“Historian Herbert Butterfield, in noting the different political spirit of Western man since the French Revolution and how he had once, long before 1789, responded to the intractable difficulties of human coexistence & social order, has remarked that men ‘make gods now, not out of wood and stone, which though a waste of time is a fairly innocent proceeding, but out of their abstract nouns, which are the most treacherous and explosive things in the world.'”
M. E. Bradford — American Man Of Letters / Classicist
Original Intentions; On The Making & Ratification of the united States Constitution –pg. 18
We are still the knuckle dragging idolaters that pagan man was. The only difference is that our idolatry is gnostic, which is seen in how we reify nouns turning them into gods. Pagan man had the good sense to eschew abstract gods for the safety of the concrete gods of wind, water, fire, and wood. The idolatry of the pagans was a mirror opposite of modernity as it embraced an animism that found its gods in all things material. The whole notion of evolutionary progress of religion is a myth, as measured by its own standard. We have not advanced from an earlier age where men worshiped false gods. We have merely abstracted our gods so that we no longer have the inconvenience of carrying them around with us or of building shrines in order to lodge them. Pagan man today is religiously one with his pagan forefathers. Their multitudinous gods were concrete. Our multitudinous gods are abstract. We simply are to close to our gods to see that they are just as fatuous and just as powerless as the gods that were made out of trees and iron.
It remains true today with our abstract gods what was true of the concrete gods made by the pagan idolaters of old.
Isaiah 44:9 All who make idols are nothing,
and the things they treasure are worthless.
Those who would speak up for them are blind;
they are ignorant, to their own shame.10 Who shapes a god and casts an idol,
which can profit him nothing?11 He and his kind will be put to shame;
craftsmen are nothing but men.
Let them all come together and take their stand;
they will be brought down to terror and infamy.12 The blacksmith takes a tool
and works with it in the coals;
he shapes an idol with hammers,
he forges it with the might of his arm.
He gets hungry and loses his strength;
he drinks no water and grows faint.13 The carpenter measures with a line
and makes an outline with a marker;
he roughs it out with chisels
and marks it with compasses.
He shapes it in the form of man,
of man in all his glory,
that it may dwell in a shrine.14 He cut down cedars,
or perhaps took a cypress or oak.
He let it grow among the trees of the forest,
or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow.15 It is man’s fuel for burning;
some of it he takes and warms himself,
he kindles a fire and bakes bread.
But he also fashions a god and worships it;
he makes an idol and bows down to it.16 Half of the wood he burns in the fire;
over it he prepares his meal,
he roasts his meat and eats his fill.
He also warms himself and says,
“Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.”17 From the rest he makes a god, his idol;
he bows down to it and worships.
He prays to it and says,
“Save me; you are my god.”18 They know nothing, they understand nothing;
their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see,
and their minds closed so they cannot understand.19 No one stops to think,
no one has the knowledge or understanding to say,
“Half of it I used for fuel;
I even baked bread over its coals,
I roasted meat and I ate.
Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left?
Shall I bow down to a block of wood?”20 He feeds on ashes, a deluded heart misleads him;
he cannot save himself, or say,
“Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?”
