I think many people know that what we call science was created by the Christian church. Looking at the current opposition between “science and religion,” it is difficult to believe this, but it is true. Monasteries were a kind of scientific center, and most scientists sincerely believed they were engaged in discovering God’s designs. I want to say immediately that here I am not pursuing the goals of church apologetics, especially since that has again become unfashionable. In this case, I want to speak about things larger than any church or religion — namely, about worldview — and draw attention to what scientists have long noted: the phenomenon of “science” arose in Christian countries.
We, regardless of our personal religiosity, are carriers of a certain worldview whose roots lie in Christianity. The essence of this worldview consists in the existence of immutable laws of nature that a person gradually discovers but cannot repeal or change. They can only use them for their own benefit. This is precisely the Christian conception — God created the world and withdrew, muttering “seems like it turned out well…” Subsequently, the world exists according to laws immanently inherent to it. The Old Testament God, for example, despite being known for his heightened activity, nevertheless acts within the framework of his own laws, arranging floods or turning people into salt pillars. A “miracle” is a miracle precisely because it can be identified as a variation of common practice or familiar phenomena. Usually people do not turn into salt pillars, but, say, water “turns” into ice — that is, the very idea of changing states of matter is known, and the “miracle” occurs within the framework of this idea. Well, a flood is simply a very large flood. The New Testament God, meanwhile, does not appear on the scene at all, leaving it to mortals.
The idea of “law discovered by people” seems obvious to us simply because we are not acquainted with any other — pagan representations. This is not difficult to remedy, at least using the example of widely known Greek mythology. Here, gods, demigods, nymphs, dryads, and other entities act. All of them possess their own will and act in their own interests; mortals can use these interests, enter into deals with the gods, and so on. The entire course of events is merely a product of the interaction of wills. The pagan world is a world of absolute voluntarism. Therefore, in paganism there is no concept of miracle. It does not exist because there is no law.
By the way, Greek democracy, which resolved an enormous number of issues by voting, is a typical realization of precisely pagan representations of the world. The laws of Greek poleis are orders that can be revoked by other orders.
Actually, all this is to say that we have again returned to the pagan world. The Enlightenment removed God but left the Christian cosmology, replacing the laws created by God with “laws of nature.” Physics replaced God as the primary cause with the Big Bang. But natural scientists are powerless to change the laws, whatever they are called, and they honestly acknowledge this. Basically, for the natural sciences, only the external attributes have changed. But for the “unnatural” sciences, everything turned out as poorly as possible. There are many reasons here — from the obvious methodological problem of “who here is the subject and who is the object” to the banal use of these sciences for political interests. Basically, if in the 19th century economists still believed they were investigating “God’s design,” today none of them would say such a thing. Moreover, when natural sciences speak of the “unattainability of truth,” it is only about approaching a goal that can be infinite and during which old ideas can be completely refuted. In the “unnatural” sciences today, it is directly said that truth does not exist, and there are only opinions, moreover equivalent ones. “Law” here is understood only as a sufficiently large array of statistical data. That is, here has come complete and final paganism.
The deity in this faith is, of course, the state, since the entire body of “unnatural sciences” exists around its activity.
The state for these people appears as some abstraction. But this is an astonishing abstraction. It is not introduced, like other abstractions, for analytical purposes in some reasoning. This is such an abstraction that actually exists, that is, has some will and goals, but at the same time, we cannot see it and directly interact with it. It would be correct to call it an “essence,” a “spirit,” or a “god.” Let us also note that this essence is immortal — governments change, regimes are overthrown, but the state remains. In life we do not encounter it directly, but always deal with servants of the cult — officials and politicians. This essence is in active interaction with mortals; one can beg something from it, one can try to use it for one’s own purposes, deceive it, and so on, and all this gives a predictable result right here and right now, in this life and, unlike, say, Christian prayer, is a reproducible technology.
The entire political process is built on the interpretation of “state interests,” and its content consists of determining how well the priests prayed and whether the right person was sacrificed. Even such a seemingly maximally rational activity as “state reform” is actually always only a reform of the priestly hierarchy, a way of redistributing “gifts,” and so on, while the state itself does not change at all.
All this, of course, can be attributed to journalistic exaggerations; however, here is what is interesting. I have long encountered an interesting phenomenon. When you converse with moral relativists who especially love to repeat “there is no truth, there are only opinions,” sooner or later it turns out that they are unable to define the state. That is, in no way. These supposedly atheistic, independent, and free-thinking people turn out to be powerless here. Even the all-powerful Google does not help them — they cannot find a suitable definition. And this is not surprising. After all, if one understands that we are dealing not with independence and atheism, but with faith whose god is the state, then it becomes clear that within the framework of faith, God cannot be defined, or rather, cannot be defined otherwise than as “almighty, omnipresent.” Well, since they have no truth and no law, the state for them turns out to be almighty and omnipresent. It can be very difficult for them to acknowledge this, because this contradicts their “free-thinking” and “independence.” But the trouble, of course, is not this, but in the fact that we are all victims of the pagan cult, whether we believe in God, the Big Bang, or say that we believe in nothing.