"In Scientism, not only are non-falsifiable methods employed, the totalitarian tactic of social feeling (social group think, which can be enforced through media, education, politics, corporations, the state, etc.) is used to enforce the 'settled science'. . ."
This paper investigates the conditions of knowledge pertaining to science, distinguishing genuine science from pseudoscience as it relates to Covid-19. I discuss the relationship between science and socio-political structures, illustrating how science can be corrupted into scientism. I argue that the current dominating ideology of technocracy, a form of “modern gnosticism,” is incompatible with Christianity, since it sees the cosmos not as a divine order but a man-made system created by a will to power to dominate man and nature. I show that this Promethean rebellion against God results in the Nietzschian deicide and gnostic recreation of the order of being that leads to our current technocratic totalitarianism and corrupted science concerning COVID-19.
Since everyone presupposes something and has various precommitments in forming beliefs, in approaching factual questions, observing evidence, etc., we will explore the necessary presuppositional commitments for the possibility of knowledge concerning science. This will serve to illustrate how beliefs, ideologies, paradigms, theories, and socio-political structures influence (or even corrupt) the “evidence” and how we ought to approach issues within science. The approach we will take in this paper, therefore, will be a presuppositional analysis of the dominating ideologies and socio-political structures in which science is now operating that leads to the corrupted science and scientism we are currently experiencing with COVID-19.
Scientific knowledge
Before proceeding to discuss science and the demarcation problem (distinguishing science from pseudoscience), let us briefly mention the various types of knowledge and reasoning. This will help to illustrate where science stands in terms of knowledge, and when science ceases being science and becomes scientism. Traditionally there are two standard forms of reasoning: deductive reasoning[i] and inductive reasoning.[ii] The methodology in the empirical sciences is primarily based on induction and known as inductivism, the approach whereby scientific laws are inferred from particular “facts” or observational evidence. Therefore, scientific theories are inferred by reasoning from particular facts to general principles. The problem, however, is that this type of reasoning (ignoring Hume’s problem of induction for the moment) simply amounts to things being probabilistic and –assuming we could establish such reasoning as knowledge – would only count as the lowest type of knowledge.[iii] The more devastating critique is found in David Hume’s problem of induction, which shows that causality cannot be derived from sense experience and that the principle of uniformity of nature cannot be justified from empirical grounds. Since science grounded in induction is based on deriving facts from experience and because it assumes the future will resemble the past (the principle of the uniformity of nature), the belief in the validity of induction and that nature is uniform end up being fallacious assumptions that beg the question (i.e., circular reasoning) and are therefore unjustified.[iv] Of course, one of the alternatives to inductivism is Karl Popper’s theory, which argues that scientists do not need to use induction, since the criterion of falsification makes reasoning from experience deductively valid. However, falsificationalism is fraught with its own difficulties and will simply push the question back to more fundamental epistemological considerations that inevitably lead one to beg the question concerning how they “justify” their criteria for their justification criteria, another instance of circular reasoning and epistemic bootstrapping. Returning to the idea of inductivism by which laws of nature are formulated on the basis of factual evidence, there are additional problems with the very concept of “factual evidence” and the idea that science proceeds by way of accumulation of “facts.” If we read Thomas Kuhn’s The Structures of Scientific Revolution, for example, we find that the history of science does not proceed by accumulating more and more evidence to confirm or adjust/readjust theories as if it were ever approaching a more accurate view of the world. Rather, science always proceeds by way of “assuming” the paradigm/overall theory such that evidence now becomes paradigm-relative and incommensurate with other scientific paradigms/theories. Kuhn shows that this happens not by way of evidence, but by something akin to a “revolution” or coup d’état – “out with the old and in with the new!” In other words, “factual evidence” and what counts as “facts” is relative and dependent upon theory. A change in theory results in a change of fact. This is an indication that an epistemological analysis of “evidence” must occur at the level of paradigms.
Furthermore, even within a single theory it is not clear what constitutes facts, since the only facts that one could agree are independent of any scientific theory are those sense experiences immediately present to the individual. However, the problem here is that this takes “facts” out of the objective public realm and makes them entirely private and subjective.[v] In addition to the problems establishing what constitutes facts and that science doesn’t proceed by an accumulation of “facts,” there are the difficulties with the incommensurateness of scientific paradigms and theories, which even includes current accepted scientific theories. This is something that not only Kuhn realized, but was further described in detail in W.O. Quine’s work. Quine, in his “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” was able to demonstrate that we are simply unable to derive science, or confirm any scientific theory or paradigm, from sense-experience. He and Duhem, in what is called the Quine-Duhem Theory of the Underdermination of Data thesis, revealed that our data, sense-experience, and observations can all fit and support multiple conflicting scientific theories or paradigms; that is to say, the available evidence at any given time will be insufficient for determining what theory or beliefs we should adopt. Therefore, the science is indeed underdetermined by the evidence/data.
What this reveals is that if there are multiple scientific theories (all conflicting with each other) that will all fit the evidence and data, then they all can’t be true and can’t describe the reality of the world or its structures at the same time. This is what leads, among other things, many philosophers of science to reject scientific realism in favor of either anti-realism, metaphysical quietism, or instrumentalism. Quine, Duhem, Laudan, Putnam, Fine, Feyeraband, Dewey, et. al. are in this camp, and think science is not metaphysics and ontology. Given the aforementioned problems in science with the incommensurateness of paradigms and the underdetermination of data, many have argued for science being a praxis/poiesis (knowledge concerned with doing, making, producing – i.e., methodology) rather than theoria (or knowledge about ontology or metaphysics). Many philosophers are inclined to move science out of the ontological/metaphysical sphere and commit oneself to a sort of metaphysical quietism/instrumentalism. Since science is concerned with doing and making, like a tool (i.e., a techne), it is argued that it shouldn’t be concerned with describing reality (ontology) or metaphysics, which is what the vulgar often take it to be. One doesn’t go into their toolbox and expect a screwdriver to tell them about the metaphysics of the world or the ontological structures of reality. Screwdrivers are tools, and although they have something to do with reality, what they have to do is really concerned with production, accomplishing a goal, and doing – not giving us a metaphysical commentary. Likewise, they argue we should view science in the same way. It is a tool for making, doing, producing, etc., and not in the category of ontology or metaphysics. Scientific theories, scientific facts, laws, etc. are no truer than, nor do they describe reality more accurately than do our screwdrivers and hammers.
Rather than thinking that each statement (e.g., “the atom has a nucleus,” etc.) maps on to reality in a one to one correspondence (a naïve realist or verificationalst view), Quine suggests “that our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body.” In other words, statements only have meaning within the greater “fabric” or “web” of beliefs and language structures, i.e., paradigms. In fact, he says it is better to think of the entities, properties, laws, et. al. (e.g. atoms, electrons, etc.) to be something like mythological characters we posit in order to serve some functional purpose within the overall general story (i.e., scientific paradigm). Whether one takes a realist, critical realist, an instrumentalist, or a metaphysical quietist position on science, what becomes evident from the literature and history is that science does not reach the level of knowledge that the vulgar and those who ascribe to scientism think that it does. This has particular significance for our considerations on the COVID science, since most who support the official stance on COVID, together with their prescribed recommendations, ascribe a greater epistemic status to science than it really has. One of the issues that plague our common and contemporary views of science (a factor that often leads to scientism) is a fundamental confusion between methodology (methods for obtaining desired results) and ontology (reality). Because of the pragmatic success of the methodology in modern science, many are led to think that science gives us an exalted, objective, or comprehensive knowledge of the world. However, the pragmatics of methodology does not necessarily equate to knowledge of reality (i.e., just because it works doesn’t mean that it is true). As we have seen from the Quine/Duhem underdetermination of data thesis, you can have multiple conflicting scientific paradigms and theories whose individual methodologies all “work” and whose descriptions all fit the appearances/data, but nevertheless still wouldn’t be “true” given the fact that they contradict each other.
In conclusion, since as Michael Polanyi states, the “premises of science on which all scientific teaching and research rest are the beliefs held by scientists on the general nature of things,”[vi] we are brought back to our initial considerations on how various beliefs, ideologies, and socio-political structures influence and even corrupt “evidence” and turn science into scientism. As Anthony O’Hear points out, “Much of what scientists tell us of these things inevitably goes way beyond anything we have evidence for. Any evidence we have is necessarily drawn from a tiny part of the whole universe, and may not be representative or indicative of the whole.”[vii] Taking this in conjunction with how science has currently been elevated to the status of absolute truth,[viii] we have reason to suspect that what is been presented with the COVID science may be corrupted into scientism. Therefore, let us turn our attention to scientism.
Scientism
Systems have arisen in history where science ceased being science, yet nevertheless operated under the guise of science. Eric Voegelin identifies both Marxism and National Socialism, although not limited to these alone, as just such systems. In such socio-political structures, the society at large and the majority of scientists in those societies remove God as the intelligible ground of being, that which would ground science, and they begin to create speculative enterprises and systems that make certain questions practically and conceptually impossible.[ix] For example for Karl Marx his concealment in his gnostic speculation takes on the form of an “intellectual swindle.” Voegelin states: “Marx’s prohibition of questions has to be characterized as an attempt to protect the ‘intellectual swindle’ of his speculation from exposure by reason; but from the standpoint of the adept Marx the swindle was the ‘truth’ that he had created through his speculation, and the prohibition of questions was designed to defend the truth of the system against the unreason of men.”[x]
Recent questions that have also become prohibited are the questions about what makes science actually science. Other conceptually impossible actions within the neo-gnostic systems include the questioning of the “settled science.” If answers are given, it is often met with another speculative explanation that can neither be verified nor falsified. Hence, the “science” that is incapable of being falsified moves out of the realm of science and into the domain of pseudo-science. Voegelin goes on to argue that this takes on a religious quality and becomes known as scientism. Augusto Del Noce points out that “the distinctive ideology of the ‘technological society’ is scientism, the ‘view of science as the ‘only’ true knowledge…” This, he argues inevitably leads to a technocratic totalitarianism. He states, “Now, an advocate of scientism, and a society based on his way of thinking, cannot help being totalitarian inasmuch as his conception of science . . . cannot be the object of any proof . . . [he] does not intend to elevate other forms of thought to a higher level . . ., but he simply ‘denies them.’”[xi] In Scientism, not only are non-falsifiable methods employed, the totalitarian tactic of social feeling (social group think, which can be enforced through media, education, politics, corporations, the state, etc.) is used to enforce the “settled science.” In fact, both the positivists and founders of Scientism, Saint-Simon and Comte, advocated for the use of “social feeling” tactics to subordinate individuals and ideologically conform them to the new system in the name of “progress.” Voegelin identifies these things as essential components of gnostic systems and key features of Scientism.
There is a definite link to Scientism and technocracy. Neil Postman states:
By Scientism, I mean three interrelated ideas that, taken together, stand as one of the pillars of Technopoly… [1] the methods of the natural sciences can be applied to the study of human behavior… [2] social science generates specific principles which can be used to organize society on a rational and humane basis. This implies that technical means-mostly “invisible technologies” supervised by experts–can be designed to control human behavior and set it on the proper course… [3] faith in science can serve as a comprehensive belief system that gives meaning to life, as well as a sense of well-being, mortality, and even immortality.[xii]
What should be concerning to us is that we are finding these exact same elements, attitudes, and things happening now amidst the “COVID science.” In fact, it is something that existed prior to the virus with the issues surrounding the “settled science” of climate change. Although there may be scientists who believe in God, the overwhelming majority of scientists and the system itself that science now exists in, operates on definite secular atheistic assumptions. This current system is historically situated in our post-Enlightenment, technocratic-gnostic socio-political structure. Furthermore, as the philosopher of science Anthony O’Hear points out, “if science itself can take on some of the characteristics of mythology, it is also true that science, being part of culture produced by human beings, cannot remain immune from other cultural and ideological influences,”[xiii] and will inevitably be shaped by technocratic ideas and powers. Therefore, let us look at various epistemological techniques to determine the trustworthiness of certain scientific claims and see how certain ideologies and power structure can possibly corrupt science and medicine.
Epistemic Litmus Tests for Good Science
Philosophers often propose thought experiments and scenarios that, although they may never be encountered in real life or are even remotely possible, nevertheless serve as epistemic tools to derive certain principles, confirm or falsify various theories, test hypothesis, etc. For example, we only need to think of Descartes’ evil demon thought experiment to illustrate that this served not to confirm that he in fact believed everything was an illusion and deception created by an evil demon, but rather an attempt to show that under the worst case scenario there were things that could or could not be known with certainty. Taking this in conjunction with something like Popper’s falsification principle (the attempt to disprove one’s theory, rather than confirm it), we may find a helpful heuristic in establishing whether we can actually trust the COVID science being presented to us. Let us assume the worst case scenario, which I will later argue there is evidence for, and see if the monopolized narrative and aggressively forced propaganda concerning the COVID science is trustworthy.
Consider the following epistemic litmus test put in the form of a question to determine how we would know something is good science or not. What special methodology, unique insight, or appeal to distinct privileged paradigms would you as an individual scientist use or have that would have allowed you to know that what was being purported to be actual science, either in the National Socialist regime, Stalin’s Russia or any Marxist regime, was in fact science or whether the science was corrupted through dominating ideologies and propaganda? What would make you personally and uniquely distinct from all the rest of the people or scientists in those regimes, people and scientists that all agreed the science was settled, true, authoritative, and provided justification for carrying out certain extreme measures in the name of the “common good”? Now ask yourself, how do you know that you are not in a similar situation? How would you know? Will the science reveal that to you? I would argue scientists are most likely to be in the worst position to determine this. How do I know? Well look at history. Furthermore, what would be the evidence for the trustworthiness of such an “official scientific stance” (i.e., evidence that wouldn’t be question begging, e.g., citing those that would be precisely the ones that are in question)? And how would you argue that those explanations supporting the “official narrative” simply weren’t something similar to a nonfalsifiable conspiracy theory? Now keep in mind that these questions are designed to create a healthy introspection where one can begin to ask important epistemological question about the nature of trust and to raise question about whether the current COVID science is operating properly as science. Going forward we can use similar techniques employed by detectives and prosecutors to determine the trustworthiness of a person or a group, and apply these same techniques to the COVID science narrative as well. Let us call these techniques “detective epistemology.” However, before we go into these techniques, let us turn our attention to the topic of technocracy.
What is Technocracy?
What precisely then is technocracy? The seeds of technocracy begin with Saint-Simon and Comte’s positivism and their scientism. However, the overall ideas begin much earlier than the Saint-Simon and Comte. We see the radical shift in both thinking and orientation that occurs in modernity and the Enlightenment, which includes how man approaches technology and defines knowledge. For example it was Francis Bacon who famously declared that “Human knowledge and human power is the same thing, for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced.”[xiv] Not only is knowledge redefined purely in terms of pragmatic and predictive effects,[xv] a new science, morality, aesthetics, and philosophy is created – in short, a new world. As Phillip Sherrard states, “When Bacon concluded that his novum organum should apply ‘not only to natural but to all sciences’ (including ethics and politics) and that it is to ‘embrace everything,’ he opened the road for the all-inclusive scientific takeover of our culture and for the urban industrialism which is its brainchild.”[xvi] This is the Baconian prescription for “the total scientivization of our world…”[xvii] In his New Atlantis, Bacon “conceived of a new social order dedicated to the expansion of modern science and progress in human achievement through dominion over nature…”[xviii] Nevertheless, the modern project of mechanization is perfected in the likes of Galileo, Descartes, and Newton, whose projects only accept a universal quantitative approach to everything and the application of mathematical techniques to all of nature. In this new social order, anything that does not submit to this universal quantitative project simply was not science. As Sherrard explains, “what could not be caught in the net of numbers was non-science, non-knowledge, and even in the end non-existent.”[xix] This, together with the revolutionary spirit[xx] of the new man who in his pretended autonomy revolted against heaven, resulted in a period that “is characterized by the increasing dominance of anthropocentric forms of political speculation, as opposed to theocentric questions.”[xxi] Mircea Eliade himself defined modern societies as “those which have pushed the secularization of life and the Cosmos far enough.”[xxii] In Modernity, as typified by the Enlightenment thinking of Kant, not only must nature and her laws be conceived as radically autonomous from God, the Promethean rebellion against God must also apply to the human will. Both nature and the human will are now conceived to be radically autonomous from God. An autonomous mechanized nature and man leaves us without any objective meaning or grounding in the transcendent. As Bruce Foltz concludes, “such a world offers no inner resistance to manipulation and control, presents no grain against which we ought not to cut. In Heidegger’s words, it is a world that has become an inventory or resource (in German, Bestand) for technological control and consumption.”[xxiii] Technology, therefore, is now being used as the sole means to exploit nature and recreate man and society according to the gnostic, atheistic, ideas to perfect the human experience without grounding this in the living God as the unconditioned grounds of being.[xxiv]
How does this conception of technology relate to the idea of technocracy? The political power of the secular state, which attempts to maintain a canonical morality over a relativistic and nihilistic culture that embraces a plurality of moralities,[xxv] has been exchanged for a “New Atlantis.” Political institutions, as John Gunnell points out, have begun to be “replaced by a ‘parliament’ of technical experts.”[xxvi] This elite class of technical experts have come to be called technocrats. The technocratic image[xxvii] now replaces the politician and provides mankind with a “vision of an industrial society wherein an elite class of engineers, scientists, industrialists, and planners systematically apply technical knowledge to the solution of social problems and the creation of a rational social order.”[xxviii] Much of their ideas and social engineering techniques (“social physics”) are presently being employed amidst our current “science.” The technocratic theory and ideology is further articulated and promulgated by the following important intellectuals: Max Weber, Karl Mannheim, Edward Bellamy, Bertrand Russell, Arthur Koestler, Zbigniew Brzezinski, et. al. However, the term “technocracy” originated with an engineer in 1919 named William Smith, and became popularized as an idea in response to the Great Depression, a movement John Gunnell explains that “for a time gained considerable notoriety and a substantial following,” and “began with a group of technicians and engineers dedicated to social reform whose concepts were modeled on the technological republic in Edward Bellamy’s late-19th-century utopian novel Looking Backward. They were also influenced by the economic theories of Thorstein Veblen and the principles of scientific management growing out of the work of Frederick W. Taylor, both of which suggested, much like the later work of James Burnham in The Managerial Society, that politicians and industrial entrepreneurs should, and would, give way to technical elites.”[xxix] C. P. Snow, who dramatically pursued the problem of the influence of experts on political decisions, argued that “one of the most bizarre features of any advanced industrial society in our time is that the cardinal choices have to be made by a handful of men” in a world of “closed politics” and “secret scientific choices” where there is “no appeal to a larger assembly … in the sense of a group of opinion, or electorate.”[xxx]
Technocracy[xxxi] is intrinsically linked to the socio-political system and policy making in a unique and interesting way. John Gunnell explains Technocracy’s relation to politics as follows: “1. In circumstances in which political decisions necessarily involve specialized knowledge and the exercise of technical skills, political power tends to gravitate toward technological elites. 2. Technology has become autonomous, hence politics has become a function of systemic structural determinants over which it has little or no control. 3. Technology (and science) constitute a new legitimating ideology that subtly masks certain forms of social domination.”[xxxii] Again, much of this goes back to Saint-Simon and Comte’s positivism. Concerning Saint-Simon, Dante Germino explains that there was “a mania for system construction characteristic of the nineteenth century in particular… He was obsessed with the urge to reduce all explanations, all principles to a single over-arching formula. There could be only one science, one government, one religion, one organization of social classes.”[xxxiii] Saint-Simon’s progressivism, socialism,[xxxiv] and positivism would all coalesce into the ideology of scientism, providing the technological managerial ruling elite of the future technocracy with their own religion.[xxxv] As H.G. Wells predicts, the technological elite can use religion for social domination to control populations and the socio-political structures.[xxxvi] The underlying condition that allows a technocracy to come into being and corrupt science, control policy making, manipulate research, and result in certain forms of social domination is the scientism that arises from modernity. However, before getting into how technocracy specifically ties into the current science concerning COVID, let us turn back to our epistemological concerns about evidence, trust, and justification.
Establishing Trustworthiness
The 1976 swine flu that infected 230 soldiers at Fort Dix, resulting in one death appealed to the 1918 Spanish flu in fear of a similar pandemic, which resulted in a vaccine being fast-tracked and the corporate-medical institution with the help of the government instructing all Americans to get vaccinated. After 45 million Americans were vaccinated, the next few years produced four thousand Americans filing vaccine damage claims with the federal government totaling $3.2 billion, 300 deaths attributed to the vaccine, several hundred cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, as well as healthy 20-year-olds ending up as paraplegics – all this despite the death count never rising above one. We find something similar with the H5N1 bird flu scare in 2005. Recall that President Bush declared that 2 million people would die from the bird flu.[xxxvii] However, despite all the hysteria and fears, only 98 people died globally in 2005 and another 115 the following year, revealing the bird flu not to be a pandemic.[xxxviii] What did result from the hysteria were fast-track procedures for licensing and approval of pandemic vaccines created by the WHO: “Ways were sought to shorten the time between the emergence of a pandemic virus and the availability of save and effective vaccines.”[xxxix] Sound familiar? We also had the swine flu scare of 2009 and were warned that it could kill 90,000 Americans and hospitalize 2 million; however, like the aforementioned cases, fears did not materialize. Again, what did materialize was the CDC’s push for Swine flu shots for everyone, despite the severity of the Swine flu being moderate and most often not requiring medical care or hospitalization. We see the exact same pattern with the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, just as in legal cases, we need to determine if there is there possible motive in all these cases that would explain the same recurring pattern of behavior. In other words, who stands to benefit from such overreaction and fear mongering? What is clear is that both Big Pharma and Big Tech (which form essential parts of the technocracy) have benefited, and therefore, we have a potential motive for the overinflating numbers, creating fear, excessive governmental control, and the suppression or censoring of any evidence that would contradict that such events are actually pandemics or that there are other safer and more effective treatments other than what Big Pharma is prescribing and putting on the market. In fact, we have John Hopkins University revealing that COVID deaths have been manipulated and were exaggerated, which confirms the same pattern that we have noticed in the hysterics of supposed past pandemics.[xl] Therefore, let us take a look at the relationship between drug companies and the medical community to see how corruption of science and medicine can occur.
Drug Companies and Doctors as a Source of Corruption
The cronyism between drug companies (Big Pharma), the medical and research establishments, and government is a major source of corruption that often prevents us from doing good science and practicing acceptable medicine. We will soon see how this is tied to technocracy and the managerial ruling elite. Dr. Marcia Angell, MD, former Editor in Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine (one of the most prestigious medical journals) wrote an article in January 2009 entitled “Drug Companies and Doctors: A Story of Corruption”[xli] that examines how corporate-academic liaisons have corrupted the integrity of medicine. As pointed out earlier, there are incentives and motives for drug companies to promote or even lie about drugs, exaggerate diseases, promulgate fears about diseases in order to financially benefit from the sales of their drugs.[xlii] Since drug companies provide the major funding for research, Dr. Angel argues that drug companies can easily introduce bias and corrupt the integrity of medicine and science. She states: “Because drug companies insist as a condition of providing funding that they be intimately involved in all aspects of the research they sponsor, they can easily introduce bias in order to make their drugs look better and safer than they are. Before the 1980s, they generally gave faculty investigators total responsibility for the conduct of the work, but now company employees or their agents often design the studies, perform the analysis, write the papers, and decide whether and in what form to publish the results.” This results, as Dr. Angell argues, in scientists and medical faculty being “little more than hired hands, supplying patients and collecting data according to instructions from the company.” This manufactured control and conflicts of interest leads to further problems in the scientific and medical communities, which we can see relates directly to the push for the mRNA gene therapy vaccines and the suppression of alternative medicines and treatments. For example, the “industry-sponsored trials published in medical journals consistently favor sponsors’ drugs-largely because negative results are not published, positive results are repeatedly published in slightly different forms, and a positive spin is put on even negative results.”[xliii] Dr. Angell goes on to point out that, just in psychiatry, a “review of seventy-four clinical trials of antidepressants, for example, found that thirty-seven of thirty-eight positive studies were published. But of the thirty-six negative studies, thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that conveyed a positive outcome. It is not unusual for a published paper to shift the focus from the drug’s intended effect to a secondary effect that seems more favorable.”[xliv] This corruption inevitably leads to physicians practicing “a very drug-intensive style of medicine. Even when changes in lifestyle would be more effective, doctors and their patients often believe that for every ailment and discontent there is a drug.”[xlv] We are seeing the exact same corruption surrounding COVID-19, where possible alternatives to what are known to be new and dangerous vaccines are suppressed.[xlvi] Furthermore, physicians are led to believe that the newest technology is superior to anything else, despite the dangers, since they are both being funded (which we will discuss in further detail) by these drug companies and are “swayed by prestigious medical school faculty, to learn to prescribe [these] drugs… without good evidence of effectiveness.” For further evidence on how these drug companies purposely misrepresent the effectiveness of their drugs, see Lancet’s (one of the leading medical journals) recent article exposing the real effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines and the drug company’s promotion and publication of relative risk reduction (RRR) and purposeful suppression of the absolute risk reduction (ARR) to give the appearance that these vaccines are more effective than they really are.[xlvii]
Concerning the corruption that arises from drug companies funding doctors, Dr. Angell explains that “most doctors take money or gifts from drug companies in one way or another…[xlviii] No one knows the total amount provided by drug companies to physicians, but I estimate from the annual reports of the top nine US drug companies that it comes to tens of billions of dollars a year.” The conclusion arrived at is that the pharmaceutical industry through funding has “gained enormous control over how doctors evaluate and use its own products. Its extensive ties to physicians, particularly senior faculty at prestigious medical schools, affect the results of research, the way medicine is practiced, and even the definition of what constitutes a disease.”[xlix] These conflicts of interest and biases that result in corrupted science and medicine are not restricted to psychiatry alone, and the causes of corruption are not limited to only drug companies. “Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices.”[l] Consequently, as Dr. Angell explains, “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines.”[li] However, related to COVID policies, substantially drastic measures require substantial evidence, which having considered just a few of the aforementioned points, is far from being sufficient for such drastic measures. Furthermore, since drug companies have perfected a new and highly effective method to expand their markets…” where instead “of promoting drugs to treat diseases, they have begun to promote diseases to fit their drugs…”, a strategy “to convince as many people as possible (along with their doctors, of course) that they have medical conditions that require long-term drug treatment…”, we have more than enough reason to think that the science and data on COVID is being manipulated for financial benefit. Moreover, there are countless examples of top research and publications admitting to fraudulent findings and publications. One recent example is the editor of Lancent Journal (the most respected of the peer-reviewed medical journals), Richard Horto, admitting in 2015 that “Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.”[lii] Dr. John Ioandis, one of the world’s leading experts on medical research, adds to this stating that 90% of medical research is tainted if not outright bogus due to influence from the industry. Therefore, we have substantial evidence just on the basis of the relationship between drug companies and doctors alone, as pointed out above, for establishing corruption in research, medicine, and science that would make the “official narrative” on COVID highly dubitable. Now let us consider how drug companies play a part of technocracy and the cronyism with other entities that only compound the problem of corruption in science and medicine.
Given that technocracy is the tendency for political and political power to gravitate toward technological elites such that science and technology become autonomous, making politics a function of systemic structural determinants over which it has little or no control, we can see how the cooperation among various institutions, including, education, Big Tech or GAFAM, Big Pharma, the medical establishment, corporations, financial institutions, foundations, media, Hollywood, the music industry, and nation states becomes important in attempting to solve social, economic, ecological, and health issues relate to COVID globally,[liii] which lends itself to global governance through the cooperation of various transnational actors as a solution to both local and global problems. As Klaus Schwab states concerning global governance and technocracy, “Global governance is commonly defined as the process of cooperation among transnational actors aimed at providing responses to global problems (those that affect more than one state or region). It encompasses the totality of institutions, policies, norms, procedures and initiatives through which nation states try to bring more predictability and stability to their responses to transnational challenges. This definition makes it clear that any global effort on any global issue or concern is bound to be toothless without the cooperation of national governments and their ability to act and legislate to support their aims. Nation states make global governance possible (one leads the other), which is why the UN says that “effective global governance can only be achieved with effective international cooperation.”[liv] The two notions of global governance and international cooperation are so intertwined that it is nigh on impossible for global governance to flourish in a divided world that is retrenching and fragmenting.”[lv]
It is important to understand that science doesn’t exist in a vacuum. As we have seen, science is embedded within certain socio-political structures and operates on the assumptions of those dominating ideologies.[lvi] Therefore, our science ought to be assessed in light of the current gnostic technocracy and its philosophy (scientism and the technocratic image of man and the future society), an overall ideology that results in control, conflicts of interest, biases, the favoring of sponsor’s drugs and research, the suppression of contrary evidence, and various other corruptions which permeate the scientific and medical fields.[lvii] Again, scientific analysis at this paradigm level will inevitably involve epistemological questions. Relating to the original discussion presented earlier, our epistemological concerns ultimately turn on issues of trust. This means the recent problems observed with nutrition science, climate change, and COVID science must be assessed within the context of the dominating technocratic philosophy. We must ask ourselves are the gnostic technocratic ideas compatible with Orthodox Christianity, can the science be corrupted by the socio-political authority of that technocracy, can scientific consensus be trusted in light of this, and does this make certain “scientific” claims highly suspect and dubitable?
Understanding this within the context of the current gnostic technocratic totalitarian system and cronyism previously outlined, we find that much of the problems are not simply due to error, sample sizes, or invalid exploratory analysis. Our scientific judgments and procedures can indeed be corrupted by the “specific authority”[lviii] of our dominating technocratic gnostic system. For instance, the gnostic technocratic system can determine the overall scientific narrative and promulgate these ideas through the political structures, the media, academia, corporations, the WHO, DAVOS, etc. (something Gunnell points out) who are managed and controlled by technocratic elite. Of course “social feeling,” as Saint-Simon and Comte point out, becomes necessary to control and determine people’s thoughts and actions (i.e., a “manufactured consent,” as Noam Chomsky explains). In fact, this gnostic concealment tactic of “social feeling” has been recently used to shut down questions concerning whether COVID is a pandemic, whether the numbers and data are accurate, whether the tests are reliable, whether the proposed solutions have or will work, whether there is corruption and manipulation of the collected data, etc. We are often given the pseudo-scientific “non falsifiable” responses to many of these questions (e.g., “well it didn’t work because we didn’t lock down long enough, not enough people were wearing their masks, etc.”) This is another indicator that the supposed “science” is no longer science. These are the essential signs of a modern gnostic system, as Voegelin has pointed out. Of course, this doesn’t mean that at times we don’t actually do good science; however, it does illustrate how science can be corrupted and can become dubitable or untrustworthy.
Returning to our detective and legal analogies for investigating the truth or trustworthiness of the official story about the COVID-19 pandemic, let us summarize the preponderance of circumstantial evidence (i.e., suspects, behavior, money, motives, rewards, beneficiaries, social control, history of repeated behavior, anticipation or prediction, etc.). If a suspect or a group of suspects, act like they are guilty (e.g., intimidating witnesses, censoring, demonetizing, deplatforming, attacking critics as “conspiracy theorists,” concealing or destroying evidence, constantly changing their story or their alibi, etc.), then they probably are guilty, or at the very least they are covering up for someone else. Furthermore, it is not only when have evidence of prior crimes (e.g., lying or manipulating data), but when we can discover that an accomplice or collaborator benefits financially or politically in terms of increased power and control (an established motive), then we have additional evidence and reasons to hold these persons or groups suspect. If a very wealthy and powerful group of people (e.g., Bill Gates, the WHO, and the World Economic Forum, et. al.), who strangely predict with amazing detail that a COVID-19 pandemic will occur, providing precise and exact matching details both with regard to how it will play out and how the social and political responses will go, including how Big Media is to respond in dealing with such a pandemic (e.g., the exercise known as Event 201, the John Hopkins Center for Health Security document, The SPARS Pandemic 2025 – 2028[lix]), then we have even more evidence that a crime has been committed. In a legal case, this would be akin to finding someone who supposedly wrote a fictional story about a murder, whose story describes in great detail just such a “fictional” crime, only to discover an actual murder that matches this story with striking exactness, and is connected to the author who was already being held in suspicion of committing just such a crime. Taking into account all the evidence, together with the fact that many of these foundations are funding journalism and major media corporations,[lx] that the various transnational actors mentioned (corporations, foundations, governments, media, tech, et. al.) that all share a common goal, ideology and benefit financially from cooperating together (financial motive), together with the discovery that the underlying commitment to scientism is precisely what makes it possible to “manufacture consent” and corrupt the science, we have more than enough reasons to doubt the “official narrative” concerning COVID-19 and we have substantial evidence that consent is being manufactured.
How did we get here?
The problem at hand, therefore, can be traced back to a fundamental shift in thinking and orientation that occurred in modernity. Modern man began to view himself, the world, the cosmos, the polis, and his proper place in relation to them all in a radically different way from the ancients. In his Promethean rebellion, man severed the transcendent ground of being from the intelligible world, mechanized nature, and gave himself a pretended autonomy whereby he thought he could now exercise full dominion over being. In his Nietzschian deicide, modern man created speculative gnostic systems, and like Adam and Eve, he attempted to hide his sin by having his system conceal the truth. The abolition of both the transcendent God and nature resulted in a loss of objectivity, something that would have served as a helpful restraint on the morals, thoughts, and actions of man. Consequently, the libido dominandi became the only guiding principle, a sheer will to power where man could use (or misuse) technology to control, dominate and exploit nature all in the name of “science” and progress. For the modern man, “the speculative system in which the gnostic unfolds his will to make himself master of being” is insisted on being called “science.”[lxi] However, in order to commit such deeds, science had to become absolutized, and with it, the entire scientivization of the world. This became the very essence of Scientism. It “is, literally, a resolution of the will: the resolution to accept as real only what can be verified empirically by everyone.”[lxii] Nevertheless, to carry out a complete scientivization of the world, Scientism had to relate to the socio-political sphere. Hence, the atheistic gnostic speculators created what is known as technocracy. Within our current technocratic totalitarian system, we have found another gnostic ideology that is dehumanizing, anti-scientific, atheistic, and completely at odds with Christianity. Since such gnostic systems corrupt science, we must be aware of their presence, dominion, and power to corrupt. Furthermore, we must acknowledge that technocratic totalitarianism, like all modern gnostic systems, attempts to conceal these sins by building a socio-political operating system that prevents asking foundational paradigmatic questions, making such questions – as well as others – practically and conceptually impossible.
Where do we go from Here?
What then is the solution to our current gnostic scientism and technocratic totalitarianism, beyond just becoming aware of it as such? As Sherrard himself explains, “It is superfluous to stress that this cosmic disorder, reflecting the radical dehumanization of our society, and incurable apart from a total re-personalization of the conditions of work in our society, is already well advanced…” And since “our society cannot be re-personalized or rehumanized without a dismantling of the whole present scientific industrial structure, we have something of the measure of the task that lies ahead.”[lxiii] If, however, we are to rebuild our “society in the image of an integrated humanity, we must first be clear in our minds what it means to be human.”[lxiv] Since the idea of what it means to be human in Christianity is not the same in the secular atheistic technocracy of Scientism, we must first admit that there is simply no common ground in such matters.[lxv] This is something Tristram Engelhardt himself was keenly aware of, particularly in the domain of bioethics and medical science. There is no common ground with secularism because, as Engelhardt argues, their “goal is to have secular professional ethics trump other moral obligations, including one’s obligations to God. ‘Selfless’ secular professionalism and social justice are thus invoked as objective moral norms that require health professionals to violate their ‘private’ obligations to God…”[lxvi] He goes on to state that our Christian paradigm and “commitment to honor one’s obligations to God is characterized as a self-centered, selfish focus on private matters or private religious ‘feelings’ that are inferior in their force and that conflict with, and are overridden by, public secular social obligations…”[lxvii]
Therefore, given the preponderance of evidence concerning the conflicts of interest within the industry, the power structures and financial incentives of the groups involved identified as the technocracy, who are not only capable of corrupting the science for financial gain and ideological control, but have a proven track history of such crimes, why would one be trusting of the “official narrative” concerning COVID? What would one’s evidence be that such a system is trustworthy (evidence that wouldn’t be anecdotal or result in question begging, e.g., citing doctors or scientists that supports one side but are precisely the ones that are in question)? Again, why wouldn’t the various explanations supporting the “official narrative” be simply something similar to a nonfalsifiable conspiracy theory? I believe these questions are the most important questions to ask, especially in light of the fact that our most credentialed and experienced holy elders, ascetics, and monks (who are removed from secular ideological influences) speak unanimously and with one voice against the “official COVID narrative” and its prescriptions; whereas, those of us in the world (including priests and Bishops), who are most susceptible to being influenced by secular ideas, politics, compromised in various ways, and/or misled by other things, are divided on this issue. Since we Orthodox do our epistemology by looking for the consensus, especially among the credentialed spiritual elders, where the highest epistemological status is achieved through a life of repentance and asceticism (the places where monks living apart from the world spend most their time), and not through placing the primacy on philosophy and science to achieve these epistemological heights, Orthodox need to account for the fact that this consensus stands firmly against the “official COVID narrative” and its prescriptions. In other words, it is the Orthodox practice of repentance and asceticism that illumines our philosophy and science, and not the other way around. Therefore, I believe all Orthodox must look within themselves and give an account for this, and then ask themselves, “in whom do we put our trust?”
Here we have two worlds: a city of man and a city of God, and we are reminded of the Gospel passage that warns us “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”[lxviii] Pluralism and multiculturalism are failed experiments. Secular pluralistic societies attempt to combine and mix contradictory cultures, values, and ideologies. However, since the core values, morals, ideas, and commitments of distinct cultures and competing philosophical systems are fundamentally at odds with one another, it is inevitable that one group will have to compromise their essential beliefs. This creates a situation where ideological conflicts are simply resolved by the will of the stronger, an appeal once again to the gnostic principle of libido dominandi. In our current situation, it is the atheistic technocratic totalitarians, using the secular state under the spell of “science” who exercise their will to power to eliminate any competing ideologies or practices. Therefore, multicultural and pluralistic anthems are simply Trojan horses, bringing an enemy whose ideas and ethos are incompatible with Christianity. As Engelhardt states, “We do not share common ground. Christianity has ancient roots that are immune from the consequence of the collapse of the Western moral-philosophic project.”[lxix] Therefore, we find two paradigms, the Christian and the modern secularist, two world-views that are simply incompatible with one another. Within society, law, government, education, ethics, science, and medicine we find ideological conflicts, as well as conflicting prescriptions on how to conduct one’s life in the aforementioned areas. We continue to discover claims about science and what constitutes proper medical care that are simply incompatible with Christianity. We only need to look at the various bioethical conflicts to acknowledge “the incompatibility of claims made by the contemporary secular state about what should count as proper medical professional conduct and those claims grounded in the demands of God.”[lxx] Moreover, public policy and health guidelines regarding COVID-19 are now being carried out by the secular state and technocratic elites that often contradict our liturgical practices and faith. We have identified several problems with absolutizing science, refusing to critically assess the scientific claims and approaches. We have highlighted the dangers of Scientism and pseudo-science, as well as pointing out general concerns about trusting a science that is now operating within the framework of a gnostic atheistic and antihuman technocracy.
Hence, the real krisis (judgment) is this: we must now make a decision, a judgment. Where and in whom do we put our trust? Do we put our trust in the city of man or the city of God? Do we put our trust in the secular, immoral, anti-Christian technocrats (where “science,” I have argued often no longer operates as science), elevating the empirical sciences (the lowest form of reasoning) with its ever-changing conclusions to the status of divine revelation and absolute truth? Or do we put our faith in the lives of the Saints, the life of the Church, in the Faith once delivered to us from God Himself, the Faith of the Orthodox, the Faith that established the Universe? It is not clear the precise ways the Christian should proceed in dealing with providing a suitable environment to conduct science and politics; however, it is my hope that through our current crisis we begin to see the religious nature of the threat at hand. It is my hope that we can identify the corruption of philosophy into philodoxy that culminates in the radical transformation of the political/social framework in which science exists and is understood. As I have argued, we now exist in a new social-political-paradigmatic order, where science has become something different than science. It has become a religion. The new religion is Scientism or science-dolatry, where the high priests are the scientific “experts”[lxxi] and technocratic elites, and the devotees/worshipers are those who follow or participate in the gnostic structures of the totalitarian terror of technocracy. As Voegelin states: “Today, under the pressure of totalitarian terror, we are perhaps inclined to think primarily of the physical forms of opposition. But they are not the most successful. The opposition becomes radical and dangerous only when philosophical questioning is itself called into question, when doxa takes on the appearance of philosophy, when it arrogates to itself the name of science and prohibits science as nonscience.”[lxxii] We have entered into a new age based on the old reoccurring gnostic themes. We find an absolutizing of science (replacing philosophy, epistemology, ontology, and metaphysics with empirical sciences), an elevation of the “technical experts” to the infallible magisterium of the new universal religion, and the suppression – if not complete abolition – of all questioning and critical analysis of their project and new gnostic religion. There has, as Voegelin explains, “emerged a phenomenon unknown to antiquity that permeates our modern societies so completely that its ubiquity scarcely leaves us any room to see it at all: the prohibition of questioning.”[lxxiii] Although these modern gnostic projects and speculative programs (as opposed to philosophy) have existed in the political paradigms of Socialism, Marxism, and National Socialism, the “conscious, deliberate, and painstakingly elaborate obstruction”[lxxiv] of logos has not been limited to these paradigms alone. We are living in the gnostic scientism of the technocratic totalitarianism of this present age.
Therefore, we ought to count this as a blessing. For a crisis will make things clearer to us. It will help us see what ideas and beliefs we are truly committed to. It will aid us in seeing where we put our faith and trust. Let us not forget, as the Optima Fathers pray: “Teach us to treat that whatever may happen with peace of soul and with firm conviction that Your will governs all… In unforeseen events, let us not forget that all are sent by you.” This crisis is the will of the Lord. Glory to God! Let us make the best of it and ask ourselves: whom do we serve and where is our citizenship? Let us say, as the people said to Joshua, “I will serve the Lord.” With the grace and help of God, let us resist the spirit of the age and this world and declare, as the Psalmist says, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.”[lxxv] May we pray that upon that dreadful judgment day, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ will say to us “well done good and faithful servant”[lxxvi] and not “depart from me. For I never knew you.”[lxxvii]
[i] A deductive argument is an argument incorporating the claim that it is impossible for the conclusion to be false given that the premises are true. Deductive arguments are those that involve necessary reasoning.
[ii] Inductive arguments are arguments that incorporate the claim that it is improbably that the conclusion be false given that the premises are true. Inductive arguments only involve probabilistic reasoning. In general, inductive arguments are such that the content of the conclusion is in some way intended to go beyond the content of the premises.
[iii] “Karl Popper, one of the most influential philosophers of our time, argued that the mathematical probability of all theories, scientific or pseudoscientific, given any amount of evidence is zero. If Popper is right, scientific theories are not only equally improvable but also equally improbable.” Lakatos, Science and Pseudoscience, originally broadcast on June 30, 1973 and subsequently published in Philosophy in the Open edited by Godfrey Vesey, Open University Press, 1974 and also as the Introduction to Lakatos’s The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Philosophical Papers Volume 1 (edited by John Worrall and Gregory Currie) Cambridge University Press, 1978.
[iv] Moreover, science continually suffers from the problem surrounding causation (causation being one of those things necessary for science). It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to establish casual relations, since correlation does not equal causation. This difficulty is only further compounded when we consider Hume’s problem of induction and his arguments that “causation” is something that cannot be derived from sense-experience or observations about the natural world (sense-experience/observations also being necessary for science).
[v] “So we have the dilemma, that if facts are truly independent of theory they are private and do not form part of the public domain of knowledge; if they are public facts they are affected by all sorts of influences particularly from previous knowledge and upon which their exact form and our confidence in them depend.” (Harre, The Philosophies of Science, 43-44)
[vi] Polanyi, Science, Faith, and Society, 11.
[vii] O’Hear, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, 203.
[viii] As O’Hear states, “the elevation of fascinating speculation into absolute truth is one of the marks of a mythology.” (Ibid., 204)
[ix] “The murder of God, then, is of the very essence of the gnostic re-creation of the order of being.” (Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, 41)
[x] Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, 11.
[xi] Augusto Del Noce, The Crisis of Modernity, 231.
[xii] Neil Postman, Technopoly, 391.
[xiii] Anthony O’Hear, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, 210.
[xiv] Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 3.
[xv] Comte had his famous dictum: Savoir pour prevoir (“To know in order to predict”).
[xvi] Phillip Sherrard, “Modern Science and Dehumanization,” 8.
[xvii] Ibid.
[xviii] John G. Gunnell, “The Technocratic Image,” 394.
[xix] Phillip Sherrard, “Modern Science and Dehumanization,” 8.
[xx]“ For modern science has its starting-point in a revolution in consciousness, or revolt against heaven, that has resulted in the reason first ignoring, then denying, and finally closing itself to the source of knowledge which is above it; and this has meant that it has been forced to turn for its knowledge exclusively to that which is below it—to the “external” world of sense-data and sense-impression.” (ibid., 13)
[xxi] Dante Germino, Machiavelli to Marx, 7.
[xxii] Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities, 25.
[xxiii] Bruce Seraphim Foltz, “The Gnosticism of Modernity and the Quest for Radical Autonomy,” 3.
[xxiv] Engelhardt sees morality grounded “not in philosophy but in an experience of the living God who commands.” (H. T. Engelhardt, After God, 217)
[xxv] “After metaphysics and after God, the secular fundamentalist state becomes a surrogate for God because, once reality, morality, and bioethics are severed from an unconditioned ground in being, and once moral reason is recognized as plural in content, one is not just left with a plurality of moralities and bioethics, but also the closest thing to a common morality and a common bioethics becomes that morality and bioethics are established as law and in public policy…” (Engelhardt, After God, 92-93)
[xxvi] John G. Gunnell, “The Technocratic Image,” 394.
[xxvii] “Many of the characteristic features of the technocratic image may be found in the work of Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and his vision of an industrial society wherein an elite class of engineers, scientists, industrialists, and planners systematically apply technical knowledge to the solution of social problems and the creation of a rational social order.” (John G. Gunnell, “The Technocratic Image,” 394)
[xxviii] John G. Gunnell, “The Technocratic Image and the Theory of Technocracy,” Technology and Culture, 396.
[xxix] John G. Gunnell, “The Technocratic Image,” 393.
[xxx] C.P. Snow, Science and Government (Cambridge, 1961), 1.
[xxxi] For further academic literature on technocracy see the following: William E. Akin, Technocracy and the American Dream (Berkeley, 1977); and Henry Elsner, Jr., The Technocrats: Prophets of Automation (Syracuse, N.Y., 1967), J. S. Dupre and S. A. Lakoff, Science and the Nation: Policy and Politics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962); Robert Gilpin, American Scientists and Nuclear Policy (Princeton, N.J., 1962); Robert Gilpin and Christopher Wright, eds., Scientists and National Policy Making (New York, 1964); H. L. Nieburg, In the Name of Science (Chicago, 1966); S. A. Lakoff, ed., Knowledge and Power (New York, 1966); D. S. Greenberg, The Politics of Pure Science (New York, 1967); S. Fredrick Seymour, ed., Washington Colloquium on Science and Society, 1st ser. (Baltimore, 1967); E. B. Skolnikoff, Science, Technology and American Foreign Policy (Cambridge, 1967); H. Brooks, The Government of Science (Cambridge, 1968); E. Shills, Criteria for National Goals (Cambridge, 1968); Joseph Haberer, Politics and the Community of Science (New York, 1969). Paul J. Piccard, ed., Science and Policy Issues (Itasca, Ill., 1969); W. S. Sayre and B. L. R. Smith, Government, Technology, and Social Problems (New York, 1969); Irene Taviss and Judith Burbank, eds., Technology and the Polity (Cambridge, 1969); James C. Charlesworth and Alfred J. Eggers, Jr., Harmonizing Technological Developments and Social Policy in America (Philadelphia, 1970); Jack Douglas, ed., Freedom and Tyranny: Social Problems in a Technological Society (New York, 1970), and The Technological Threat (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971); Nigel Calder, Technopolis (New York, 1971); J. R. Ravetz, Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems (Oxford, 1971); D. Schooler, Jr., Science, Scientists, and Public Policy (New York, 1971); J. Primack and F. von Huppel, Advice and Dissent: Scientists in the Public Arena (New York, 1974); Albert H. Teich, ed., Scientists and Public Affairs (Cambridge, 1974); John D. Montgomery, Technology and Civil Life (Cambridge, 1974); Robert F. Baker, Richard M. Michaels, and Everett S. Preston, Public Policy Development: Linking the Technical and Political Processes (New York, 1975); Philip L. Bereano, ed., Technology as a Social and Political Phenomenon (New York, 1976); W. Henry Lambright, Governing Science and Technology (New York, 1976); Victor Basuik, Technology, World Politics and American Policy (New York, 1977); G. Boyle et al., The Politics of Technology (New York, 1977); Joseph Haberer, ed., Science and Technology Policy: Perspectives and Developments (Lexington, Mass., 1977); Ina Spieqel-Rosing and Derek de Solla Price, eds., Science, Technology and Society (Beverly Hills, Calif. 1977). C. P. Snow, Science and Government (Cambridge, 1961).
[xxxii] John Gunnell, “The Technocratic Image and the Theory of Technocracy,” 397.
[xxxiii] Dante Germino, Machiavelli to Marx, 280.
[xxxiv] “Saint-Simonians were among the first to use the term ‘socialism,’ which entered the Western political vocabulary in the late 1820s.” (Ibid, 283)
[xxxv] “Scientists began to take the place of priests, initiating not of course into the kingdom of heaven but into the brave new world of more consumer goods and limitless economic growth. It was by courtesy of the scientists that the industrialists and bankers of the nineteenth century bulldozed their way to fortune and produced the devastation of the modern industrial world.” (Phillip Sherrard, “Modern Science and Dehumanization,” 8.
[xxxvi] See H.G. Well’s God the Invisible King.
[xxxvii] National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza: Implementation Plan (archives.gov)
[xxxviii] “In 2005, 98 people died globally, and another 115 the following year.” Jeffrey Tucker, American Institute for Economic Research, A Retrospective on the Avian Flu Scare of 2005 – AIER
[xxxix] World Health Organization, “Safety of Pandemic Vaccines: Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 Briefing Note 6,” August 6, 2009, https://ww.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/notes/h1n1_safety_vaccines_20090805/en/.
[xl] Johns Hopkins University Reveals Manipulated Covid Death Figures — Puppet Masters — Sott.net
[xli] The New York Review, January 15, 2009, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22237.
[xlii] To promote new or exaggerated conditions, companies give them serious-sounding names along with abbreviations. Thus, heartburn is now “gastro-esophageal reflux disease” or GERD; impotence is “erectile dysfunction” or ED; premenstrual tension is ‘premenstrual dysphoric disorder’ or PMMD; and shyness is ‘social anxiety disorder’ (no abbreviation yet). Note that these are ill-defined chronic conditions that affect essentially normal people, so the market is huge and easily expanded. For example, a senior marketing executive advised sales representatives on how to expand the use of Neurontin: ‘Neurontin for pain, Neurontin for monotherapy, Neurontin for bipolar, Neurontin for everything.’ It seems that the strategy of the drug marketers-and it has been remarkably successful-is to convince Americans that there are only two kinds of people: those with medical conditions that require drug treatment and those who don’t know it yet. While the strategy originated in the industry, it could not be implemented without the complicity of the medical profession.” (Dr. Marcia Angell, “Drug Companies and Doctors: A Story of Corruption”)
[xliii] Ibid.
[xliv] Ibid.
[xlv] Ibid.
[xlvi] See Dr. Robert Molone’s (inventor of the mRNA technology) interview with Bret Weinstein (Condensed) CENSORED – Dark Horse Podcast – How to Save the World in Three Easy Steps (odysee.com), and Steve Kirsch’s research on the dangerous of the mRNA vaccines and evidence of more effective alternative treatments: Should you get vaccinated? (trialsitenews.com)
[xlvii] COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and effectiveness—the elephant (not) in the room (thelancet.com)
[xlviii] “Many are paid consultants, speakers at company-sponsored meetings, ghost-authors of papers written by drug companies or their agents, and ostensible ‘researchers’ whose contribution often consists merely of putting their patients on a drug and transmitting some token information to the company. Still more doctors are recipients of free meals and other out-and-out gifts. In addition, drug companies subsidize most meetings of professional organizations and most of the continuing medical education needed by doctors to maintain their state licenses.” (Dr. Marcia Angell, “Drug Companies and Doctors: A Story of Corruption.”)
[xlix] Ibid.
[l] Ibid.
[li] Dr. Marcia Angell, NY Review of Books, January 15, 2009, “Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption.”
[lii] Dr. Richard Horton, Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma? Vol. 385, April 11, 2015). Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma? (thelancet.com)
[liii] Who or what specifically form the essential components of technocracy that shape policy, education, science, and research? The Trilateral Group (prominent members include Henry Kissinger, Michael Bloomberg, Eric Schmidt and Susan Molinari (of Google), and others), the Club of Rome, the Goodclub, the Aspen Institute, the Atlantic Institute, the Brookings Institution, the WHO, the World Economic Forum (the organization that hosts the annual conference of billionaires at DAVOS, Switzerland,) The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (the largest funder of the WHO: GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, a partnership between Gates and pharmaceutical companies,[“In many ways [Gavi] is a role model for how the public and private sector can and should cooperate – working in a much more efficient way than governments alone or business alone or civil society alone.” (Klaus Schwabb, “World Leaders Commit to GAVI’s Vision to Protect the Next Generation with Vaccines,” GAVI, January 23, 2020. ] GAFAM (Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft), Big Energy (Exxon Mobil, BP, Gazrpom, PetroChina, Royal Dutch Shell), Big Media (Comcast, ViacomCBS, the Walt Disney Co., Discovery, Inc., et. al.), the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Pharmaceutical Companies, all of which share a common goal on various issues relating, for example, on how to work together for a more equitable and healthier society, resource-based economics, a healthier planet, etc. (e.g., sustainable development, UN Agenda 21, the 2030 Agenda, the New Urban Agenda, green economy, the Great Reset, the Paris Climate Agreement, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, etc.), who all mutually benefit from policies that facilitate their control of the markets around the world and who play an importance in policy making and funding research. These are the essential components of what is called technocracy, which related to the particular global issues of COVID, cooperate together to “manufacture consent” to achieve shared and common goals, for better or for worse.
[liv] United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), Committee for Development Policy, “Global governance and global rules for development in the post-2015 era”, Policy Note, 2014, https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/cdp/cdp_publications/2014 cdppolicynote.pdf.
[lv] Klaus Schwab, COVID-19: The Great Reset, 82.
[lvi] “Specific Authority demands therefore not only devotion to the tenets of a tradition but subordination of everyone’s ultimate judgment to discretionary decision by an official center.” Michael Polanyi, Science, Faith, and Society, 59.
[lvii] “In view of this control and the conflicts of interest that permeate the enterprise, it is not surprising that industry-sponsored trials published in medical journals consistently favor sponsors’ drugs—largely because negative results are not published, positive results are repeatedly published in slightly different forms, and a positive spin is put on even negative results. A review of seventy-four clinical trials of antidepressants, for example, found that thirty-seven of thirty-eight positive studies were published. [Erick H. Turner et al., “Selective Publication of Antidepressant Trials and Its Influence on Apparent Efficacy,” The New England Journal of Medicine, January 17, 2008.] But of the thirty-six negative studies, thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that conveyed a positive outcome. It is not unusual for a published paper to shift the focus from the drug’s intended effect to a secondary effect that seems more favorable.” (Dr. Marcia Angell, NY Review of Books, January 15, 2009, “Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption.”)
[lviii] See Michael Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society.
[lix] spars-pandemic-scenario.pdf (auricmedia.net)
[lx] For example, among the various Gant Foundation grants, $250 million has been given to the following major media corporations, which have all routinely published news favorable to Gates and his projects: BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National Journal, the Guardian, Univision, Medium, the Financial Times, the Atlantic, the Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington Monthly, Le Monde, PBS NewsHour, the Center for Investigative Reporting.
[lxi] Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, 32.
[lxii] Augusto Del Noce, The Age of Secularization, 104.
[lxiii] Sherrard, “Modern Science and Dehumanization,” 5
[lxiv] Ibid.
[lxv] In fact, as As Lancellotti himself states: “the technological society is no longer unified by any shared idea of the good…” (“Augusto Del Noce on the ‘New Totalitarianism’,” 326), and therefore, there cannot be a common ground with a society that does not have any unified shared idea of the good, let alone an idea of the Christian good.
[lxvi] H. Tristram Engelhardt, After God, 254.
[lxvii] Ibid.
[lxviii] Matthew 6:24
[lxix] Tristram Engelhardt, After God, 389.
[lxx] Ibid., 19.
[lxxi] “Scientists began to take the place of priests, initiating not of course into the kingdom of heaven but into the brave new world of more consumer goods and limitless economic growth. It was by courtesy of the scientists that the industrialists and bankers of the nineteenth century bulldozed their way to fortune and produced the devastation of the modern industrial world.” (Sherrard, “Modern Science and Dehumanization,” 8)
[lxxii] Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, 15.
[lxxiii] Ibid., 16.
[lxxiv] Ibid.
[lxxv] Psalm 20:7
[lxxvi] Matthew 25:23
[lxxvii] Matthew 7:23
About the Author
Fr. Deacon Ananias Sorem, PhD is CEO, Founder, and President of Patristic Faith. Father is an Orthodox apologist and Professor of Philosophy at Fullerton College and Carroll College. He has a BA in Liberal Arts from Thomas Aquinas College, together with an MA (Honors) and PhD in Philosophy (Epistemology; Philosophy of Science; Philosophy of Mind) from University College Dublin. His current academic work focuses on philosophical theology, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. Father is the author of several articles and peer-reviewed papers, including: “Searle, Materialism, and the Mind-Body Problem,” “Gnostic Scientism and Technocratic Totalitarianism,” “An Orthodox Approach to the Dangers of Modernity and Technology,” and “An Orthodox Theory of Knowledge: The Epistemological and Apologetic Methods of the Church Fathers.” He is also known for his YouTube channel, the Norwegian Nous, where he provides content on theology, apologetics, logic, and philosophy.