Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein novel
Blurring the lines between Science & Scientism
Near the beginning of the 19th century, Mary Shelly wrote a novel that began the horror and science fiction genre of literature; that novel was titled: Frankenstein. It began as a contest But evolved into a novel of immense importance. It gathered the swirling currents of curiosity concerning the relationship between electricity and life, between the dividing line between life and death. Whereas science is limited to empiricism, measurability and repeatability, scientism knows no boundaries. Spurred on by popular media, scientism enters the realm of popular acceptance and then begins to replace science as a mode of investigation into God’s Creation. In other words, scientism is the mechanism that replaces the God of Creation with the merging of science, fantasy and blasphemy to produce a type of patch-work beliefs not unlike the Prometheus monster in Mary Shelly’s novel. Welcome to today.
Scientism is the application of observation and repeatability to those areas that cannot be observed such as psychology, philosophy, etc. It becomes a Slippery Slope logical fallacy because non-empirical beliefs replace observable facts justifying one’s pre-set conclusions. This may be fine for literature and movies as entertainment but is hardly the basis for
discovering the workings of Creation and the adaptation of discoverable forces to improve the lot of people.
At the beginning of the 19th century electrical force was being discovered but poorly understood. Benjamin Franklin’s international fame stemmed from his experiments that lightening, electricity, could be channeled in a non-destructive manner; i.e., his invention of the lightening rod which saved many a sailing ship on the open seas from burning due to lightening strikes. Luigi Galvani put on public displays showing electrical currents inducing movement in frog’s legs. “Galvani’s nephew, Giovanni Aldini, went much further when in 1803 he used electricity to reanimate the limbs of George Forster, a criminal executed in London, before the shock of a horrified audience.” {Open Mind. Science. Bioscience. The Scientific Origins of Frankenstein.}. The earlier introduction of artificial respiration to save apparently dead drowned persons inflamed the discussions of how to define death and life. Indeed, there were two major schools of thought concerning life: 1) empirical only forces {mechanistic} or 2) non-empirical forces {vitalism}. These debates pitted science against philosophy, so-called at the time, but clearly eliminating God and His truth from the discussion.
Uniformitarianism had taken hold in the 18th century with James Hutton, father of modern geology, who challenged Bishop Ussher’s chronology that Creation occurred near 4004 B.C. Without a doubt Bishop Ussher took liberties with his biblical interpretation; however, Hutton violated Scripture with his Uniformitarianism views (2Pe 3:3-5). This was too be expected from those who are not saved as Paul discussed in Romans (Ro 1:18-32). Ungodliness, translated from the Greek asebeia means one who is incapable or unwilling to accept God or His Truths. Paul discusses that all people were born in sin and thus automatically rejected God’s truths and only through salvation by grace and the receiving of God’s new nature could one begin to understand God as taught by the Spirit (1Co 2:14). By the middle of the 19th century Uniformitarianism was being applied to biology, Darwin’s Origin of the Species and later to the new discipline of psychology via Freud’s psychoanalysis technique. This philosophy would have been well known to Mary Shelly and were affluent audience. Just as Frankenstein’s monster was created from various body parts and brought to life by some force, presumably electricity, so Uniformitarianism permeated through various sciences forming a monstrous philosophical incoherent nightmare that masqueraded as man’s truth in opposition to God’s truth.
Frankenstein’s Monster Appeared as Man
But Was comprised of Dead Body Parts
As Frankenstein’s monster moved, talked and thought, so Uniformitarianism appeared to extend the scope of science beyond the empirical realm. The various disciplines adopting Uniformitarianism soon came together into an amalgamated contradictory morass of nihilistic philosophies. By the mid 20th century most Christian denominations had abandoned a high view of the Bible in favor of what became known as Scientism. The abandoned Gospel re-emerges as the Social Gospel which today has become the Social Justice and Woked movements. All of these movements embraced the scientism of their day: evolution in biology, psychology and psychiatry, evolution in creation {or nature}; today the lost have added the additional scientism of climate change and nutrition. This is in addition to rewriting history to fit an imagined narrative based on nothing more than mistruths at best and lies at worst. The agenda of all these various scientisms is to force an overarching governmental force bringing the world under the yoke of a rusting elite at best or a one-rule entity at worst with the vast majority of people returned to perpetual servitude under the guise of equality.
The Joker is a Metaphor for Scientism
Wearing the mask of Science over Lies
Public education was used by pietists in the 19th century to force Protestant morality onto Lost society; however, by the mid 20th centuries this yoke was thrown off and public education became the mechanism to enforce both scientisms and the Social Justice and Woked movements onto captured societies. The true Gospel, which always a minority view, now found itself under attack as a non-scientific philosophy of the ignorant based on the masquerade of scientism as science. The patch-work of incoherent and nihilistic philosophies resembled Mary Shelly’s monster made by the mad scientism of Dr. Frankenstein now became the dominant and government-enforced view. Opposing views are either banned or suppressed by the limiting of free speech. Even economics has come under the sway of scientism with the suppression of the truth that free enterprises with the Industrial Revolution raised, and continues to raise, man’s standard of living such that slavery is economically unviable except in the poorest areas yet untouched by industrialization. However, the scientism of Keynesian economics has morphed into the spread of socialism, a tyranny responsible for the most deaths and wars in a single century in the history of mankind, to force an international socialism {globalization} onto the world.
Now of this should come as a surprise to Christians, yet many are leaving the true Gospel to embrace the monster of Satan because they covet, a type of idolatry, not God but their own place in the coming New World Order (Col 3:5). People are believing the delusion of this monster scientism, rejecting sound doctrine and following seducing teachings that perpetuate the myth that God does not exist (2Th 2:3-12; 2Ti 3:1-5; 4:3-5). The Lost are expected to reject God and erect their own context for facts to reinforce their unbelief in God and such did all of us when we were lost before Christ came to save us. But, at salvation we received a new nature which sees God’s truth (2Co 5:17). Christians cannot knowingly accept these Frankenstein patch-work of incoherent, nihilistic philosophies simply for friendship with the world as it makes us enemies with the Lord that saved us and brings into question our very salvation of which we boast (Ja 4:1-4). If we join the world in its march to destruction who will bring the light of the Gospel which is the only hope anyone has in this life and the next (Mt 5:13-16)?
In Mary’s novel the monster, product of Scientism, joined with the father of scientism and both drowned in the ocean, essence of sinful rebellion against God. This mirrors the return of Christ when modern scientism cowers in the caves awaiting the Lord’s return begging for the rocks to fall on them and hide them from the returning Messiah, the author of all truth (Re 6:15-16). Where will you be? In heaven at the wedding feast of the Lamb or on earth cowering in the caves waiting for His return in judgment?