It has become a trope.
Climate obsession is a religion. Progressivism is a religion. Wokeism is a surrogate religion. Science is a religion. One can read this everyday across the conservative media spectrum. The repetition of the trope has dulled our minds to the fact that they are indeed religions, were once formalized as such and still remain in some places. Their creators were not at all embarrassed.
The first overt cults of “rationality” were born from (what else!) the French Revolution. Both the Cult of Reason and the Cult of the Supreme Being emerged during the French Revolution. Of course everyone found reason to denounce and murder the other guy.
The Cult of Reason, principally founded by Antoine-François Momoro, was overtly anti-theistic and was intended to replace the Catholic Church during the French Revolution. The most beautiful cathedrals in France were converted into Temples of Reason including Notre Dame de Paris and the huge, Our Lady of Strasbourg cathedral.
The Cult of Reason was the religion of the Hébertists, a group which came to power during the Reign of Terror and a main force behind the de-Christianization of France. One of their most infamous leaders, Jean-Baptiste Carrier, drowned nearly 1,000 clergy, and local men, women and children in the river Loire. His reason dictated it be done. By 1793, the Cult of Reason was powerful enough to declare a nation-wide Festival of Reason on 10 November of that year. PARTY!!!
Such power was too much for Maximilian Robespierre to bear. He hated Christianity but hated the atheism of the Herbertists as well. Deism is the way, he preached, so he had all the Herbertists beheaded. His reason, and that of the Committee of Public Safety, demanded it. Robespierre reasoned that the Cult of the Supreme Being, which he invented all by himself, was much better for social order because, he reasoned, a godhead was necessary to keep the rabble in line.
On 8 June 1794, the Festival of the Supreme Being was celebrated. PARTY!!!
The well-planned and expensive party was so contrived and stodgy that some folks turned on Robespierre, who went screaming (due his jaw being shot off) to the guillotine about a month later 28 July 1794.
Napoleon Bonaparte banned both cults in 1802 saying their parties sort of sucked anyway and what was WAY more fun was to declare war on every nation in Europe and murder Spaniards. Now that ROCKED!
Little did Napoleon know in 1802 that a three-year old kid in France would start the whole silly thing up again some years later as a grouchy adult.
August Comte would re-establish the Cult of Reason in a new form, the Religion of Humanity. Comte, who gave the world Positivism which later morphed into the lustrous turd of Logical Positivism, would also hand down his own religion complete with a priesthood and liturgical ceremony. The Religion of Humanity was once very popular and heavily influence American pedagogy, although few churches were ever established here.
However, Comte’s religion did influence the American Ethical Culture movement, a movement dedicated to “The cultivation of a perfect character in each and all." It’s quasi-Christian churches and schools centered around New York. The young Robert Oppenheimer attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York, the original Ethics school founded by Felix Adler. You can still send your kid there for $63,000 a year. Lunch is extra but the snobbery is free.
Albert Einstein, a friend and mentor of the younger Oppenheimer, was himself a booster of the Ethical Culture Society. While at an event in 1951, he said, “Without 'ethical culture' there is no salvation for humanity.”
Which is the same thing as saying he only had faith in humanity itself. Yeah… the guys that helped make the atomic bomb think humanity can be saved with their own ethics.
For me, I will put my faith in Christ in whom lies my salvation, your salvation and world’s.
Don’t go into the ring with the devil only believing in science.
This was one of the most enjoyable history lessons I've had in a while.
"Don’t go into the ring with devil only believing in science." Just tremendous.
People like James Lindsay and Vivek Ramaswamy are planning a legal challenge against wokeism on the grounds that it is a religion. I look forward to seeing how the courts rule and what definition pops out.