lovely abstract pattern. Tire of it, turn the end barrel, the ‘”bits” and the pattern suddenly changed although the same infrastructure held.
I feel like that a bit. Snr. Agamben identifies 3 separate “religions”, i.e. religious as brought to you by an institution of your choice – a modern invention, once no choice, only RC;- capitalism and scientism specifically medicine.
I think they are only one religion – they just present 3 different “angles” or perspectives.
Yet look at the similarities.
First and foremost, they are strictly, rigidly hierarchical. And, indeed, for nearly all of their hundreds of years history, Male dominant hierarchical. And pretty much so now except for the lower echelons of medicine.
Controls are all held largely by the white male Caucasians of the world, and although a challenge to capitalism has been claimed to be mounted – it hasn’t really. Socialism in the Western Christian world is only Capitalism – Lite.
They defend this structure vehemently. Just examine what happens to heretics of all aspects. Julian Assange has challenged the “Droit de seigneur” in it’s supposed “right” to do as it pleases with and to the peasantry, without any obstruction of passage. His punishment is almost medieval in it’s unthinking barbarity.
See what happens when a small unheard of concern tries to challenge the market dominance of an Amazon, a FaceBook. When court cases are mounted to challenge “anti-trust” and pollution by massive oil capitalist concerns. Anyone ?? See how long those those small, unprotected concerns last.
In medicine, let me speak from personal experience. Look at the topmost hieirachry of medicine, the Consultants, top surgeons, the Government advisors. How many are women? Be a nurse [in the West almost totally female dominated ] and challenge a doctors actions. How many have tried – let me tell you, to be a female heretic certainly wont get you tied to a stake and burnt alive, but your career is a goner.
And those mass heretics – the homeopaths the natural health practitioners, those who used herbs, diet, water, integrated with meditation and such – how much accepted by the High Priests of medicine are they? Just look at the worrying “accidental death” rate across US of natural health practitioners. The laws passed to restrict those heretics of us who prefer to defy the enforced deity of scientific medicine -; which, believe me, is anything but scientific these days.
We dont so much need to look, I think, at the three faces of organised, systematised, authoritarian and dictatorial religion, but look inside ourselves.
Why do we need it? Why do so many want someone to tell them what to do?
One man I read who converted to Islam said he did so because “everything you do is explained, and why you clean up after toilet with your left hand”.
It must puzzle many of us that someone exists who wants to be told how to do something so basic. But they exist in their thousands, Why did a Pope and Bishop ruled Roman Church flourish, when the Manichees, the Cathars and most of all, the Gnostics, were destroyed, allowed to be destroyed, and the dictator in the Roman Palace still followed?. These alternative religions didn’t promote a priesthood;, the central principle was one of life and belief being something between each person and his own conversation with God. They were close to the principle that no Book or Priest was needed when the follower listened to God and lived the Laws. No room for a dictatorial Pope there, is there?
Same with politics, when the revolutions to “overthrow” to bring in “democracy” happened, did they want something new? A world with small autonomous groups running their own lives as they chose and a voluntary association of the richest if the land were threatened, to organise defence? No, once again they appointed a hierarchy, and found means of fooling the people they had some input, and the serfs obey the lords, just as peasants obeyed the priest and bishops and women who strayed out of line in herbal and natural practice got burned alive.
Now it’s the turn of medical lords, who have joined with politics as has the entire of science. The barrel of the kaleidoscope has turned, and “Doctor” must be obeyed. Not long ago, In Australia, they tried to ban selling vitamin supplements without a doctors permis — sorry, prescription. Try getting any patient resisting some treatment, medicine, and just say “but the Doctor says you must” and you get instant obedience, as once one said “But Father says…” as they still say “But the CEO says….”
There has been an attempt at individual autonomy in the highly Capitalist Mining sector in Australia, where many skilled tradesmen became “contract” workers, agreeing their own terms, signing their own contract, working their best hours to get the job done, away from any “micromanagement” They’ve been pretty well drummed out as “heretics’. The High priest, the Senior Ministers, the Consultant Doctors, want to be obeyed, not have the serfs think for themselves.
And resistance? – rare, and not only by a very few, but those few rejected, spurned, despised by the many who obey.
As the satirical author Terry Pratchett said “the trouble with most of mankind is that it came with a design flaw – it has a fatal tendency to bend at the knee”
Indeed. Turn the barrel to find the next pattern. There’ll be one there.
“And even as I speak” — so to speak .
I turn to my FB page and see: “The US FDA proposed ban on homeopathy – what you can do. For those of you who believe in natural medicine, you may be shocked to know that the US Food and Drug Administration has proposed to essentially ban homeopathy with draconian legislation that would give them sweeping powers to empty the shelves of homeopathic preparations. To read more , visit:
https://lynnemctaggart.com/the-us-fda-proposed-ban-on-home…/
Thus the High Priests of Medicine AND Politics drum out the heretics.
None of this surprises me. They are in the process of centralizing everything. Production and distribution will all be centralized. No more organic food. Just poison food for the plebs. No more medical choice or options. Only what the rulers of the universe give us.
It is game on!
Yes, in fact it’s been going on for years Craig. It’s just like a game of “Grandmothers’ Footsteps”; as you draw close to the end, their purposes become more clear, more people wake up to what’s going on, and it becomes a race to the finish.
Will enough wake up and rebel in time to defeat those who would enslave them, but are far far fewer in numbers than we? Or will they clamp the gates on freedom shut just before enough gather to break out?
All it takes is 10% of the population to fully “take on board” the birth of a new idea, for acceptance of that idea to go exponential, [and the rate then increases past exponential], in it’s acceptance throughout society.
So we all have to “do our bit”, as he English used to say during WWII. Even if all you can do is to write a few lines every now again :-)
As Eric Schmidt proudly said, God rot him; “I want Google to provide one single answer to every question.”
That people in power say such things, and said them on their way to absolute power, yet we allowed them, has been our undoing.
Great Article.
Scientism has been wiping out old religions, and the aggressive imposition of modern medicine is a tool to this end. There is the powerful rumor that all pre-modern medicine was vastly inferior to modern medicine, but this seems to rest on the accusation that pre-modern people were lying when they talked of people living a very long time. Maybe if people actually practiced Christianity (something that’s hardly been done after the first few generations), they would gradually start living longer and longer. It’s a falsifiable idea, but modern people don’t feel like doing that experiment. Instead we’re trying “let’s destroy everything and consume all resources for maximum hedonism, call it progress, and see where it leads us.”
What is the point of living long anyways? The sooner you die, the more resources are available for others to enjoy Maximum Hedonism.
There is a definite correlation between scientism and homosexuality. I think they mutually cause each other. We need more research on this subject.
I agree with the main point of the article. In a second comment I will highlight how current medicine is more akin to a superstition, as opposed to science. But this “religion”, as it is, is completely in the hands of certain players, Bill Gates these days, as he and others pay 75% of the WHO bills, or Blackrock and Vanguard, as explained to us by Jon Hellewig on this Saker site about 2 months ago.
It is Big Pharma, controlled by those entities, who pays for poorly designed studies, and when something is found that could confuse the public, use mass media to convince the people. Life expectancy was going down already in the West, even before the current media storm. People who follow mainstream media are unable to make choices that help them.
2nd comment: current health science completely ignores human natural history, which has been ongoing for at least 1.8 million years. So it is outside of science. Instead, it relies on studies it funds to advance its own propaganda. Nutritional studies paid for Big Pharma have proved to be particularly useful as they push people into wrong dietary choices. Big Pharma pays for the study, then it decides if the study gets published or not.
The goal is to make people sick, and to administer drugs to the sick person “from now until he dies”. Drugs are intended to treat symptoms and not to address and heal the underlying cause, for treatment is far more profitable than a cure.
Some pearls:
– cholesterol is a necessary nutrient, the human body producing 2 grams a day. Overall mortality as a function of chol. follows a U curve, similar to many other nutrients. Mortality sharply increases below 200mg/dl, yet federal guidelines prescribe chol. lowering drugs for everyone above 180mg/dl. For women, there is no upper limit, the more chol. they have, the longer they live.
– diabetes 1 is an incapability to metabolize carbohydrates. I have a niece with it, and the doctors who follow her force her into a carb. rich diet.
– the Warburg effect shows clearly that 95% of cancer cells feed exclusively on sugars. Cancer patients are advised to eat according to the food pyramid.
For me it is no surprise that we are entering an era of mandatory vaccines. It was baked in the cake long ago.
Dr. Are you telling me that my hydraulic fluid is contaminated with organic material?! This was about 50 years ago when one profiteer introduces cholesterol into a semi annual medical examination. The latest medical fashion fad id blood pressure.
Absolutely great article!
But science is also “science”, which is fake science. Science is something that can be corrupted. Watch “The crisis of science” at Corbett Report.
I have been skeptical to the scientificality of medicine since reading Ivan Illich “Medical Nemesis” decades ago. Big pharma is not about science but about profit and marketing, by the belief that it is scientific. That belief is religious, if you like that metaphor.
Mandatory convictions and institutional enforcements, as Ivan Illich wrote. That man was Shrinking the Technosphere long before Dmitry Orlov.
And now mandatory vaccination (with gene altering vaccine made by Moderna) is planned enforced by soldiers. Where is this dystopian power abuse going to take us?
So, again, does “the virus” exist ?
Has it been properly isolated from a sick person ?
Here is an example.
from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7036342/
“The patient’s oropharyngeal samples were obtained by using UTM™ kit containing 1 mL of viral transport media (Copan Diagnostics Inc., Murrieta, CA, USA) on day 7 of her illness. We inoculated monolayers of Vero cells (ATCC ® CCL-81™) with the samples and cultured the cells …”
Where is the isolation ?
Koch’s postulates:
– The bacteria must be present in every case of the disease.
– The bacteria must be isolated from the host with the disease and grown in pure culture.
– …
A good article but I don’t see the science/medical cartel as being undogmatic. They are very dogmatic. Vaccines only help and save and never injure in spite of evidence to the contrary. If you don’t get yourself and your children vaccinated you are an enemy and danger to everyone else.
You have cancer? The solutions and only ones permitted are cut, burn and poison. I stood in a Canadian Tire store on Friday waiting for my order. As I looked about and observed I was overwhelmed with seeing how we are being slave trained. It is clear to anyone not filled with fear.
Heed the warning from these Saints/Elders. If they were here now none of this would surprise them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgmD41eDk9A&list=LLhehRu_EcDa2tN3J0XpZV0Q&index=2&t=0s
God have mercy on us. We had better find our faith and find it fast. Christ does not move away from us. We run away from Him.
Religion or Cult , or new Hybrid ?
Mood of total obedience, in hope for total security = captivity, bondage = slavery.
To me this tribulation sounds like Requiem for the mostly real freedom the West
enjoyed for some time and was proud about it.
What timing this essay is given the finding of this quote I read this morning from Ravi Zacharias one of the most gifted and respected Christian apologists recently passed. Here is what he said:
“To sustain the belief that there is no God, atheism has to demonstrate infinite knowledge, which is tantamount to saying, ‘I have infinite knowledge that there is no being in existence with infinite knowledge’.”
And,
“I am absolutely convinced that meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain; meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure. And that is why we find ourselves emptied of meaning with our pantries still full.”
For all that science has given us the sad truth is it has also given us so much pain and evil in return. I mean really look no further than this quote:
In San Diego, I talked with Captain Eddy. He had been with the expedition in the Marshall Islands on November 1, 1952, when America exploded her first hydrogen bomb. In a sober voice, Captain Eddy said, “No one could visualize the awfulness of that sight unless he were there in person.” Two hundred miles above the Pacific, the mighty hydrogen bomb was detonated. The blast lighted up thousands of miles of Pacific sky. At Auckland, New Zealand, 3,800 miles away from the scene of the blast, New Zealanders said the ocean showed a reflection that was blood red. “The scientists present at the scene were dreadfully shaken,” said Eddy. “They thought they had set the heavens aflame with a chain reaction of exploding atoms that would surely go around the world.” On returning from his mission, Captain Eddy asked to be transferred to another department of service and was given a position in the field of seismology, studying earthquakes back in the South Pacific.
and,
“If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the might One and I am become Death the shatterer of worlds.” J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967
Trial and error, trial and error!!!!!
Science doesn’t know the end from the beginning and wow the gambling that goes on. Like for example we are now sending machines out to sun that are nuclear powered. Yeah, lets damage the sun or as I wrote in my book Climate Change the Work of God:
Now, excuse me, but what would happen if something were to go wrong with that spacecraft and it were to continue towards the sun, especially if it were nuclear-powered? Or what if it exploded right there where it’s sitting? Let’s consider what would happen if our scientists, in studying those dust particles, were to learn that our sun is dying. What are they going to do? Play God by sending a team of astronauts out there to try fixing it? Or maybe, given what some scientists are being led to believe these days, they’ll hook up huge radio telescopes in the hopes that their plea for immediate help will reach some aliens ears. pg. 9
Faith is not blind and I take exception to Bob the first commentator who said:
“At least science is testable and falsifiable. Religion is not. There is no comparison between the two.”
This is a lie it is not the truth. Faith is not blind and God can be observed to exist.
Lastly Ravi Zacharias died from cancer and cancer is just a result of our science {industrialization} so it can be said that all who die from cancer have been murdered really.
There is a doctor associated with USANA who wrote years ago that at the turn of the last Century we were all dying from infectious rather than degenerative diseases but today it is the direct opposite.
Yeah and what science is going to solve this? Bulldung!!!
Medicine as ” Religion”. Abortion as a ” Sacrament”. Banking as ” God’s Work”. Main Stream Media as “Truth tellers”. ” Homosexuality” as a Norm. Is there any correlation between ” Talmudic” beliefs and practices; and all the above mentioned ” Noble Activities??.
Here is a message regarding the gods of medicine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRWVWUs5Tac
Father Josiah Trenham
The article is rather convoluted and requites some effort, but the author seems to be taking a sideways glance at science and religion as existing as a term, a manner of identifying accepted or known ways of relating to the world through faith, of belief systems.
Like this :
” I’m not sure if we will see a return to the burning and blacklisting, but as already evident, the views of those who seek the truth and refuse to accept the dominant fictions will undoubtedly be excluded from public discourse, or met with accusations of purveying fake news (news, not ideas, because news is more important than reality)”
That’s the proof that medicine is the new religion, realized since Covid took the world stage of humanity 2020.
Nothing new here. I remember way back when the Cold War was cold.
Good little church going Americans just couldn’t believe that anyone could be an atheist. Eventually light bulbs started glimmering above their heads. “Ah, Marxism is your religion.”
Well, it isn’t, nor is it an antireligion. Ok, Marxism is anticlerical but that is something else. Marxists can be Christians, that was OK with Lenin, but if they decided to be Christian Agents of Influence, that was something else entirely.
These days we have some idea of the origin of religion. We know that the chimpanzees have a glimmering of it and we and they parted company at least five million years ago.
How we went from there to Shamanism I don’t know and I don’t think that anyone else does. But we know something about how so called higher religions came into being. Somewhere grain became a major crop. Grain is sown and harvested about the same time everywhere and it is therefore possible to tax it, which made the State possible. And so came the alliance between landowner and priest , who in the early days often were one and the same.
Shamanism was useful to humanity, the higher religions exists to keep the rich rich and the poor poor, and very little else.
These days the higher religions are on their way out because they are no longer much use in the class war.
Those interested in these matters should read Friedrich Engels’ book about the workers in Manchester.
Bob Altemeyer’s “The Authoritarians” is also useful though he does not discuss religion. When Orwell wrote “Animal Farm” he obviously did not realise that he was describing a problem that humanity has had for the last ten-twelve thousand years.
@ jens guld
“Most of the major states of history owe their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.”
Albert Einstein
https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/
Nothing new here. I remember way back when the Cold War was cold.
Good little church going Americans just couldn’t believe that anyone could be an atheist. Eventually light bulbs started glimmering above their heads. “Ah, Marxism is your religion.”
Well, it isn’t, nor is it an antireligion. Ok,Marxism is anticlerical but that is something else. Marxists can be Christians, that was OK with Lenin, but if they decided to be Christian Agents of Influence, that was something else entirely.
These days we have some idea of the origin of religion. We know that the chimpanzees have a glimmering of it and we and they parted company at least five million years ago.
How we went from there to Shamanism I don’t know and I don’t think that anyone else does. But we know something about how so called higher religions came into being. Somewhere grain became a major crop. Grain is sown and harvested about the same time everywhere and it is therefore easy to tax it, which made the State possible. And so came the alliance between landowner and priest, who in the early days often were one and the same.
Shamanism was useful to humanity, the higher religions exists to keep the rich rich and the poor poor, and very little else.
These days the higher religions are on their way out because they are no longer much use in the class war.
Those interested in these matters should read Friedrich Engels’ book about the workers in Manchester.
Bob Altemeyer’s “The Authoritarians” is also useful though he does not discuss religion. When Orwell wrote “Animal Farm” he obviously did not realise that he was describing a problem that humanity has had for the last ten-twelve thousand years.
Unreadable .
Maybe the original italian script was better ,but this pretentious jargon is awful . The author needs to read Orwell on how to write english .
I have chosen a section of the article at random to check your claim.
“The most frequent cause of death in this country by far is cardiovascular disease. It is well known that its mortality can be easily reduced by healthier living and eating. Yet, no doctor ever considered it necessary to resort to legal measures to compel patients to follow a prescribed lifestyle and diet, to decree what people eat and how they should live, transforming the whole of existence into a set of mandatory healthcare requirements.”
I have read Orwell. I do not think that any of his tips on how not to write, apply to the section above.
If you think there are, perhaps you could point them out.
Or, is it possible that you simply prefer soundbites to adult text?
Karl Marx was right, “Religion is the opiate of the masses”.
“Government” is a religion. (Larken Rose)
This is an excerpt from Larken Rose’s new book, The Most Dangerous Superstition.
The Religion of “Government” (TMDS pp. 28-32.)
“Government” is neither a scientific concept nor a rational sociological construct; nor is it a logical, practical method of human organization and cooperation. The belief in “government” is not based on reason; it is based on faith. In truth, the belief in “government” is a religion, made up of a set of dogmatic teachings, irrational doctrines which fly in the face of both evidence and logic, and which are methodically memorized and repeated by the faithful. Like other religions, the gospel of “government” describes a superhuman, supernatural entity, above mere mortals, which issues commandments to the peasantry, for whom unquestioning obedience is a moral imperative. Disobedience to the commandments (“breaking the law”) is viewed as a sin, and the faithful delight in the punishment of the infidels and sinners (“criminals”), while at the same time taking great pride in their own loyalty and humble subservience to their god (as “law-abiding taxpayers”) And while the mortals may humbly beg their lord for favors, and for permission to do certain things, it is considered blasphemous and outrageous for one of the lowly peasants to imagine himself to be fit to decide which of the “government” god’s “laws” he should follow and which it is okay for him to ignore. Their mantra is, “You can work to try to change the law, but as long as it’s the law, we all have to follow it!”
The main factor distinguishing the belief in “government” from other religions today is that people actually believe in the god called “government.” The other gods people claim to believe in, and the churches they attend, are now, by comparison, little more than empty rituals and half-heartedly parroted superstitions. When it comes to their everyday lives, the god that people actually pray to, to save them from misfortune, to smite their enemies, and to shower them with blessings, is “government.” It is “government” whose commandments the people most often respect and obey. Whenever a conflict arises between “government” and the teachings of the lesser gods — such as “pay your fair share” (taxation) versus “Thou shalt not steal,” or “duty to country” (military service) versus “Thou shalt not murder” — the commands of “government supersede all the teachings of the other religions. Politicians, the high priests of the church of “government” — the mouthpieces and representatives of “government,” who deliver the sacred “law” from on high — even openly declare that it is permissible for the people to practice whatever religion they wish, as long as they do not run afoul of the supreme religion by disobeying “the law” — meaning the dictates of the god called “government.”……
http://deadlinelive.info/2011/02/28/government-is-a-religion-larken-rose/
In Pindostan, TV shows are the vector for propaganda. And what kind of shows do they create for us, the serfs? Cop shows, doctor shows, and social insecurity reinforcing sitcoms. Cop shows remind us of how the police must recognize our rights. They don’t, but every week we watch vile criminals released because of those pesky “rights” And every week doctors “save” helpless people through heroic efforts. Groups that need propaganda, or PR, are generally up to no good and need to massage their public image. Cops and doctors get weekly boosts from media, to massage their image. And they create an army of “Karens”, clamoring for tougher drug laws (unaware the drug game is run by intelligence), and for more lockdown measures.
One time I had a chat with a lady who recounted a horror story regarding her mothers cancer. Mum was left almost penniless, but “survived”. What struck me at the time is this:how did the woman or her mother know she had “cancer”? The “test” from the same people selling the cure? The “plandemic” has shown us the potential for fraud there.
An interesting point. I agree with you, I think. Therefore, ALL Science is, with a high degree of probability, false.
Would you agree?
To use your own terms;
Does the scientific ‘test’ itself become the main vector of ‘falsification’? Recently, the FDA shut down the CDC test-manufacturing facility at Fort Detrick because the test kits were contaminated (probably intentionally) with the material they were designed to test for. And, has it not been proven that the very participation of an observer, in the behaviour of ‘light’ alters the very nature of that light?
Like religion, all science can thus be seen by ‘non-believers’ as delusional, a series of constructs, which look like rubbish by ‘experts’ to the outsider, but are endowed with meaning by the believer.
Perhaps the integrity and sufficiency of a belief system, of both the honest Christian and the honest Scientist, as opposed to the hoi-polloi, will allow what the author called: “a real and proper alliance in the name of common interest.”
Of the triad of modern ‘faiths’ posited by Agamben, capitalism has been superseded (maybe ‘subsumed’ is a better word) in our time by the Corporation as ‘person’; A sinister Golem which ‘our’ governments have signed a blood-pact with. This strange ‘marriage,’ as Mussolini termed it, between the State and the Corporation (the highest stage of capitalism) is modern Fascism. It partakes of religion and of science, but not any longer of Christianity. Hence no exception was made for the Church in the shutdown of ‘non-essential services’, Until Trump did so, fairly late in the game, but symbolically, as he had already allowed state-rights to trump (sorry) the constitution.
That systemic political crisis of Democracy (and democracy) may be a problem which lies above and beyond the scope of Agamben’s article. He examines the ‘technology’ of our oppression but not the mystical core of it. The AntiChrist nature the secular world as a whole is hinted at by Agamben in his fond reference to St Peter and lepers and censure of ‘distancing’. What Dante and Christian theology teaches is the togetherness and closeness of the Godly and the isolation of the damned, from God and from each other.
“Wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name, there am I” said Jesus. Solitary confinement of anyone but especially people like Assange and Manning and too many to mention here is truly a diabolical punishment.
I wonder how a Breughel, if one could miraculously appear, would paint the current global Plandemic in a canvas which might be called The Triumph of the Malthusians:
I see the image of metro-sexual deviant Justin Trudeau with his funny socks, as the Pope of Medical Science and officiating priest, with acolytes Birx, Fauci, Tam (what names!) ‘communicating’ the Vaccine, while the unholy Trinity of HebrewJesus (Ghebrayjesus) of the WHO, Bill Gates (Katz) and ‘the Man of Many ‘Soros’ hovers above, suggests a Black Mass on a Dantean landscape of shit, studded with metaphysical landmines such as the world has never seen.
(Bob, if you find my picture of a Hell a bit strained by the ‘players,’ especially the role granted to the Dynast Boyish-King of Canada, Trudeau, bear in mind that he is obsessed currently, not only in keeping Canada in lock-down mode (a slang prison term) until he can force a vaccine on us all, but also in becoming Head of the UN.)