Looks like you’re mighty popular. I’m going to attempt to built upon what Kim has written in response to your question about Baudrillard & God. Notice my blog, I’m an idiot, so feel free to destroy anything I say.

I love Kim’s example with God & ‘the Word.’ I think it’s the Gospel of St. John that begins “in the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Of course, this only works if you are Christian. Anyhow, this is a clear example of equation. Baudrillard would argue that there is no ‘God’ there is only a collection of representations and images that are striving to illustrate ‘God’ but, in their belief are creating a reality that is unique to them. There is ‘the Word’, images, icons, and ideas of ‘God’ that make him real, but, as I believe Baudrillard argues, without these, there is no God. It’s a Derrida-ean thing…you can’t talk about ‘it’ without mentioning ‘it’. It is not possible to have a conception of God without actively creating and making ideas about God concrete.

Maybe I can help you out where you say, “On page 1737, it says ’science never sacrifices itself: it is always murderous’.”

It’s not that science murders itself. Instead, think of science as a killer of all that it studies. Science feels the need to categorize and explain a subject at any and all cost to the subject it studies. This doesn’t mean much when we think of inanimate objects, but when we talk about people, this becomes detrimental.

Have you ever seen the movie Nell? Nell is a woman living in the middle of nowhere, having been raised by her mother who suffered from a stroke. Nell never learned to talk the way we do. Instead, she learned to speak like her mother who had lost control over her facial muscles. Once the mother dies, Nell is discovered and suddenly she becomes the object of scientific study. Psychologists believe she made up a new language so they camp out and spy on her. Her house is monitored and she has no privacy. Eventually she is removed from her home and placed in a facility for further observation. Here she sinks into a deep depression. The suffering she feels comes at the hands of the psychologists who believe she is simply a case to be analyzed. Had she not been rescued by the two psychologists who eventually do see her as human, not just a case for science, she would have lost every aspect of life as she knew it and died within the confines of an asylum.

As for God…
This part I am unsure of but I think maybe you can think of God as equal to “The Word.” People tend to see God as the originator, the one who “spoke” things into existence. If we believe the “word” is God’s power, can the word itself call things into existence, including the concept of God? If I’m right, Baudrillard thinks yes. He thinks words, or signs, can call things into existence whether those things are real or simply concepts, including the concept of God. Suddenly, God is not real.

In the case of images/statues that are supposed to represent God, consider this. When nobody living has ever seen the spiritual entity, what can those symbols or icons possibly be modeled after? Those symbols are now a copy of an unreal image. Yet, those who are religious believe in a “truth” that is actually based in the unreal. Some would call this faith. Baudrillard calls it hyper-reality.

(We’ll see if I’m close in class tomorrow.)
- Kim