For in our own time, the earlier, naturalistic revolution against God replaced the name ‘God’ by the name ‘Nature’. Almost everything else was left unchanged. Theology, the Science of God, was replaced by the Science of Nature; God’s laws by the laws of Nature; God’s will and power by the will and power of Nature (the natural forces); and later, God’s design and God’s judgment by Natural Selection. Theological determinism was replaced by a naturalistic determinism; that is, God’s omniscience and omnipotence were replaced by the omniscience and omnipotence of the Natural Sciences.
Hegel and Marx replaced the goddess Nature, in her turn, by the goddess History. So we get laws of History; powers, forces, tendencies, designs, and plans, of History; and the omniscience and omnipotence of historical determinism. Sinners against God are replaced by ‘criminals who vainly resist the march of History’; and we learn that not God but History will be our judge.
-Karl Popper (A Pluralist Approach to the Philosophy of History)
Yep, the Progressives’ “Arc of History” bit – a crock in its entirety. History just “is” – it is just what has happened in the past and has no agency, in and of itself, to sway the agency of actual live humans. A recording, yes, but nothing more (regardless of the nonsense that Obama spewed in using it). Same with nature – nature is also “just is”
