"Let us embrace Science and the new technologies unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease, death and the sweat of labor"
About this Quote
Vorilhon’s line sells technology the way a revival preacher sells salvation: total, cleansing, inevitable. The hook is its swaggering promise of liberation, but the real move is substitution. “Science and the new technologies” aren’t just tools here; they’re positioned as an heir to religion’s emotional job, offering meaning, security, and a grand narrative of escape. The phrase “unfettered” is the tell. This isn’t a plea for curiosity or research funding. It’s an argument against restraint, against skepticism, against the messy democratic impulse to ask who benefits and who gets hurt.
The subtext is a kind of techno-millennialism: the old myths are dead, the new miracles are engineered, and the faithful should stop hesitating. “Myth of god” frames belief as childish superstition, while “age old fears” paints doubt as outdated hardware we can finally uninstall. Even “disease, death and the sweat of labor” reads like a secular Trinity of suffering, with innovation cast as the redeemer that can abolish biology and economics alike.
Culturally, it lands in a familiar celebrity register: big, sweeping, emotionally satisfying, allergic to footnotes. It also echoes a late-20th-century strain of futurism where technological progress is treated as moral progress, and friction is treated as reaction. The line works because it flatters the listener into joining an enlightened vanguard. It also reveals its blind spot: liberation for whom, at what cost, and under whose control. The promise is freedom; the pitch is faith.
The subtext is a kind of techno-millennialism: the old myths are dead, the new miracles are engineered, and the faithful should stop hesitating. “Myth of god” frames belief as childish superstition, while “age old fears” paints doubt as outdated hardware we can finally uninstall. Even “disease, death and the sweat of labor” reads like a secular Trinity of suffering, with innovation cast as the redeemer that can abolish biology and economics alike.
Culturally, it lands in a familiar celebrity register: big, sweeping, emotionally satisfying, allergic to footnotes. It also echoes a late-20th-century strain of futurism where technological progress is treated as moral progress, and friction is treated as reaction. The line works because it flatters the listener into joining an enlightened vanguard. It also reveals its blind spot: liberation for whom, at what cost, and under whose control. The promise is freedom; the pitch is faith.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
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