Darwinism and the Religion of Scientific Materialism

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." (www.marxists.org/...)

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, http://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 Linda Kimball 2006 About the writer: Linda is a writer and author of numerous published articles and essays on culture, politics, and worldview.

I know that you don't think much of Darwin, but to link his work to Marx is just plain inaccurate.

Hello Patrick! Actually, the above italics do not accurately reflect my view of Charles Darwin. As a scientist, I don’t think he had any particular anti-transcendence ax to grind for the simple reason that he was not preoccupied with such matters. He was no philosopher; he was “just doing science.” The microevolution aspects of the theory seem sound to me, a non-scientist. But I never could develop as much confidence in the macroevolution aspects. The theory may yet be true, but for now it seems there are some yawning gaps in it that need explanation.

At bottom, the problem I have with Darwinist theory is the way in which it has been appropriated by other thinkers. I have in mind some of its early “boosters,” such as J. Huxley and E. Haeckel, who seemingly have inferred certain principles from the theory, chief among them that man is body only, soul being an illusion, a “ghost in the machine” (which statement reduces the body itself to a mechanism). It appears that Karl Marx was well aware of Darwin’s science by the time of Das Kapital, and it is evident that he shared the view of Huxley and Haeckel.

What Huxley, Haeckel, and Marx have in common is they are all radical materialists who utterly reject any possibility of transcendence in reality: random mutation + natural selection essentially boils down to its unstated initial premise, that “matter in all its motions is all that there is.” In more recent times, we have Jacques Monod’s analysis of Darwinian evolution as the expression of pure chance and necessity. And as you are well aware, the infamous Richard Dawkins uses the theory as a stick to beat Christians with. Two more radical materialists.

In short, Darwinist evolutionary theory has had some rather stunning social effects that Darwin himself most probably did not intend or anticipate. And manifestly, political effects, too.

I stand by my observation that Darwinist theory is the basis for Marx’s theories of man and history. For Darwin, it is the species that is significant; the individual has no real significance in itself beyond what it contributes to the gene pool of the species. Certainly this maxim extends to mankind. But if man is merely the unavoidable consequence of chance and necessity, and is ultimately subject to it, then there is no possibility left for there to be any meaning in history. History simply becomes the evolutionary process itself — which is blind.

It is not to be doubted that Marx’s theory of man likewise places no particular value on the individual — the mass of men, or the Massman (e.g., species), is the subject of its tender concern. Because the individual is not preeminent in Marxian theory, he may be sacrified as necessary if the well-being of the Mass demands it, for “the greater good of the whole.”

For Marx the senselessness of history is something that must be “ended” — by “ending” history itself — and a new beginning made, shaped to an eschatology of the perfect State which shall bring about a perfect human future. That is to say, that Marx (a kind of self-appointed “representative man of his age,” and would-be “savior” of mankind) will guide human action toward the perfect fulfillment of a Paradise in time, here on earth: “A system so perfect that no one will need to be good.” So it’s time for the “senselessness” of history to stop, and for socialist action finally to create a real pattern of meaning for history — which, by the way, really could not be intelligibly discerned at all until some unspecified future time. So history still remains “senseless” in this respect, from the view of the present.

For Marx, one particularly obnoxious example of the senselessness of history is the accretion of all ideas of human and natural transcendence, which he held to be utterly false. These, Marx teaches, must be eradicated so that man, “once cured of false consolations, may construct a perfect world.” Religion is the opiate of the masses; so the masses must be cured of this pestilential addiction: And so God must “die.”

And yet I find it highly ironic that Marxism:

“draws its passion, and its fascination, from the root of [biblical] prophetism, which promised a world the signs of whose coming had no rational index.” [Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 1941, quoted in Aiden Nichols OP, The Thought of Benedict XVI, 2005, p. 156]

In short, Marxism presents itself as an alternative religion suitable for rationalist, materialist, desacralized human beings. It certainly goes without saying that it is a “religious commitment” to which its followers are passionately devoted, usually to the point of irrationality. By comparison, Christianity is the model of self-consistent reason.

In the broadest sense, the entire complex of theoretical thought articulated by the thinkers mentioned above, what they all have in common, is participation in the post-Enlightenment intellectual/cultural ambience, with its emphasis on reason, materialism, positivism, and utilitarianism. Yet as Nichols points out,

“…the Enlightenment contained within itself the seeds of its own downfall. Enlightenment depends on a conviction of the ‘absoluteness’ or ‘divinity’ of truth. Should it call into question this pre-supposition of truth, it will end up by justifying the irrational, as has happened in the work of the philosopher-biologist Jacques Monod. Moreover, the more the Enlightenment movement advanced in history, the more it tended to whittle down the concept of reason which was its foundation. The rational becomes the reproducible (in a laboratory). Reason undergoes a positivist fall. People renounce the search for truth and replace it by concern with what can be done with things….
“…Like positivism, Marxism rejects the primacy of logos. It sees reason as generated ‘dialectically’ by matter, [ergo] by the irrational, and must, therefore, regard truth as simply a human postulation.” [ibid., p. 256f]

For Darwin, apparently there is no “logos,” either. At least logos — reason, intelligence — does not show up in his work as in any way involved in the order of the natural world. But then we must realize that “logos” is non-phenomenal, non-random, immaterial, and “transcendent” — the very sort of thing that both Darwinist and Marxian materialist presuppositions forbid. We do need to recognize that “logos” on the one hand, and “random mutation + natural selection” according to “chance and necessity” on the other, are mutually irreconcilable concepts: They are totally “non-isomorphic.”

Well, them be my thoughts this afternoon, for what they’re worth — my usual two-cents’ worth.

Just one last thing to mull over, if you have the time and interest:

“In the religious history of the species, God appears in a variety of cultures as the Watcher, the being full of eyes. Man
“knows that absolute security does not exist, that his life is always exposed to the gaze of Someone, that his living is a being-seen. [ibid., p. 190f]
“But this sensation … can precipitate two contrary reactions. Either one can react negatively, angry at the existence of this Witness who threatens man’s unlimited capacity to will and act. Or one can respond positively, opening himself to love through his enveloping presence, finding in it the ‘confidence’ which allows him to live.”

Thanks so much for writing, dear Patrick!

“At bottom, the problem I have with Darwinist theory is the way in which it has been appropriated by other thinkers. I have in mind some of its early “boosters,” such as J. Huxley and E. Haeckel, who seemingly have inferred certain principles from the theory, chief among them that man is body only, soul being an illusion, a “ghost in the machine” (which statement reduces the body itself to a mechanism).”

It seems that it is not only Darwinist theory that gets ‘appropriated’ by Marxist/Socialist “boosters.” Certain thoughts of our nation’s founders likewise have been ‘appropriated,’ most especially the thoughts of one Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Jefferson, it is alleged, was a ‘Deist’ if it could be said he harbored any genuinely religious beliefs at all. Perhaps so, but a most unusual ‘Deist’ he was, in that his ‘Deity’ was avowedly and specifically Jesus Christ, as various of his letters to various persons attest. This is no surprise, but what follows may be to some.

In the excerpts above you make mention of “matter in all its motions is all that there is” as being the “unstated initial premise” held in common by Marxists and many another radical materialist. These are familiar phrases oft mentioned both by you and by a certain young lady whose initials are A-G, but they were also familiar to me in another context. I was rather certain that sooner or later I would come, once again, upon that other context. Sure enough:

In a letter to John Adams, dated April 11, 1823, the aforementioned worthy, Thomas Jefferson, first expresses his vehement disagreement with Calvinist thought (Adams was a Calvinist) and then launches into a declaration of faith that could today only be identified as Creationist or of Intelligent Design! Quoting:

“On the contrary, I hold, (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the universe, in its parts, general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces; the structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere; animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles; insects, mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organized as man or mammoth; the mineral substances, their generation and uses; it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe, that there is in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a Fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their Preserver and Regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regeneration into new and other forms.”

“We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power, to maintain the universe in its course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view; comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets, and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos.”

“So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful Agent, that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed through all time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a Creator, rather than in that of a self-existent universe. Surely this unanimous sentiment renders this more probable, than that of the few in the other hypothesis.”

I cannot attest that this is the specific letter which awakened in my mind echos of your phrases and descriptions. Very likely there are more letters. Jefferson wrote so many, and so many on the subject of religion; written often to his closest friends, but also to ministers who were simply interested in effecting an exchange of views.

So there it is, dear Betty. Make of it what you will.

*Reason* is not what you meant by *logos*; you mean it in a theological way. Reason is logic.

Actually, CG, I used the term in the classical Greek way. I am particularly fond of the philosophy produced in ancient Greece by thinkers such as Heraclitus, Parmenides, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. They were familiar with the term logos as denoting the meanings reason, intellect, mind, ratio (with its mathematical implications). It is (as you point out) the etymological root of the word logic.

Maybe you are of the persuasion that reason was a discovery of the Enlightenment period. It seems quite clear to me, in contrast, that reason had been discovered in mid-first-century B.C., in Athens. It seems clear this was the first historical period that gives evidence that human beings had isolated and described this thing "reason" — and they called it logos.

I don't need to point out again that this logos is, by nature and definition, nonphenomenal, nonrandom, immaterial, and "transcendent." This appears to have been the consensus view of the time, and the settled meaning of the word for a couple of millennia.

I am not talking "metaphysical banality" here, but of something that (evidently) your blind spot does not let you see. But if you've never been a student of human cultural history, then one can't blame you for having a "blind spot." Maybe it's just a lacuna that your experience in the future will supply. I hope so.

cheers, CG. Thank you so much for writing.

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