Brainy Voodoo

Scientific Materialism of the Great Purification

Scientific materialism was the religion of the apocalypse. It concentrated the negative elements of religion so they could be efficiently expiated. It arose in those dark, thrilling days of the Manifestation and helped make the world desperate for a fresh dispensation Truth.

Scientific materialism is the term I use for the intellectual and philosophical movement which held that science and scientific knowledge were the best ways to understand human nature and solve human problems. It answered the problem of identity—Who Am I?—with the formula of unnatural deism [Tyler 2002], "I am my genes and epigenes." Scientific materialism played the role of religion in guiding answers to life's fundamental questions. What is the meaning of life? What is the value of the human being? The source of morality? Some call scientific materialism the worst religion of the Old Humanity.

The most unnatural of religions for the most unnatural of all worlds, flaring at the end of the cycle of cycles, it had no advantages of religion (of sharing divine love and promoting selfless service), and all the drawbacks of unnatural religion: divisiveness, self-importance, disrespect for other religion.

In the last two hundred years of the Old Humanity scientific materialism played a supporting role in the worst tragedies that befell humanity, what were called crimes against humanity. Scientific materialism worsened both racism and human racism. In the 19th century it played a role in the development of socialism and communism. The political and economic system of communism was invigorated by contempt for religion in general and Christianity in particular. It was instituted alongside state-mandated atheism. In the 20th century, scientific materialism contributed to the development of Nazism in Europe by providing bizarre, pseudo-scientific theories of racial superiority.

By the time of the Great Purification the intellectual elite who accepted scientific materialism as a religion substitute and influenced others to do so could be characterized as human racists, though the term is harsh. They rejected theories of racial superiority, or at least they knew it would be politically unwise to admit to holding such beliefs. But they believed in and practiced the final form of this faith which fostered human racism, the depersonalization and objectification of human beings. They held that life was merely "meaningful" but not sacred. Human defined meaning replaced the sense of Godful sacredness as the highest aspect of life.

Complicated, transitional relation between scientolatry and God-based religious consciousness through the 19th and early 20th centuries. Many people avowed God-based religion but their life choices and tone of everyday life were directed by the implications of scientific materialism. Also groups of people, the worst example the sociopolitical death cult called Nazis, mouthed Christianity but lived pseudo-scientific materialism. But during the Great Purification scientolatry became a sort of nonorganized religious movement, and it is this movement which was comprehensively summarized in the book Consilience.

The scientific advances of the 20th century were preserved and we all enjoy the benefits of them. We benefit more fully than they did from the "fusion of head and heart." Instead of augmenting faith with science, scientolators pitted them against each other. Scientolatry saw faith in God not as the most important form of human knowledge but as anti-knowledge. There was no rational justification for elevating science into a religion any more than making music or athletics into a religion.

Scientific materialism impeded the progress of science in at least four major ways: 1) It rejected the eternal inspiration of serving God and serving others in God, 2) it worsened the amorality of science by disguising the craving for power as service for humanity, 4) it was divisive, contemptuous of religion, it dogmatically misunderstood the intuitive and spiritual experience of most people of the world.

Scientists of the Great Purification who embraced scientific materialism saw their purpose to debunk religion and establish once and for all that God was a human creation. Even by the Silence, religion in America had lost much of its political and economic clout. Scientists of the Great Purification by and large looked upon God as a mental crutch, and thought religion was for the gullible and slow witted folk. We know that the ending of a vast cycles of cycles was underway, in order to bring about the end of the cycle to end the Old Humanity, it was necessary for faith to retreat even as scientific knowledge increased. The cycle had to end, the Old Humanity had to shed its unnatural sanskaras like dead skin. But as historians it is our job to dig a little deeper than the clichés about the unnaturalness of Old America. The scientists of the Great Purification were not merely anti-God miscreants or human racist devils. Some of them were addicted to the new-found power of science, intoxicated with the mastery of nature which came so swiftly after so many centuries of helpless subjugation to natural processes. Some did delight in the spiritual fallacies of the Great Purification simply because these fallacies wrested control over life away from God.

Others had benevolent ideals and sincerely believed science was the only hope for saving humanity from terminal war making. Remember the weapons of the 20th century? This hope was not completely unreasonable. They believed, not unjustly, that religion had worsened suffering. They pointed to the wars and divisions caused by religion. We now know a central purpose of the The Awakener's advent was to unify religion and to end the irrational, antagonistic aspects of religion.

But none of the major scientists of the late Old Humanity were given to use the manna of The Awakener. David Bohm's work was analogous to metaphors Baba used, but we don't know whether Bohm was aware of Baba. When God Speaks was published in 1955 it was sent to several prominent scientists who declined to look at it. It was not yet time.

Conflict and competition between science and religion was a fluxing animus of the Old Humanity. In some centuries it was marked and in others there was more harmony according to the cyclical nature of nations and ideas. It is hard to understand the complexity of that obsolete antagonism because scientific materialism, although based in human racism, also expressed ideals for a better world.