The God Who Was Us

Comte’s Religion of Humanity, like its unsuccessful forerunners, was not conceived by a prophet or messiah talking to God, but rather was deliberately designed using rational thought. His aim was to foster social unity and advance human progress. This secular faith represented yet another attempt to apply logical thinking to the realm of spirituality and social organization. (There were two previous attempts in France during the Revolution, but we are not going there at the moment.)

Comte was born during the turmoil of the French revolution in Southern France. He was well acquainted with the excesses that had occurred in the name of “liberté, égalité, fraternité” during the revolutionary period. After years of rage, fear, hate, murder and war, French society was in need of stability. Comte developed a master philosophy that he hoped would achieve this, which he called Positivism. Comte’s Religion of Humanity, described in his Systeme de politique positive, is an offshoot of his Positivist philosophy.

The basis of Positivism is that we do not and cannot know anything absolutely and what we know is relative, meaning we don’t understand the essence of anything but only how some things relate to other things. The consistent relationships and sequences of events that we observe, we consider to be laws. But we don’t know their essential nature or their ultimate cause and never will.^[2] So there is no point in wasting mental energy on them. For example, discussions of the existence or non-existence of God are a waste of time since we can never know for sure.

To Comte, the world’s great religions might contain great humanitarian ideals and might serve a useful function in society, but they were not created by God. They were created by men, and their doctrines are based on imagination not facts. For this reason, they should be rejected. Questions addressed by religions, such as where did the world come from and what happens after we die, are of no importance, as we can only guess at answers and our answers would be most likely wrong.

You can say that Positivism is an engineer’s religion. It is all so logical. All of our beliefs should be based on facts. By extension, Comte laid out that because human groups act in a predictable manner, sociology, the science of our social organizations, can be distilled into laws of social nature. Social organization should be based on these laws. Technocrat specialists should organize and run our societies based on these sociological laws.

Comte envisioned that scientists would run the schools, the governments and other institutions of society. These technocrats would use scientific sociology to control society so that there would be order and progress. He believed this Positivist vision could bring about this change.^[3]

The Religion of Humanity was a natural outgrowth of Positivism. The religion was organized with a hierarchy and even a pope, the “High Priest of Humanity,” sitting in Paris. The religion was designed to provide the social and emotional benefits of religion, while adhering to Positivist principles. Just as technocrats would run society in a Positivist paradise, in the Religion of Humanity, the priests would direct public opinion, arbitrate disputes and, of course, teach. Priests would be specially trained in a fourteen-year program to become experts in their craft. They would earn no money and could not hold any offices outside the priesthood. This would allow them to maintain a purely spiritual and moral authority.

In response to the vast number of Christian faiths, Comte idealized the unity of the Medieval Church. It is because of the historical unifying influence of the one Church that most people in the West still continue to share a common set of intellectual beliefs and values today. In his Religion of Humanity, Comte built on that Catholic foundation. He pretty much took the old Catholic prayers, songs and sacraments and revised them to worship “divine Humanity” rather than God. Instead of rejecting the devil, parents were asked to renounce “all sins of inordinate selfishness.” According to Thomas Huxley, the religion was “Catholicism minus Christianity.”^[4] The sign of the cross, became the sign of Love, Order and Progress. The Lord’s Prayer became

Holy Humanity,

who are in all human time and space,

Hallowed be thy Name,

may thy recognition come to all men,

and thy labors glorify the heavens and the earth.

Grant us power to earn our daily bread,

and deter us from erring as we strive to serve others aright,

and teach us how to deliver each other from every evil,

Amen.^[5]

In the religion, humanity itself was called “the Great Being” and was to be the object of worship, rather than Reason or Robespierre’s Supreme Being. The Great Being included all those people who in the past, present and future, sought to improve humanity.

Comte’s religion recognizes the basic truth I often write about. Humanity itself is an entity, we individuals are merely insignificant parts of it, and yet we all have an important part to play in helping humanity progress.

Love, not reason, is the underlying principle of the religion. Altruistic motherly love is key; and, therefore, the religion stresses the emotional and nurturing characteristics of women. The purpose of the religion is to get believers to act in the best interest of humanity as a whole. In fact, the Religion of Humanity provides the important qualities of religion that Alain de Bottom pointed out in his book, Religion for Atheists. It encourages us to act unselfishly, to love and help others, all in the name of progressing the species.

The New York Positivist Society was established in New York City in the late 1860s and lasted for only a few years. Services were held every Sunday and during special Positivist holidays. Typically, about twenty people attended the Sunday services, and the special observances might have as many as forty attendees. The Springfield Republican commented on one such observance:

They seem to make of science a demi-god, and one at first feels repelled by the chilling character of their belief. Yet, on the other hand, they hold to and practically exhibit so high a faith in human nature, and such a conception of man’s responsibility and duty, that their practice redeems their principles.^[6]

The Religion of Humanity spread throughout the world but was always a niche religion and never gained first-order status. While the religion has since faded from prominence^[7] with only a small following remaining in Brazil, its core concept—the reverence for human potential and collective progress—continues to influence contemporary thought.

It seems to me that the reason is that you need something from the other side, God, for instance, who has the supreme authority to establish a religion. Who was Comte, but just a man, who stumbled onto some great concepts, but he didn’t talk to God. And he wasn’t God. There is no authority there.

So the hunger of intellectuals remains. But how do you resolve it?

^[1] Comte is known as the founder of sociology and the coiner of the term “altruism.” His emphasis on a scientific mathematical approach to decision-making has become the foundation for modern statistical analysis and business decision-making. He was well-known in intellectual circles and, it is said, greatly influenced John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Herbert Spengler and other thinkers.

^[2] John Stuart Mill, The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (Henry Hold, 1873), 11.

^[3] Sociology has matured and been perverted since then. Advertisers, governments, mass media and social media companies appear to be applying scientific sociology today, not for the common good of humanity but rather to brainwash us into purchasing their products or thinking their thoughts.

^[4] Rollin Chambliss, Social Thought: From Hammurabi to Comte, (Dryden, 1954), 424.

^[5] Joseph Lonchampt, Positivist Prayer, trans. John G. Mills (Independent Republican Job Office, 1870), 29.

^[6] “From New York,” Springfield Republican, January 31, 1872, cited in Gillis Harp, Positivist Republic, 34–35.

^[7] The religion’s website was removed from the internet in the 2010s.