SEKHMET SPEAKS
This article was written by John Anthony West, probably in the 90s. Mr. West passed away on Feb 6th 2018.
Part One
INTRODUCING SEKHMET:
Sekhmet, in ancient Egypt, was portrayed as a female figure with the head of a lioness. In the mythology, it was Sekhmet who meted out Divine vengeance when errant humanity neglected to worship the gods and took matters into its own unknowing hands. Her destructive rampages were designed to restore rightful order, she was the goddess who heals... but by fire. Here in the pages of BRES she is spoken for (in appropriately contemporary terminology) by her amanuensis, John Anthony West, rogue Egyptologist, author of Serpent in the Sky: the High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt and other books and student of the 'symbolist' school of Egyptology developed by the Alsatian mathematician and philosopher, R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, and developer of the controversial but geologically supported theory that the Great Sphinx of Giza was built, not by the dynastic Egyptians, but by an earlier civilization flourishing in Egypt around 12,000 or more years ago.
SEKHMET ON CIVILIZATION:
Civilization is like a park. It's not 'natural', it doesn't just happen in the normal course of affairs. Nature, left to her own devices will not produce a park; human beings, interested only in procreation, food, shelter and the acquisition of materal goods will not produce a civilization. Both park and civilization are contingent upon human will, intelligence, industry and intervention -- and the understanding that both natural world and human beings possesses a hidden or occult potential. Both park and civilization may be seen as exaltations of the natural order. Only human beings can bring them forth into manifestation.
A good park (the Japanese are perhaps the most accomplished masters of the art) is not the "conquest" or even the taming of wild nature, but an aesthetic enhancement of its manifold distinct but hidden qualities. And a valid civilization is not the suppression, repression or distortion of our human nature but rather its transformation into something higher; something nature (that is to say "the gods") have not freely bestowed upon us except as potential. In the park of civilization, the mighty oaks and maples represent the great religions; the shrubbery and flower beds the complex of sophisticated amenities that distinguish civilizations from so-called primitive societies. (These are no less satisfactory or spiritually developed on their own terms but they function in tune with nature and are uninterested in or consciously opposed to making nature serve human values. So for the sake of our extended metaphor these primitive or traditional societies are not civilizations in the usual sense of the word.)
Once established, the park/civilization calls for endless cooperation and intelligent attention if it is to flourish. When the parkkeepers, (its priests, scientists, philosophers and artists) are drunk, crazy, greedy and lazy the park quickly degenerates. Once the process of degeneration sets in, there is no direction from above. Without direction from above, the humble but necessary carters and traders who bring in the manure, tools and supplies quickly take advantage of the anarchy. Dissatisfied with their lowly status, they euphemize themselves into "businessmen", "industrialists", "entrepreneurs", "marketing managers", "advertising executives" and "financiers" and preempt positions of power. Their power is then maintained by a hierarchy of mercenaries, henchmen and yes-men similarly euphemized into "politicians". Chaos ensues. And in this particular instance that chaos is called "Progress". A pseudo-science is then invented to justify the production and distribution of ever-greater heaps of manure. This pseudo-science is called "economics". It has no basis in reality, yet it seems to --once the manure carters have taken over the park. In the absence of a functioning, spiritually based religion, "economics" is then glorified in turn into a pseudo-religion: Theo-economics, which, supported by its accompanying philosophy of Metafinance, becomes the catechism of the Church of Progress. And so we find ourselves today. The oaks and maples are blighted and rot from the core out; the shrubbery grows rampant and out of control, the ponds are stagnant, weeds, brambles and poison ivy take over all open spaces, and everything is covered with manure. There is no room for bear or deer or wolves to live, but bugs and vermin flourish. What had been an exaltation of nature becomes nature degraded -- to many a state far less satisfactory than nature left to her own devices which in turn provokes a nostalgia for simpler times.
Left to itself, sooner or later the park will revert back to nature leaving little trace of its former state. But meanwhile, life in the park --except for the bugs, the vermin and the manure carters-- is hell. How then to reverse the process? Obviously it can't be stopped. It has to run its course. Nothing can nourish the oaks and maples back to health (in the park of Western Civilization these trees were stunted, diseased and grotesquely deformed to begin with and their conversion into useful firewood will provoke little mouming). Pruning the shrubbery is next to useless. There are only a couple of alternatives.
The simplest of course is set the whole thing on fire, burn everything to the ground, and start from scratch. Ancient legends and texts around the world seem to indicate that this has happened in the past. Sodom and Gomorrah may refer to such an event; Plato's 'Atlantis' to another version of the same; in the prophetic Hermetic book of Aesclepius (ca. 2nd Century AD) Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice Great Hermes) the Neoplatonic name for Djehuti, or Thoth, the ancient Egyptian embodiment of Divine Wisdom, declares unequivocally that this has been the repeated fate of parks when the parkkeepers go berserk. And of course the potential for a conflagration of this sort is everpresent today-- nuclear, environmental, pestilential, or any combination thereof.
If that is what is actually in store, the Armageddonites have the only solution. Head for the hills, prepare bunkers stocked with assault rifles and supplies of pork and beans and hope to ride out the holocaust. But if that is not the preodained and ineluctable denouement, perhaps the park can be revivified even as it goes through its necessary process of dissolution: salvaging what is still viable and salvageable, dismantling and recycling what is not, disposing of what is noxious, toxic and inessential, and reestablishing the correct chain of command as a prerequisite to a new order. All of this takes time, vision, a common aim, and a wide variety of complementary skills. Enlightened gardeners must replant trees. (It is a curious fact that, just before they die, trees often produce far more nuts and seeds than they do in healthy maturity.) In this case, the trees will not be genetic clones of the old (the park/civilization analogy is not exact --analogies never are. But they will be viable mutations based upon the same eternal principles -- what Schwaller de Lubicz called the doctrine of the return to the "source"; what Graham Hancock calls "the science of immortality". In ancient Egypt the gardeners were the followers of Osiris, divine creator of civilization, embodiment of the principle of regeneration and renewal, the mortal "god" who dies but who carries the seed of eternal life (Horus) within him. Landscape architects (sons and daughters of Ptah, architect of heaven and earth) must redesign the entire plan to conform to the radically changed conditions of a new precessional age. The parkkeepers have to be sobered up and brought back to sanity --or summarily fired and replaced. The arrogant manure carters must be deprived of power and put back in their rightful, honorable, but subordinate positions. But before constructive gardening and landscaping activity can take place on a grand scale, before the ponds can be purified and restocked with flsh, the ground first has to be thoroughly cleared. The brambles have to be chopped down, the poison ivy pulled out by the roots, the deadwood cleared away and the weeds composted. In Egypt, this was the work of Sekhmet, the lioness, female aspect of the fire principle, she who both destroys and heals ... through fire and purgation. Appropriately equipped with flamethrower and chainsaw to cope with the stubborn contemporary breed of weed, bramble and poison ivy, it is Sekhmet's twenty-first century job to clear the way for the gardeners and architects; to apply the wrecking ball to the Church of Progress.
Civilization is not a birthright, it is a privilege. We can act upon it, or ignore it -- the latter at our peril.
Hers is the path of constructive destruction. In this monthly column I shall be reporting on Sekhmet's work-in-progress.
Part Two
SEKHMET ATTENDS LOW MASS IN THE CHURCH OF PROGRESS
The Fundamentalist Christian right commonly accuses its atheistic opposition (under its various aliases: ėRationalismķ, ėSecular Humanismķ, ėMaterialismķ) of being a religion in its own right, and it is tempting to discount any accusation made by the fundamentalist right (to turn the old joke inside out: with fundamentalists for enemies, Rationalists hardly need friends). Predictably, the accusation is both ridiculed and denied by the targeted Rationalists, Materialists and Secular Humanists. They point to the lack of any official, written dogma and of any central authority vested with the power to enforce dogma; they emphasize the absence of a belief in any sort of transcendent reality (the essence of all other religions), they disavow both faith and personal experience as valid means for accessing truth, and they insist upon empirical proof as the sole criterion for the establishment of truth.
So: Is the Church of Progress really a Church? Even as I ask this rhetorical question, the New York Times serendipitously provides definitive (if decorously covert) proof that it is.
THE REAL STAR WARS: BETWEEN ORDER AND CHAOS:
Astronomers now know that not even the constellations represent any meaningful order. But every so often some maverick astronomers come up with tantalizing clues of a hidden universal order... In a report published in the Jan. 9 issue of Nature, an international team of astronomers say they have found reason to believe that superclusters --giant globs of galaxies-- are arranged in a gargantuan ėthree dimensional chessboardķ expending throughout the heavens...
If true, this would be stunning news. There is little reason to believe that the big bang, the explosion that began the universe, scattered its debts with more care than any other blast. A universe so fastidiously and geometrically arrayed would require... new laws of physics. Not many astronomers will be easily persuaded that we dwell in the cells of a celestial lattice ...
Maybe back in the beginning the dice were loaded. As the universe was unfolding, some unknown ordering principle might have been at work.. One of the hard- earned lessons of modern science is how effortlessly structure can bubble up from below, without the need of a great designer. Random genetic mutations, sifted by natural selection, give rise to biological order. And from the unpredictable quantum fluctuations of subatomic particles emerge the crystalline scaffolding of atoms and molecules. Gravity creates its own order .. (George Johnson, New York Times, 19/ 1 /97)
Sounds legit, doesn't it? 'Rational', unemotional, factual, above all scientific. But read carefully. It's simultaneously subterfuge and propaganda. The dogma may be unofficial and unwritten, but it is demonstrably Church of Progress dogma nonetheless. The church Credo goes something like this: the universe is an accident; matter precedes mind; consciousness is a kind of spin-off of matter; human life, indeed, all life, serves no higher purpose. ėSpiritualķ and ėsacredķ are no more than euphemisms for superstition. There is no consciousness higher than our own (at least not on this planet) and no possible transformation of the material into the spiritual. There is only Progress, hope defrayed into the future. Jacob's ladder no longer bridges the gulf between heaven and earth. It has been laid flat along the ground. Given enough time, science and technology will establish their version of heaven right here on earth. All we have to do is continue implementing those proven rational values that have brought our planet to its present state. At a certain point, Progress will automatically take over and everyone will live happily ever after. The geneticist, J.B.S. Haldane, with characteristic bluntness, set out the premises upon which his materialism was founded: 1) ėThat there was material before there was mindķ. 2) ėThat there were events before there were any minds to perceive those eventsķ. These perfectly undemonstrable and metaphysical notions are set out in a book drolly entitled: SCIENCE AND LIFE: Essays of a Rationalist. To this day Haldane enjoys a high reputation among fellow metaphysicians calling themselves Rationalists.
Haldane and George Johnson decades later in the New York Times seem to be talking science but are actually expressing a system of beliefs, a Credo. Call it the atheology of the Church of Progress. Only it is not acknowledged as a Credo. It is called ėreasonķ and it is said to follow from the facts of science. But it has little to do with science. Its several chief elements are in no sense necessary corollaries of the actual scientifically validated facts of the physical world --as its faithful pretend.
It is the religious, or quasi-religious nature of these beliefs that provide half the evidence to substantiate the accusation-- that Rationalism/Materialism/ Secular Humanism is a religion in its own right. And this accusation has been leveled by sources far more reputable and better informed than the fundamentalist, creationist right. The Church likes to pretend to the public that all who oppose its dogma are Creationists by definition and therefore unworthy of serious attention. But the philosopher of Science Paul Feyerabend has spelled out the similarities between the acknowledged and the unacknowledged churches in detail (Science in a Free Society, 1978) and much earlier in the century the eminent mathematician and philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead wrote: ėThe certainties of science are a delusion. They are hedged round with unexplored limitations. Our handling of scientific doctrines is controlled by the diffused metaphysical concepts of our epoch (italics mine) Even so, we are continually led into errors of expectation. Also, whenever some new mode of observational experience is obtained the doctrines crumble into a fog of inaccuracies.ķ (Adventure In Ideas, Cambridge University Press, 1933).
Yet sixty five years after Whitehead wrote those words, George Johnson in The New York Times is still talking hidden metaphysics all the while firmly believing he is talking scientific fact or basing his conclusions upon established fact. He is not. The big bang is hypothesis, currently the most fashionable cosmological hypothesis but hypothesis nonetheless, and sharply opposed by cosmologists and mathematicians no less qualified than those who support it. ėRandom mutation giving rise to biological orderķ is speculation. No scientist has ever witnessed or produced a random mutation that gave rise to biological order. Natural selection isn't even speculation. It is a label applied to a mystery, and by definition devoid of scientific explicative power. It is a tautology -- since what has survived automatically has ėsurvival valueķ and thus science is obliged to ascribe alleged mechanisms ensuring survival by hindsight; which often takes deliciously fanciful form -- when, for example, trying to account for the ėsurvival valueķ of the peacock's tail, or the bower birds architectural feats, or the entire duck-billed platypus. ėNatural selectionķ proves nothing and is not itself in any sense proved. (Actually, I would hazard that if a true civilization somehow springs from the ashes of Progress somewhere over the course of the next century, Neo-Darwinism will eventually be regarded as perhaps the most deluded superstition ever to have infected the human mind. It will be seen as a kind of intellectual Cargo Cult of the Western World and currently fashionable proponents such as Richard Dawkins in England and Stephen Jay Gould in America will be remembered -- if, indeed they are remembered at all-- as laughing stocks; figure of fun to set up and knock down in slapstick student skits.) From: JAWSPHINX@aol.com Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 13:00:46 -0400 (EDT) To:
The assertion that ėstructure bubbles up from belowķ on its own, independent of any guiding principle, design, or intelligence is speculation by definition, since a guiding principle, design (in the sense of plan) or intelligence is by definition invisible, unmeasurable, unreplicable and therefor unscientific. A visitor from outer space confronted by this article and unaware of the necessity of an author, might well conclude that it ( and Mr. Johnson's article, too) is also ėbubbling up from below independent of any guiding principle, design, or intelligence.ķ How would he/she prove otherwise ... scientifically. The principal if not sole attraction of each of these hypotheses is simply that each is founded upon Coincidence as its causal metaphysical principle.
Mr. Johnson has woven hypothesis, speculation, fantasy and imagination together into a tapestry that he labels ėscienceķ and that is readily printed as ėscienceķ by the staid and respectable New York Times, staunch guardian of the status quo. But it is not science. It is an exercise in what Whitehead rightly terms ėthe diffused metaphysical concepts of our epochķ. Any reader of this column has read a thousand versions of that same article: it is the utterly predictable reaction to any new finding that in any way challenges the central doctrine. Johnson's obvious aim is to minimize or slough off the possible revolution in cosmology that might ensue if it were proven that superclusters are arranged in a gigantic three dimensional pattern -- since this would challenge the supremacy of that great Ungod: Coincidence. But because the challenge in this case comes from astronomers working within the Church itself, and that challenge is abstruse and arcane, it poses no immediate threat to the hegemony of the Church and so is handled with some civility. If the challenge comes from outside the establishment, and if it concerns matters either more accessible or more exciting to the lay public (e.g.: UFO'S, astrology, alien abductions, homeopathy, psi phenomena, crop circles, monuments on Mars, Atlantis -- Sekhmet will be reporting on some of these controversies in future issues) the tone changes dramatically. All pretense to civility is dropped, and the offending material is if possible ignored, but if impossible to ignore then attacked, derided or misrepresented.
It is the rightful job of science to determine the facts of the physical world but it is no longer science when unwarranted metaphysical conclusions are drawn upon those facts. Once these metaphysical conclusions are accepted as axiomatic and institutions grow up around them dedicated to proselytizing them and preserving them from attack, the similarities to institutionalized religion (as we know it in the West, especially) become obvious. This makes up the other half of the accusation: the Church of Progress as a repressive, autocratic institution intent upon ferreting out, exposing and persecuting its heretics.
In our next column Sekhmet will direct her attention to the the guardians of the Unfaith, the Jesuits of the Church of Progress: Science, Education and the Press ...
Part Three
SEKHMET SPEAKS (3) PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANTI-SCIENCE SOCIETY STOP THE PRESS: Headlines in the last week of February announced the successful cloning of sheep and monkeys by scientists in the U.K. and in America. Though in this month's Quest, Sekhmet had intended to continue her discussion of the Church of Progress, these cloning experiments sent her foraging into her long-term memory bank for an account of the Proceedings of the Anti-Science Society (a shadowy organization whose alleged roots stretch back to ancient Greece when a prototype of the contemporary society was founded by Platonists in an attempt to combat the pernicious proto-rationalism of Aristotle.) The present society annually presents A.S.S. Awards --mainly to scientists who have inadvertently succeeded in holding modern science up to ridicule and derision. Sure enough, Sekhmet was able to retrieve an account of the proceedings of the Society written some twenty years ago, when the future spectre of cloned complex organisms was first raised. It is worth noting here that the Society's staunch neo-Luddite principles expressed in these proceedings have been somewhat softened over the past two decades, largely through the interest shown by the television and film industries in subjects normally denounced by Establishment science and by the tremendous communications powers inherent in newly developed computer technology, specifically the Web, which permits the instant worldwide broadcasting of material that would normally be either ignored or vilified by Church of Progress forces. Apart from this caveat, however, Sekhmet finds this account of the Anti-Science Society's Proceedings largely applicable to the possibilities inherent in the above-cited headlines. Sekhmet will continue her discussion of the Church of Progress itself in upcoming columns.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANTI-SCIENCE SOCIETY SENSATION! A.S.S. SUPPORTS GENETIC ENGINEERING, In an astonishing turnabout, the Anti-Science Society recently came out strongly in favor of continuing research into all forms of genetic engineering. Largely responsible for the surprise conclusion was a paper read by the Society President, alchemist and astrologer, Dr. Ephraim Lilly.
Dr. Lilly, who has doctorates in both modern mathematics and philosophy from Oxbridge University, revealed his the discovery of the mathematical, psychological and sociological constant that, applied to all questions of science and technology, allowed for objective, quantifiable criteria. In lay terminology, Dr. Lilly dubbed the new constant, 'The Bungle Factor'. Dr. Lilly proved to an initially skeptical audience that by simply applying The Bungle Factor the single great question hanging over the history of science might be answered: Why, in over three centuries of science and technology, has not one single thing worked out the way it was intended? Apologizing for descending to the obvious, Dr. Lilly listed several examples of science gone awry:
- Theoretical research into the structure of matter leading to the actual, permanent, imminent threat of nuclear annihilation.
- Perversion of the sacred science of Alchemy into a gross manipulation of matter, or Chemistry, leading to stockpiles of bacteriological and chemical weapons; and simultaneous, irreversible toxic poisoning of the earth, sea and skies.
- Advances in modern medicine leading to uncontrolled and uncontrollable population expansion with no foreseeable means for feeding additional billions of people.
- The miracle of mass communication that instantly disperses news of disasters and catastrophes about the world, thereby infecting all 'humanity instantly with psychic poison --since all 'impressions' such as bad news produce quantifiable, demonstrable negative emotional states. While disseminating psychic poison, the miracle of mass communication has also served to bury, minimize or otherwise camouflage whatever there may be that is genuinely new and valuable, creating a situation in which genuine learning is less accessible to the layman than it was in the worst periods of the so-called Dark Ages.
Dr. Lilly admitted that these negative results brought about by science and technology were relatively minor, and they were cited simply because they were easily defined and isolated, and equally easily explained by applying The Bungle Factor constant. The more important negative results of science and technology were not of course physical, but spiritual: the manner in which improvements to the Standard of Living inescapably destroyed Man's Way of Life; how technology effectively deprived the great mass of men from exercising the creative function that is both their birthright and their responsibility; ultimately, the one and only means Man has for contacting his divine, inner, spiritual self. These, and related questions, required a more sophisticated application of The Bungle Factor,, claimed Dr. Lilly, the results of which would be reserved for a future meeting.
BUNGLE FACTOR CHALLENGED AS A UNIVERSAL
An objection was raised from the floor. It was accepted as proven that the Bungle Factor applied to each and every instance where science and technology planned to benefit humanity, but when Science turned deliberately to destructive ends, it realized its intentions with a somewhat disconcerting consistency. Did this not relegate The Bungle Factor to but one aspect of science? It did not, claimed Dr. Lilly. The difference was merely one of degree. Whereas, all planned benefits turned into their opposites, exercises in planned destruction invariably turned out to be far more destructive and insidious than anyone had foreseen, due to The Bungle Factor. The example of radiation was cited --predictable from theoretical formulae but in practice infinitely more dangerous than anticipated; the carcinogenic qualities of defoliants was another example. A further question was raised: Was there, in the history of science and technology, any one single invention or discovery whose direct or indirect drawbacks did not outweigh its advantages? Dr. Lilly replied that his research team had studied just this question for the past twenty years. To date, the only invention meeting this difficult criterion was the bicycle, but he did not the exclude the possibility that others might be found.
Dr. Lilly vetoed further discussion, and returned to the Society's stand vis-a-vis genetic engineering.
THE BUNGLE FACTOR AND GENETIC ENGINEERING
Genetic proponents looked forward to the time when all genetic defects in man, animals and plants would yield to the corrective methods of science, and man would at last live free from the inefficient and capricious effects of Evolution. Through genetic manipulation, science would at last realize that Victorian dream: The Conquest of Nature.
The application of the Bungle Factor, and recourse to recent history with its examples of Thalidomide, DDT, PCP's and other acronyms ensured that these planned benefits would work out otherwise. But meanwhile, it was the negative possibilities of genetic engineering that aroused suspicion among scientists. Leaving aside for the moment the possibility of monstrous, self-replicating hybrids out of the pages of science fiction magazines, or the spectre of Hitlerian eugenics and the production of a cloned Master-race, critics were even more apprehensive of scientific attempts to benefit humanity by reproducing exactly those they selected as examples of the highest and most evolved human types.
Sir Peter Medawar, Nobel-Prize winning immunologist once declared, 'Science is a very great work, perhaps the greatest of all the works of man.' Though it was this statement that won for Sir Peter the first of his four A.S.S. awards, Dr. Lilly agreed that very few working scientists would find fault with it.
It followed inescapably that the perpetrators of 'the greatest of all the works of man' were necessarily the greatest men, and therefore the most deserving of duplication. Dr Lilly agreed that the prospect of a limitless number of cloned great scientists was perhaps the most terrifying scenario yet faced by Man. Fortunately, however, it was doomed to fail, and in this happy instance, it was possible even to predict the manner in which The Bungle Factor would operate.
THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW OF LIFE
Modern science defines organic life as 'The interaction between genetics and environment,' and having framed this definition, science believes it has reduced life to Rationalist terms, obviating any need for metaphysics or divine teleology. But, pointed out Lilly, like all Reductionist attempts, the definition was specious, and for all its rational appearance, it was no more than a convenient label applied to a mystery; Science playing Rumpelstiltskin and hoping the problem would vanish.
Advances in molecular biology now make it possible to quantify genetics. By breaking down environment into a finite number of variables that, too, may be quantified in some acceptably statistical fashion. But the 'interaction' that effects the interchange of forces between genetics and enviroment is undefined, ignored, and in fact, given the methodolgy of modern science,outside its scope. Therefore, continued Dr. Lilly, to define Life as a result of 'the interaction between genetics and environment' has no more meaning than to define a child as a result of 'the interaction between a man and a woman,' or to define music as the result of 'the interaction between the violinist and the violin.' In each case, the crucial third force --'love' or 'desire' in the former example, 'inspiration' in the latter-- is unaccounted for, and remains utterly mysterious; only the results can be measured, the cause remains hidden. What then is the 'interaction' that mediates between genetics and environment? It is of course that higher music that Plato called 'The Music of the Spheres', or Astrology.
As all Anti-Science Society members knew, the sophisticated statistical studies of Michel Gauquelin, Hans Eysenk, and others proved categorically that Virological factors play a part, perhaps the determining part, in the formation of the human personality. Against odds of many millions to one against chance, great athletes are born with Mars rising on the Eastern Horizon, or on one of the 'Angles' (in astrological terminology). Against similar odds, great scientists are born when Saturn is there.
Since it is the 'personality' of the athlete or scientist that channels his energies into the chosen field, and since it is the position of the stars at the moment of birth that in whole, or in part, determines the personality (in the more precise symbolic terminology of Ancient Egypt, the spiritual complex called the KA) humanity can go on, allowing geneticists to putter about, secure in the knowledge that all attempts to exactly duplicate chosen scientists will fail. The results might be strange; psychological hybrids torn apart by inner contradictions; with Venus, or Jupiter rising, the unhappy clone might end up a rationalist poet, or an analytical priest or a logical politician, but at least humanity at large would not be affected. The question was then raised: could not science take these astrological factors into account and succeed?
Dr. Lilly replied that this was impossible for two reasons. The first was that the exact astrological conditions responsible for the gene donor's personality would not re- occur for another 25,900 years, the cycle of the 'Great' or Platonic Year that incorporates the full recession of the Equinoxes. Therefore, by taking astrological factors into account, science could at best approximate a personality 'type', but never the precise individual. Secondly, there was no reason to fear even this possibility. Though the statistical evidence supporting the astrological premise was conclusive and incontrovertible, science to date had managed to ignore it, and, Lilly predicted, science would continue to ignore it. To admit the validity of astrology would be to acknowledge the metaphysical or divine basis of the universe, and there was not the slightest fear that science would undermine its own faith in chance and meaninglessness to do this. Therefore, concluded Lilly, the predictable operation of the, Bungle Factor ensured that the greatest possible genetic disaster, the cloning of scientists, was doomed to failure.
POSITIVE REASONS FOR SUPPORTING GENETIC ENGINEERING
Though A.S.S. members were unable to fault Dr. Lilly's reasoning, most still did not see why the Society should actively support a genetic engineering program. Dr. Lilly cited a number of cogent reasons.
- Genetic research is a delicate, time-consuming process. Geneticists agree that practical application of their discoveries is unlikely for over a decade. Under the worst of scenarios, declared Lilly, genetic programs gone awry are unlikely to be more destructive than other, already developed programs. Genetics is a fashionable new discipline, and it is also expensive. Therefore, support for genetics research is likely to draw both talented personnel and vital money away from other pursuits guaranteed to be even more destructive.
- Since the world already teeters on the brink of an entire spectrum of catastrophes -ecological, military, agricultural, chemical, bacteriological, nuclear, and psychological- all of them directly or indirectly traceable to science, the chances were that one or several of these disasters would catch up to us long before we would have to face the consequences of genetic tinkering. Therefore, why bother to oppose it?
- Perhaps most important, the Society prided itself on its pragmatic, unquixotic approach to scientific problems. Any study of the history of science was enough to convince even the slowest of students that neither sanity nor reason have ever dissuaded scientists from pursuing to the end any line of research no matter how obviously dangerous, useless or silly it may have been. If, said Lilly, in the face of Three Mile Island it is still possible to find strong lobbies of scientists, politicians and industrialists supporting nuclear energy, what-possible hope could there be of talking anyone out of genetic engineering? But due to the Bungle Factor, we may rest secure that whatever the intentions of the scientists involved, the results will differ radically. And it is this that gave scope for a measure of optimism. Given the prevailing morals and values of Science, any divergence from plan was liable to be an improvement.
Part Four
SEKHMET ATTEND LOW MASS IN THE CHURCH OF PROGRESS (PART II)
We left Sekhmet, two columns back, looking into the question: Is the Church of Progress really a church? She had concluded that the Church qualified as a Church on the philosophical level.
To recapitulate: If, as a starting point, we concentrate on religion's primary metaphysical function and call it, 'a system of undemonstrable beliefs held without reference to physical evidence,' theologians might not like it very much but we think it unlikely that Rationalists would object. Yet they subscribe to just such a system of undemonstrable beliefs --the Credo of meaningless described earlier (There is a vast literature, much of it written by eminent, if marginally heretical, scientists and philosophers proving this point from many different angles.)
This Credo has dispensed with the usual reliance upon a Divine, transcendent, indivisible, undemonstrable god and substituted no less undemonstrable, indivisible but untranscendent Coincidence as creator -- the whole doctrine patched together with the Krazy Glue of Neo-Darwinian evolution. But there is nothing rational or scientific about that either.
Rationalists claim that the inability to prove Divine intention proves the lack of intention; that the inability to prove purpose, proves purposelessness. This is obvious sophistry. If you cannot prove you have been faithful to your wife, does this mean you have been unfaithful?
We cannot physically prove intention or purpose on the human level, much less the Divine, yet we would have precious little science without it.
Moreover, to qualify as science, following the Rationalists' own precepts, that very lack of intention and purposelessness must itself be demonstrable, measurable, predictable and replicable. Of course it is not, nor can it be, for the simple reason that these criteria are value judgments, by definition beyond the pale of both experimental and theoretical science. So the insistence upon accident and purposelessness, and upon reason in turn is metaphysics in its own right, a set of unprovable assumptions, no more and no less metaphysical than the acknowledged metaphysical systems of other religions, differing from them only in that the assumption are wholly nihilistic.
Demonstrability, replicability, etc. represent decisions; decisions made by the priesthood to distingish between what deserves inclusion in the 'real world' and what does not. But following definitions laid down by Church atheologians themselves, a decison, any decision, cannot help but be a value judgement. Since values are purely subjective, (according to the Church of Progress but not according to most other religions) they have no objective reality, and therefore play no part in the 'real world'. Thus, ironically, according to its own standards, this Church is as subjectively based as those it disavows. And therefore it, like the others, is rooted irrevocably in physical unreality. The Credo is neither science not reason; it is merely what most scientists happen to believe.
So, seen as a system of undemonstrable belief Rationalism stands exposed as a religion. However, when Rationalism is commonly criticized as a religion, its critics are often referring to a corrupt and tyrannical institution set up to preserve those beliefs from heresy or other forms of attack rather than a metaphysical doctrine. In other words, these critics are drawing parallels to the political rather than the philosophical aspects of the church. This accusation is equally valid, and it has been leveled often, even from within its own priesthood. The parallels between this modern day Church of Progress and the organized Church of Rome at its worst are legion but both diffused and concealed. The relatively clearcut roles played by the Pope and College of Cardinals in deciding upon what is dogma and in enforcing those decisions no longer exist. There is no formal hierarchical structure to lay down the law. The Church of Progress (usually but not always) eschews bulls, edicts and encyclicals and its unpoken agenda -to enforce belief- is never acknowledged. Though no less pervasive and invasive to society as a whole, the C. of P. extends its influence on a tacit, consensual basis through its three separate but complementary orders of Jesuits: Science, Education and the Press.
For two centuries, these have been the forces or institutions that have shaped Western society, and consequently the rest of the world. While their power is universally recognized, they are seldom examined within their rightful religious context: as guardians and proselytizers of the Church of Progress. In a nutshell: Science calls the tune, Education plays it, the Press gives it rave reviews. For over two centuries the three have worked closely hand in hand. But that spirit of cooperation is not quite what it used to be.
THE JESUIT ORDER OF SCIENCE
Though the Church of Progress insists its dogma is based upon science, this is not true, and has not been true for almost a century. The energetic rather than material nature of matter contravenes the Church's simple-minded materialism while its fundamental premise of a mechanical, accidental universe has been challenged from within its own ranks by at least a few of its own most eminent physicists and biologists. As bookstores add metaphysical sections to cater to the exponentially growing interest, there is often a separate shelf devoted to titles exploring the relationships between metaphysics and the expanding frontiers of science.
The important point to make here is that the latest findings of science not only fail to support the basic materialist dogma of the Church of Progress, but in many instances, particularly in physics and biology, they appear to contravene it. Most of these ideas have not yet made significant inroads into education or the press. They are too complex, too remote and too philosophically abstruse to unsettle the rank and file of Church unfaithful. On the other hand, the hero worship science enjoyed through all of the 19th and most of the 20th Century is no longer unconditional. Over the past several decades, a number of heavily funded glossy magazines intended to make the wonders of science intelligible to the educated lay reader have foundered. Editorials in those that survive repeatedly stress the difficulty of attracting high level students to science. The authors imagine it is the science programs that are to blame, but actually it is science itself, this secular, earth-bound science that even on its highest and purest level, concerns itself with practically nothing that matters to human life.
Science still commands considerable popular respect, but some of the glamor has gone, and much of the trust. As the dire ecological and environmental consequences of two hundred years of unrestrained science-based technology come home to roost, science is saddled with a measure of the blame. Its authority is on the wane. So even though the general public has been hoodwinked into thinking that science still backs up Church of Progress dogma, that support does not mean what it once did. As far as the Church is concerned, Science today is almost as much figurehead as formulator. It therefore falls largely upon Education and the Press to inculcate, foster and maintain the unfaith among the general public.
THE JESUIT ORDER OF EDUCATION
What is called Education is not education in any meaningful sense of the word (derived from educere, to lead forth.) In reality it is no more than a vast seminary program, designed to select and develop candidates for the Church of Progress priesthood, while producing a docile, unquestioning laity. The original Jesuits used to boast, 'Give us the child until he's seven years old and he'll be ours for life,' (or words to that effect). In principle, the Jesuits of today's Church of Progress educational programs would seem to wield even more decisive influence. They have us in their power for at least twelve years, often for sixteen or more, and during the first twelve we have the various elements of the church Credo drummed into our heads without respite. Neo- Darwinian evolution (evolution as a chance process) is taught as though it were fact. Progress is taught as though it were manifest destiny. All past civilizations are presented as though they were but misconceived dry runs for the technological age that superceded them. All that is not science is presented as superstition, with the possible exception of Western secular art and literature --which enjoy a certain status as harmless diversions from the ongoing serious business of science/technology. (In The New York Times the section devoted to the arts is called Arts and Leisure. Imagine the ruckus if the section devoted to science were called Science and Tinkering.) No hint is ever given that other points of view exist, and may be held even within the Church itself.
While Progress is supposed to be furthered through the free interchange of ideas, our extended introduction to Progress, through education, is as thorough a form of brainwashing as anything devised by those earlier Jesuits, or for that matter anything existing under oppressive ideological political systems that make no pretense of open- mindedness. Even so, the advantage enjoyed by modern educators over these others is more apparent than real.
Like all religious institutions, this Church is viable only insofar as its truths appear immutable, and the philosophy based upon its truths coincides with real or perceived human needs. To survive and prosper the Church (any church) must inspire allegiance, devotion, faith --coercion will take it only so far. But there are psychological as well as logical problems confronting a Church forced by its own atheology to demand a fervent belief in disbelief (in everything save Reason of course, and the various elements of the Credo).
As is so often the case with this religion that calls itself 'Rationalism', a deceptive nomenclature confuses what would otherwise be much clearer. A belief in something is called 'credulity'. Credulity retains its hold through 'faith' which must play no part in the life of the rational human being. On the other hand, the no less passionate and equally undemonstrable belief in nothing is called Reason. Reason is sustained through the diligent exercise of ëskepticism'. But the role skepticism plays in a society dominated by the Church of Progress is rarely recognized for what it is: a euphemism for negative credulity, or cynicism, which manifests invariably in shrill debunkery -- as anyone who has looked into the evidence for such diverse topics as astrology, the paranormal, UFO'S, crop circles, lost civilizations and alternative medicine knows full well. (Later, Sekhmet will take a skeptical look at skepticism itself)
This attitude has nothing whatever to do with a keen critical sense --perhaps the last quality the Jesuits of Education care to inculcate. For a keen critical sense along with knowledge of the metaphysical and historical alternatives to the Church of Progress Credo would lead swiftly to mass defections. As it stands, cynicism and the need to debunk what cannot be incorporated into the Credo is certainly a frequent corollary of a modern upbringing.
But it is far from universal. That renaissance of interest in spiritual matters gathers strength in direct defiance to Church indoctrination. This amounts to heresy, and is treated accordingly. But meanwhile, even the ongoing campaign carried out by Education, designed to inculcate negative credulity produces wide-scale unexpected effects, effects that are not specifically heretical but nevertheless counterproductive to Church goals.
The intellectually incurious respond to the Church in any case only on its bread-and- circuses level: the cheap thrill of technology. For this majority, church allegiance is maintained only through perpetually re-stimulated enthusiasm (the space program, for example, is the psychological equivalent of selling indulgences and the easy remission of sins that the corrupt Church of Rome resorted to when it was losing its grip -- though the discovery of what appear to be artificial structures on Mars puts a whole different spin on what would otherwise be bread and circuses and of course is treated accordingly: with abuse and/or calculated neglect, a form of consensus censorship). Yet widespread public enthusiasm and interest in space exploration is accompanied by little passionate unfaith. Indeed, many at this level of comprehension accept material C. of P. benefits and, ingrates that they are, violently reject its metaphysics and embrace the mindless evangelical religion that is the other side of the same counterfeit coin.
Most of the intellectually better-equipped also resist deep educational indoctrination. Some vestige of good sense, or perhaps merely an instinct for self preservation combined with insensitivity, allows them to direct their energies toward ambition or success. They live out their lives, perhaps aware that something is awry but yet not sufficiently disturbed to track it to its spiritual source. It is perhaps this that Thoreau had in mind when he said 'most men lead lives of quiet desperation'. By more contemporary thinkers, and especially by politicians, a life lived according to such values is often called 'the pursuit of the American Dream.'
The chief victims of an education that deifies skepticism are, of course, the sensitive. For the only legitimate emotional response to the negative metaphysics of Rationalism is despair (the Existentialists were quite right on this point, wrong chiefly in the direction they took to find a solution). Despair takes many forms among the young, not all of them commonly recognized as despair. The rapid increase in teenage suicide is the most dramatic; drugs are the most obvious; with apathy, rebellion, violence, and an aimless, frenetic hedonism close behind. All happen because of, not in spite of, modern education.
If proof of this sweeping assertion is required, you need only look at what happens when the Church of Progress converts a tribal, or so-called 'primitive' society to its values, or even when it supersedes a highly sophisticated and intellectual but non- technological society. The results are invariable: suicide, drugs, apathy, violence, rebellion and an aimless, frenetic hedonism. (See the telling indictment in anthropologist John H. Bodley's VICTIMS OF PROGRESS, Benjamin Cummings, 1982)
Modern education is to the mind what AIDS is to the immune system. Prolonged, repeated exposure enhances the danger. And all of us, without exception, are called to skepticism (who can avoid going to school?). Yet, miraculously, not that many are chosen. Susceptibility varies widely, and seems mainly restricted to a certain psychological type. Happily for the future of humanity, skeptics cannot be produced at will through education; not in the kind of numbers that ensure the continued hegemony of the Church. While none escape unscathed, many escape. The creative, the courageous and the lucky do not cave in under the strain. They zero in, more or less swiftly, more or less accurately on the problem, locate its source and look elsewhere --often into the past-- for those true, spiritual values that alone can produce and sustain normal functioning human beings. The restoration and restatement of those values in acceptable contemporary form is the real challenge facing humanity. The various catastrophes threatening our planet are all, without exception, results, not causes. All follow naturally, inescapably from adherence to the debased, joyless, negative metaphysics espoused by the Church of Progress in the name of Reason. When and if different values prevail, different results will follow from them... whoops! Sekhmet sees she is running out of room. She will deal with the Jesuits of the Press, with skepticism and self-styled skeptics and with the C. of P.'s Unholy Office, or Chamber of the Inquisition in upcoming columns.
