Our Modern Neo-Paganism
Our replacement for Hephaestus and Asclepius
When you hear the word “paganism,” what do you think of? Most of us probably think of the ancient Greek, Roman, and maybe Nordic myths. However, paganism has been making a resurgence in our world. There are the obvious forms such as Wicca. Likewise, a friend of mine shortly after high school declared that he was into Odinism (worship of the Norse god of war, Odin). There is even a form of this in the music genre of folk metal.[1] While these forms of reviving paganism jump out, they are still a vast minority of our culture.
However, what is more of concern to me is not the few trying to revive ancient paganism, but the neo-paganism that has been developing in various forms and places for the past 100 years.
The most ominous and ugly form of neo-paganism was that found in Nazism. While a few within that time were outright pagans, most of the Nazi movement was a form of neo-paganism.[2] For most Nazis, it was less of specific deities, though some wanted to revive the Norse gods, but more put it in terms of cosmic forces of good and evil embodied in different races.
While that threat is, thankfully, in the past, there is a new, creeping form of neo-paganism that I have noted recently. We seem to have a new god in our world, and one that everyone is called to bow down to. The name of this god is “The Science” or simply “Science.”
My wife and I were recently streaming a program, and a commercial came on for pet food. Their tag line was “Science did that.” It even, rather ironically, juxtaposed “Science” with a veterinarian's diagnosis, which seemed to imply that the pet food was from Science but that veterinarian science was not Science. Of course, this is just a clever advertising scheme, but it seems to be tapping into a larger belief in our society that Science is the ultimate authority.
What really brought this to my attention, however, was the way we found so many talking during the COVID-19 pandemic. We were told by government officials that we should “follow the Science.” There were posters that depicted people wearing facemasks as someone who “Believes in Science.”
What struck me about all of this is that this is a rather unscientific way of talking. True science speaks of evidence and experimentation. If you talk to a research scientist, they will quickly point out that their experiments cannot prove anything to be true. Rather, they work to falsify wrong ideas with the hope that we are therefore getting closer to the truth.
It even strikes me as odd how in recent years, science has often been pitted against Christianity and Christian faith. Nevertheless, modern science is a product of Christianity.[3] Even the famous story of how Columbus believed that the world was round while the medieval Christian world believed it was flat is demonstrably false and was intended to make Christianity look foolish.[4]
Of course, it can be argued that for most people, speaking of Science is just shorthand for learning from the product of scientific investigation. For many, this might be true, but there is also a strangely religious way that people today talk about science.
The Religion of “The Science”
Consider again how often during the pandemic we heard leaders utter the refrain; “Follow the Science.” What is interesting is that they did not speak of following the evidence, or the research, but “The Science” which speaks of science as if it were a person, and more than that, an oracle of irrefutable truth. In fact, this belief is complete with its own priesthood in the form of scientists, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci. These individuals have been treated as oracles who bring the mandates of “The Science” and teach them to the masses, in much the same way that a pagan priest would explain the will of the deity they served.
Not only are there the priests who prophetically speak for The Science, but there are also heretics. The most notable of these are the leaders and authors of “The Great Barrington Declaration.” The authors of this document are a professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at Oxford University, a professor of medicine and a fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy research as well as a widely respected professor of Economics and Health Research and Policy at Stanford University, and a biostatistician and professor of medicine at Harvard. This is hardly a gathering of kooks but individuals who should know something about responding to pandemics, yet they have been pilloried, and one has even been essentially forced away from his academic position. Even those who are less influential but have questioned various messages from “The Science” have been labeled as “Science Deniers” or even mocked as “believing in magic.”
Lest you think that this elevation of science to deity statue is only done by the supporters of COVID-19 lockdowns and the use of masks, the same sort of talk has appeared on the other side. Consider outspoken critic of these measures and supporter of “The Great Barrington Declaration,” Jordan B. Peterson, who in his Feb 23, 2023 podcast criticized Anthony Fauci saying: "He took the name of science in vain." This is a very curious way to speak; it is applying the 2nd Commandment not to God but to Science! This is especially curious because Peterson has put himself forward as a lecturer on Exodus, including the 10 Commandments.
More than the question of what the proper response to COVID-19 was, there is a disturbing trust in “Science” to be the bearer of what is good. While our society has not tried to revive worship of Hephaestus and Asclepius, what we do have is a blind trust that Science, as a force, is the source of all truth and the giver of all that is good, and that is a god. As Luther famously wrote in The Large Catechism, “A ‘god’ is the term for that to which we are to look for all good and in which we are to find refuge in all need. Therefore, to have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart.[5]
The discipline of modern science can be, and usually is, a great gift from God. From modern medicine to our ability to feed more people than ever before shows how much good can come from scientific exploration. The problem comes when we elevate this to the level of deity and look to it for all that is good rather than understanding that it is an exercise by fallible human beings that our God uses to bless us and all humanity.
[1] Wikipedia, “Folk Metal” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_metal
[2] Karla O. Poewe, New Religions and the Nazis (New York: Routledge, 2006); Eric Kurlander, “Hitler’s Monsters: The Occult Roots of Nazism and the Emergence of the Nazi ‘Supernatural Imaginary’,” Ger. Hist. 30.4 (2012): 528–49.
[3] Alvin J. Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004), previously released as: Under the Influence: How Christianity Transformed Civilization (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2001), chapter 9.
[4] The truth is that every educated person knew that the world was round, the real debate was over the circumference of the world, with Columbus believing it to be smaller than it is. The majority opinion was that he would die in the middle of the ocean, because they were not aware of the existence of the Americas. The myth of how Columbus sought to prove the world was round was invented by Washington Irving in 1842 in The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus in part to discredit Christianity. For more about this see: “Christopher Columbus Never Set Out to Prove the Earth Was Round,” HISTORY, 31 August 2018, https://www.history.com/news/christopher-columbus-never-set-out-to-prove-the-earth-was-round; Valerie Strauss, “Busting a Myth About Columbus and a Flat Earth,” Washington Post, 10 October, 2011, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/busting-a-myth-about-columbus-and-a-flat-earth/2011/10/10/gIQAXszQaL_blog.html
[5] Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, and Charles P. Arand, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000), 386.