AUGUSTE COMTE: High Priest of Science!
Comte believed that the wave of instability and violence sweeping through Europe in the early 19th century was a direct result of religion's recent ASS-WHOOPING by science!
written by Fred Van Lente drawn by Ryan Dunlavey colored by Adam Guzowski
Script for ACTION PHILOSOPHERS: “AUGUSTE COMTE!”
Written by Fred Van Lente / © 2009 Ryan Dunlavey & Fred Van Lente
ONE
Panel 1: SPLASH PANEL: AUGUSTE COMTE faces us dressed as a SCIENCE POPE, with a swirling atom on his pointing pope hat and the symbol for PI atop his scepter. He wears MAX HEADROOM-style glasses. Comte makes a cross sign/papal blessing in the air. Behind him are the stereotypical AP MAD SCIENTISTS who are dressed like CATHOLIC PRIESTS.
LOGO: By the power invested in me, I, High Priest of Science and Action Philosopher #TK, AUGUSTE COMTE…
COMTE: … hereby “initiate” you into Religion of Humanity!!
PRIEST #1: Which is so totally not a Confirmation!
PRIEST #2: Nu-uh! ‘Cause we’re nothing like Catholicism!
PRIEST #3: Not one bit!!
CREDITS: Today’s Benediction will be delivered by
Fred Van Lente, Archbishop of Verbal Humor
Ryan Dunlavey, Patron Saint of Amusing Drawings
Panel 2: A younger Comte angrily departs the company of SAINT-SIMON, who is dressed in a threadbare PETER PAN costume and hangs from the top of the panel by highly visible STRINGS.
CAPTION: Young Comte served as secretary for famed French utopian thinker Count de Saint-Simon for seven years before a pointed break in 1824.
SAINT-SIMON: Only by eradicating greed through education can we form the perfect society… Blah, blah, blah…
COMTE: I can’t stand your vague intellectual pipedreams any longer!
COMTE: Society is in real crisis – and needs real solutions!!
Panel 3: Totally beefed-up bully SCIENCE pushes down scrawny weakling RELIGION (with Pope Hat) into the mud.
CAPTION: Comte believed that the wave of instability and violence sweeping through Europe in the early 19th century was a direct from Science’s recent ass-whooping of Religion and supernatural beliefs.
SCIENCE: Gimme your lunch money! Haw!
CAPTION: Nevertheless, Comte saw this as a natural outgrowth of the evolution of thought, guided by what he called “The Law of Three Stages”:
TWO
Panel 1: God beams over Adam and Eve over the Garden of Eden. Adam is missing rib in his side; Eve smells like ribs.
HEADER: Stage 1: THEOLOGICAL
Phenomena are explained through the supernatural!
GOD: I created Man from dust and Woman from Man!
ADAM: Why do you smell like ribs?
EVE: Monch, gnosh! No reason!
Panel 2: Same shot, but Adam and Eve are now dressed like Victorian Europeans and the EARTH looms over them in God’s stead.
HEADER: Stage 2: METAPHYSICAL
Much the same as Stage One, but the supernatural is represented as abstract or impersonal “forces!”
ADAM: “Nature” has created all men equal!
EVE: And women!
Panel 3: Same shot, but Adam and Eve lie DISSECTED on slabs and a blood-caked CORONER stands over them.
HEADER: Stage 3: POSITVISTIC
Phenomena are explained by formulation of scientific laws based on the constant relations between them! Any attempt to discover the “essence” or “secret causes” of things is abandoned!
CORONER: Except for the obvious biological differences, men and women are basically the same!
ADAM: Glad we could clear that up… Groan!
Panel 4: ISAAC NEWTON and GALILELO sit a table marked with a big “+”. Comte runs up with his chair over his head to join them!
CAPTION: To Comte, Newton and Galileo had already brought physics and astronomy into the positive stage.
CAPTION: He planned to do the same for the other realms of human thought!
THREE
Panel 1: The cheering peasants follow behind an ARMED DICTATOR as he marches Science away from the defeated Religion.
CAPTION: Comte called his theory of interhuman relationships “sociology,” and deemed it “The Queen of the Sciences” because all the other sciences fed into it.
CAPTION: He believed Sociology was all that stood between a despot seizing control of civil society in the vacuum left by Religion’s defeat.
Panel 2: Dumbass Saint-Simon attempts to puzzle out incredible complicated Ikea instructions. The box the parts came in is entitled “IKEA RELIJØN”. He can’t make heads or tails of it. Comte looks on, shaking his head, kneading his eyes with his fingers.
CAPTION: Comte had no interest in bringing the old religion back, though – it’s good it was defeated! But he felt society needed the structure and comfort religion provides!
COMTE: No, no – way too complicated!
CAPTION: Unlike many other reformers of his day, Comte believed a radical reconstruction of social institutions was impractical and create prohibitive disruption.
Panel 3: Comte has dressed up Religion in a new outfit, so he likes a combination of a space satellite and a Transformer. He shows Religion the mirror, where he sees the blazing head of BOB THE SUB-GENIUS.
CAPTION: Comte would just take the preexisting religious structure and graft humanistic ideals onto it!
COMTE: Instead of an imaginary God, we will worship Humanity itself!
COMTE: If by “worship,” you mean mirror human organization as the mind mirrors reality!
RELIGION (SMALL): Does this make my butt look big?
Panel 4: Comte pushes Religion out of the way so tailors can measure and fit him for his Science Pope get-up on Panel 1.
CAPTION: Raised Roman Catholic, Comte borrowed the Church’s structure wholesale for what he called his “Religion of Humanity.”
COMTE: My turn!
CAPTION: His church would be overseen by a pop—er, High Priest. (Of which he would be the first, of course.)
FOUR
Panel 1: On NEWTONMAS, kids open presents around a Giant Apple decorated with Xmas-style ornaments… while their parents drop apples on their heads.
CAPTION: Comte would have retained the Catholic calendar of saints … but replaced saints with scientists!
DAD: Happy Newtonmas, kids!
Panel 2: “Baptism,” Religion of Humanity-style … the screaming kid is dipped in a vat of PUREL (labeled as such – Kills Bacteria) which drips off him by a Science-Priest while the proud parents, dressed in Jetson-style jumpsuits looks proudly on.
CAPTION: Instead of getting baptized, kids get “presented” … instead of being confirmed, teens get “admitted”…
PRIEST: It’s much more scientific … and therefore awesome!
CAPTION: You get the idea.
Panel 3: Bob the Sub-Genius Monopoly Billionnaire throws money at the Bob the Sub-Genius bum!
CAPTION: Comte coined the term “altruism,” the moral obligation to serve others, to distinguish his movement from the Enlightenment’s interest in “individual rights,” which, in his view, were selfish and unethical!
BOB BILLIONAIRE: There but for the grace of me go I!
CAPTION: But when little-h humanity began worshipping big-H Humanity, Comte believed altruism would be the rule, not the exception!
Panel 4: In a medieval throne room, a Mad Scientist king sits on the throne while Pope Comte stands by his side. Both enthusiastically gives us the thumbs up!
CAPTION: Under Positivism, society would be like a benign Middle Ages, with science providing strength, and philosophy-religion providing moral authority!
COMTE: “Love, then, is our principle; Order our basis; and Progress our end!”
SCIENCE KING: Bright makes Right!
CAPTION: Good luck with that, Auguste!
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