Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

You, Lord, are my lamp; the Lord turns my darkness into light.

• 2 Samuel 22:29

He reveals the deep things of darkness
    and brings utter darkness into the light.
He makes nations great, and destroys them;
    he enlarges nations, and disperses them.
He deprives the leaders of the earth of their reason;
    he makes them wander in a trackless waste.
They grope in darkness with no light;
    he makes them stagger like drunkards.

• Job 12:22-25

You, Lord, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light.

• Psalm 18:73

Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous.

• Psalm 112:4

“No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are unhealthy, your body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness. Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be just as full of light as when a lamp shines its light on you.”

• Luke 11:33-36

“The French thinker Auguste Comte is noted for his theory of intellectual and social evolution, which divides human progress into three key stages. The earliest stage, the theological stage, represented by the medieval period in Europe, is characterized by belief in the supernatural. This gave way to the metaphysical stage, in which speculation on the nature of reality developed. Finally, there came the ‘positivist’ age-which Comte saw as emerging at the time he was writing-with a genuinely scientific attitude, based solely on observable regularities. Comte believed this positivism would help to create a new social order, to redress the chaos generated by the French Revolution.”

• Sam Atkinson (senior editor), The Philosophy Book, Big Ideas Simply Explained

Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte, a.k.a. Auguste Comte (1798-1857) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and writer.  He founded the philosophical school of positivism.  In his theory of science, he starts with mathematics and then goes from there to astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology.  Each of these having decreasing complexity and thus each with decreasing positivity.  He valued the complex, the specific, and the dependent in his goals of positivity.

This theory of science could be disproven easily with the complexity found in biology in the past 50 years alone.

Positivity sounds so appealing.  Who does not want to be positive?  Okay, positivity seems so appealing until the leader says that it is positively a great idea to jump off a cliff.

In that case, if the leader is the first to go, maybe the second in line can wait to see what happens before taking his or her jump.

In an article on Comte’s philosophy, the photograph of Comte looks like the least positive person I have ever seen, but then again, in the infancy of photography, you see few people smiling.  But Comte was really working his frown.

But let’s look at Comte’s lifespan in France.  He characterizes the time before the French Revolution, mostly the medieval age as being the theological age.  Looking deeper into his thoughts on the subject is the propensity to reduce belief in the supernatural down to a fetish, something that can be held, something that can be controlled.  Thus, in Comte’s view of theology is that there was really no belief in the supernatural at all but rather forces beyond our understanding that can be controlled by that talisman in your pocket.  I cannot remember who did the research, but a study of churches who claimed to have a small fragment of the cross where Jesus died were so numerous that if you collected all the blessed and certified fragments, it would weigh in the tons.  So, there is evidence that would support Comte’s views, from an atheistic perspective.  Yet, the Scriptures say that the spiritual aspects of life are foolishness to those who do not believe.

Then, the next stage was the metaphysical.  Within this stage in French development, they had the French Revolution.  While it may have started with a noble goal, the people that took over the writing of the constitution were of the mind that might was right.  Thus, chaos ensued.

This led Comte to think that theology failed and metaphysics failed, thus positivity must positively rule the day.

If Comte had really looked toward Christianity, he might have found that Christianity did not fail.  Humankind simply fell short.  Comte grew up in the chaos of his time, and as everyone since Adam and Eve has done, they blamed the chaos on anything and everything other than precious “me” or “us” as the case might be.

Just look at politicians today.  They claim all advances, or what they label as advances, to be something they personally accomplished even if they had nothing to do with it.  And if there are problems, that was a held over problem of the last administration, even when their signature was at the bottom of the document.

Comte was simply duped into thinking that some things had failed.  The truth is while God has never failed and true Christianity is still spread around the globe, the church, or many major denominations, have failed.  And even when not failing totally, they have made blunders that made things worse.  There is a great gulf between religion and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but that should not be the case.

So, unwittingly, Comte, who seems to be in the unbeliever camp, was in the darkness.  He could not see the light, for maybe the light was rather dim in France during his life.  But someone, who is in the darkness and unable to see light, is a poor leader when he says to others, “Never fear.  I positively know the way.”

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.