"For the modern world will accept no dogmas upon any authority; but it will accept any dogmas on no authority. Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with 'they say' or 'don't you know that?' or try (and fail) to remember the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper; and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say."
- G.K. Chesterton, The Superstition of Divorce, 1920
I was reminded of that quote by Chesterton while reading comments and articles about the connection between atheism and the Enlightenment. Although my memory fails me, I recall seeing a prominent professor mention that in a newspaper recently, though for the life of me I can't remember his name. Anyway atheists often say something along those lines. (Don't you know that?)
Then again, maybe my boorish imagination is weaving a strawman. After all, I can't imagine why any intelligent atheist would claim such a connection. Indeed, the "New Atheists" probably consider the Age of Enlightenment a most unenlightened age, considering the low regard that thinkers of that period had for atheism.
Still, there are probably at least a few of the acolytes of Dawkins/Dennett/Harris/Hitchens who aren't aware that most Enlightenment thinkers viewed their intellectual forebears (the New Atheists, circa 1770) with scorn. And it is easy to see why they might be confused. "The Enlightenment" is the term used to describe the 18th century intellectual movement which advocated reason as the primary basis of authority. The New Atheists also believe reason to be the primary basis of authority. Ergo, there must be some Darwinian line of descent connecting these rationalists. Q.E.D.?
Many atheists who make this mistake are simply unaware of Western intellectual history. For the rationalists of the Enlightenment era were able to trust in reason precisely because they were theists or deists and believed in a transcendent, rational God. To think otherwise was considered, as the philosophers often noted, the height of absurdity.
Take, for instance, the French. Oxford scholar Alister McGrath notes that, "Most radical French philosophers of the eighteenth century are actually to be categorized not as atheists, but as Deists…Denis Diderot (1713-84), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), and Voltaire (1694-1778)--all of who are regularly stereotyped as atheists--are clearly best regarded as Deists."
These three figures are key representatives of their age. Indeed, as the Columbia Encyclopedia states, "The Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot epitomized the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment…" How then did the Encyclopédie cover atheism? In his famous reference work Diderot was not only critical of atheism but pondered the question of whether atheists could even be virtuous:
[I]t may be that there are some whose belief in God is highly suspect, and who however are not without virtue; I even agree that their hearts might be sensible to humanity, to doing good, that they love the public good, and would like to see men happy; what are we to conclude from that? That their hearts are more worthy than their minds; for natural principles, stronger than their lying principles, dominate them without their knowledge; conscience, the feeling that presses them, makes them act in spite of themselves, and stops them from going where their dark system leads them.
And on the atheist's virtue of "doubting", Diderot says:
We doubt for numerous reasons: anger and brutality, blindness and malice, and, finally, fantasy, and because we want to doubt; but we doubt also because of prudence and distrust, because of wisdom, and because of intellectual shrewdness. Academics and Atheists doubt in the first way described; true Philosophers doubt in the second way. The first doubt is one of darkness, which does not lead to light, but which moves rather always in the opposite direction. The second kind of doubt is born of light, and it helps, in turn, to produce light. This is the doubt, one can say, that is the first step toward the truth.
At least Diderot was more generous toward atheists than was his friend Voltaire. In the entry on "atheism" in his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire argues that the reason people hold a belief in God is because of the evidence of intelligent design:
We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence. When we see a beautiful machine, we say that there is a good engineer, and that this engineer has excellent judgment. The world is assuredly an admirable machine; therefore there is in the world an admirable intelligence, wherever it may be. This argument is old, and none the worse for that.
Voltaire continues to argue for intelligent design and answers objections of "modern atheist" before concluding:
One more word on this subject. Atheism is the vice of a few intelligent persons, and superstition is the vice of fools. But rogues! What are they? Rogues.
As McGrath notes, "Voltaire regarded atheism with about as much enthusiasm as he did the teachings of the church."
(There were, of course a handful of "freethinkers" among the philosophes (e.g., La Mettrie, d'Holbach, and Helvetius) but only one name is still well known even today: the Marquis de Sade.)
What about the English? Well, there was Joseph Addison, Francis Bacon, Edmund Burke, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Alexander Pope, Adam Smith, and Jonathan Swift -- but all of them, of course, were Christian theists.
Desperate to add a big name to their wall, some atheists claim historian Edmund Gibbon. But as Keith Windschuttle points out, in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Gibbon "talks unambiguously about Jesus as 'the Son of God' and of 'the pure and proper divinity of Christ.'" That's heretical talk for an atheist.
Perhaps the only major figure remaining is Scottish philosopher David Hume. But even in his own day no one knew if Hume was an atheist, a Deist, or just a philosophical trickster.
What about in America? Arguably, the only persons that could unquestionably be included in the pantheon of "enlightenment thinkers" would be Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine. Unfortunately for the atheists, each of these men were also Deists.
Since almost every Enlightenment thinker believed in some form of Deity, where do the New Atheists get this silly notion that they are heirs of the Enlightenment? On what authority do they accept this ridiculous dogma? Perhaps they heard it mentioned by a professor in a newspaper. Or maybe they just dreamed in up. Surely, though, these self-proclaimed rationalists must have a reason for believing this nonsense.
Then again, maybe it is to be expected. To quote Chesterton once again, "It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense."
http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/mt/mt-trackback.cgi/3865
1
Athiesm or at least the modern version of it is really a reaction to centuries of religionist gurus who claimed to speak from divine autority but cant seem to explain how they could possibly know weather or not they speak from divine autority. Its a reaction to over 1700 years of religionist appologists trying (and failing constantly) to come up with new and more credible pretext to explain why their holy book's "poof" magic doesnt work in the real world. Unfortunately,many athiest have fallen prey to the brain disease that overtook virtually all religions...the disease of absolute certainty and acting upon those absolute certainties even though,like religionists,they are completely incapable of justifying those certainties with any rational credibility...i believe the most appropriate response to all these questions is the one that everyone seem to hate the most...namely "i dont know and does it really matter?"
posted on 08.28.2007 3:33 AM2
But do atheists have such absolute certainty? From what I've read of Hitchens he doesn't. HE doesn't assert that God or something like him can't exist, he asserts he has no reason to believe he does exist. Voltaire's argument of 'Intelligent Design' (anything to keep the brand alive I see) suffers from the same flaws that modern arguments do:
We are intelligent beings: intelligent beings cannot have been formed by a crude, blind, insensible being: there is certainly some difference between the ideas of Newton and the dung of a mule. Newton's intelligence, therefore, came from another intelligence.
Why? Time and time again we see big things built up from smaller things in nature. A spark becomes a huge forest fire, a gust of wind becomes a hurricane. Why wouldn't a great intelligence be built up from a long series of lesser intelligences? This assertion is made out of the blue, with no proof or even factual support (Newton's great intelligence was indeed built upon many 'lesser' people like his mother who taught him the basics that he needed to know before he could ever get close to saying anything intelligent about mathematics or physics).
Joe embraces the Enlightenment as a theistic enterprise. Technically he is right, Deism is a type of theism. But don't you notice a trend? For a theistic society to suddenly start embracing Deism seems to indicate a shift away from theism does it not? Common sense here, doesn't Deism seem like some type of atheist-lite more than it seems like a new type of theism (like Martin Luther created a new theism in Europe when he broke from the Catholic Church)?
posted on 08.28.2007 7:51 AM3
"Why? Time and time..."
That was very possibly the most ignorant statement I have every heard in my life.
"A spark..." A spark can only burn things that already existed - the forest. And even then, there is a LOSS of information. That's a perfect example supporting the idea that the only thing that can come from random energy is more chaos. A highly ordered system is reduced to low-order system of ash.
"A gust of wind..." I'm not even going to start on this other than to remark this shows a level of ignorance so far unmatched. Learn some actual science! A gust of wind does NOT become a hurricane. That whole "butterfly flutters its wings and a storm sinks a ship" is a nonsense idea gathered by ignorant newspapers from Chaos Theory, which declares nothing of the sort.
posted on 08.28.2007 8:54 AM4
I'm surprized that nobody mentioned Descarte. Certainly atheist and certainly thinking himself to be certain. And where are Hobbes and Scotus and the others who promoted progressive principles? They were all pre-Kant; they were all "modern".
Hitchens is uncertain because this age is uncertain. His skepticism is not like that of Descarte but more like the student who has not studied for the test. He cannot know the answer because he has no notes from which to study, sto standard of truth. He may claim rationalism but does not behave as one.
Deism was an answer to the skeptics who said that "There is no God because there is no evidence." The response was "There is a God, but he leaves no evidence." Both of these are inadequate to the human condition. What was needed for the benefit of Christianity was an intervention of God.
The times left too much uncertainty, and with that came the revivals (God's intervention) -- Whitfield, Wesley, Moody, Graham -- as the answer to the world's uncertainty. They changed the whole of society. But the world is still uncertain, just as is Hitchens. The postmodern is by definition uncertain, depending entirely on the fact that there are no facts. We certainly live in the most uncertain age in history.
Collin
posted on 08.28.2007 8:57 AMhttp://evangelicalperspective.blogspot.com/
5
Descarte an atheist? His radical doubt was methodological. Cogito ergo sum provided the epistemological foundation from which he believed he could derive proof of God by logical and mathematical steps.
Or at least that's what I read somewhere or heard a professor once say.
posted on 08.28.2007 9:37 AM6
Collin
Deism was an answer to the skeptics who said that "There is no God because there is no evidence." The response was "There is a God, but he leaves no evidence." Both of these are inadequate to the human condition. What was needed for the benefit of Christianity was an intervention of God.
Answer to what skeptics? The Deists lived in an age of near universal theism. They were answering the view that God is constantly intervening in the world.
Hitchens is uncertain because this age is uncertain. His skepticism is not like that of Descarte but more like the student who has not studied for the test. He cannot know the answer because he has no notes from which to study, sto standard of truth. He may claim rationalism but does not behave as one.
Exactly what is it we are uncertain about here?
posted on 08.28.2007 10:28 AM7
Does anybody remember the days when Joe actually gave arguments in favor of the existence of God? Is this what you have come to?
Given the God-soaked time they lived in and the primitive state of science, it was an amazing advance for Enlightenment thinkers to announce themselves Deists. Prior to that age, it was the most a man could do to be a Unitarian (see Locke and Newton). Building on the insights and courage of the Enlightenment and with the advances of science, a hundred years later men such as Darwin, Huxley, Ingersoll and Edison were agnostics. Today, with even further progress, we are able to see clearly and say without fear of reprisal that atheism is the only rational position.
Seriously, Joe, if Voltaire, Diderot, Franklin, Jefferson, Paine and the others were able to somehow come back to life, do you think they would be Evangelicals or atheists? Deism was merely a transitional phase out of the superstition and ignorance of theism.
I am so grateful to those men who went as far as they possibly could in search of truth. I can only see so far and so clearly because I stand on the shoulders of giants.
posted on 08.28.2007 10:55 AM8
ex-preacher,
You make metaphysics sound like a mystery novel. The same basic ideas for why one may or may not be a believer have been around for hundreds of years. To presume that cultural changes in belief are best attributed to a sharpening of our "metaphysical tools" is hubris. The "geist" of the medievals was scholastic theism, for Enlightenment thinkers it was deism, now, it's a heady mix of agnosticism and hedonism. To see some linear progress in that which neatly correlates with how "perspicuously" we (meaning white, male, Westerners) think is, well, silly.
I marvel at the, dare I say it, faith you have in humanity.
posted on 08.28.2007 11:13 AM9
Excellent post. One of the more intelligently thought out that I've read.
Even though I disagree...
I think Boonton is correct in saying that the Enlightenment was still a step away from the theism, and the first step toward looking at "reason" as if it was something existed outside of ourselves. I reject this, of course, but many positivists will talk about reason and objectivity like a Christian talks about God.
Reason exists in our minds, each mind viewing the world through a different filter than the next. It is impossible for it to exist apart from a human mind, or apart from God's mind, if you swing that way.
And Boonton, Hitchens does indeed say that. But then he goes on to demand that no one else has any reason to believe either, which is typically arrogant. But he's got to sell books somehow, right? ;)
And I'm not sure your metaphors apply here. Those small things become larger precisely because of natural laws in place that dictate how these things will react to other elements. They are, for lack of a better term, "preordained" to act that way, or dare I say it, "designed" to act that way.
posted on 08.28.2007 11:18 AM10
Boonton,
I won't argue that you're wrong on deism, but only incomplete.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism
Both features are certainly present.
Exactly what is it we are uncertain about here?
Our era is uncertain about everything.
posted on 08.28.2007 11:41 AMCarson's opus "The Gagging of God" and Pearcey's "Total Truth" provide sufficient examples. Carson covers the matter of epistemology and Pearcey covers current issues in science. (There are some evolutionists who say that the theory of evolution is only a western construct, culturally dependent, for explaining reality.)
11
"(There are some evolutionists who say that the theory of evolution is only a western construct, culturally dependent, for explaining reality.)"
posted on 08.28.2007 1:10 PMI d certainly like to know which "evolutionists" said that and in which context. The theory of evolution does not explain "reality" but rather why we observe a change of alleles in populations of biological organisms over time and i ve never heard any evolutionist or biologist claim otherwise.
12
Boonton:
Basically, any philosophical system that says "truth is relative" does not have any valid basis for saying "this philosophical system is true".
Take postmodernism, for example. It says that "truth" is just a social construct of a group of people in a particular place and time. Well then, is postmodernism such a construct? How about postmodernism's idea of truth? And postmodernism is fond of "deconstructing" texts to make them meaningless (or at least not mean what the author actually meant). But the writings of postmodernists could be deconstructed, too. So the postmodernists really wind up with no way to say "postmodernism is true" in any real sense of the word "true".
Or take the dialectic methodology. This was probably the origin of much of the "truth is relative" idea, because, no matter what conclusion you have reached (synthesis), it only serves as the next thesis, and there is of course the next antithesis, and then you need a new synthesis, and so there could never be a final truth. But if you simply assert that "dialectically is the correct way to think", and make that your thesis (in the dialectic sense of the word thesis), then there must be some antithesis (it doesn't matter what the antithesis is). Then there must be a synthesis. Again, it doesn't matter what the synthesis is, just that it exists, and that it is different from the thesis. So starting with the idea that "dialectically is the correct way to think", and thinking dialectically, we see that the dialectic is inadequate and needs to be replaced by something else. So this method that gives rise to relativism winds up destroying itself.
And so it is with every relativist system of thought.
In most cases, however, people who believe these "truth is relative" ideas only believe them about other people's truth. They can therefore ignore what other people say the truth is. But the result, whether they see it or not, is that it leaves them no real foundation to build anything on. All they can do is destroy, but they cannot build.
And this is why this is such an uncertain age. All the old truths have been destroyed, but nobody has been able to build anything new to replace them.
I suspect that you believe that science and reason are the new truths, and that we don't need "philosophical" truth. That's another topic, and this post is already too long.
posted on 08.28.2007 1:16 PM13
Basically, any philosophical system that says "truth is relative" does not have any valid basis for saying "this philosophical system is true".
What if one said that truth is not relative but the ability of truth to be condensed into any language system is inherently limited. Hence the truth value of any system of language (i.e. school of philosophy) is relative.
posted on 08.28.2007 1:31 PM14
I suspect that you believe that science and reason are the new truths, and that we don't need "philosophical" truth. That's another topic, and this post is already too long.
I wouldn't say this is a new truth. Gravity was working long before Netwon came along. And I think I see your point about uncertainity. Essentially you're saying something like, "I am certain that I am uncertain" is self-contradictory. But I kind of suspect that there's some room in there....certainly uncertain degenerates into extreme relativism and finally just plain giving up (as in "what's the point of this game? I'll never know the truth so I'm just going to go eat some chips"). But if the spirit is uncertainity then you're not being true to it because you're being too certain that you are uncertain.
Perhaps then the way to square the circle is to maintain truth but never to be too sure about it. In other words, the stance is that anything is open to be questioned but some assertions stand on shakey ground ("The Ancient Egyptians had to have had contact with UFO's who helped them build the pyramids") and others on much firm ground ("The Earth is older than 6,000 years").
posted on 08.28.2007 1:38 PM15
Boonton
What if one said that truth is not relative but the ability of truth to be condensed into any language system is inherently limited. Hence the truth value of any system of language (i.e. school of philosophy) is relative.
Sounds like you're a evangelical now.
posted on 08.28.2007 2:58 PM16
What if one said that truth is not relative but the ability of truth to be condensed into any language system is inherently limited. Hence the truth value of any system of language (i.e. school of philosophy) is relative.
Same problem. You still can't say "this system is true".
posted on 08.28.2007 5:10 PM17
There's actually a passage in Hume where he endorses an argument for the existence of God. I think he was a theist, just a barebones one who denied special revelation (i.e. what was then called a deist, but I don't know how you're using the term; many today confuse deism with a particular view about how God causes things in the world rather than its original meaning as a theist who denies special revelation; Jefferson, for instance, was a deist in denying special revelation but not in the sense many use today, since he accepted that God will judge evildoers and has expectations for how we should live).
John Locke was almost certainly an Arian. He wrote several letters questioning the Trinity and affirming the views of Arians who were his contemporaries. Isaac Newton was also a heretic on issues related to the Trinity, and he denied the possibility of supernatural intervention through miracles (thus fitting the more contemporary definition of deism). A number of scholars think Adam Smith became a deist later in life, but there is debate over this. The evidence for it is ambiguous, but the arguments that he did remain a theist are also very weak.
You forgot George Berkeley, Thomas Reid, and Joseph Butler among the devout Christians. Those three are absolutely clear cases.
As for the idea that Descartes was an atheist, no one who has read his most influential work could remotely think that. There are people who think that his theism was philosophically-motivated and not really in any pious or religious sense. But that's not the same as atheism, which is ludicrous. His entire argument that we can trust our senses depends on his proof of God's existence.
posted on 08.28.2007 6:07 PM18
I hereby acknowledge and confess my error in presenting Descarte as an outright atheist.
posted on 08.28.2007 7:46 PM19
"What if one said that truth is not relative but the ability of truth to be condensed into any language system is inherently limited. Hence the truth value of any system of language (i.e. school of philosophy) is relative."
Is that true?
posted on 08.28.2007 10:42 PM20
Mr. Carter,
Enlightenment France was a land of closeted atheism, for the simple reason that before the great revolution of 1789, it was illegal to preach heresy against the revealed truths of the Catholic religion.
This was an area of the law which was honored mostly in the breach, but it was still dangerous to be an outright militant atheist. A philosophe who pressed the point of God's lack of existence could very well find himself a guest at the Bastille, or escorted to the border for a trip to parts unknown of indefinite duration.
Enlightenment France was by no means a totalitarian state in this regard, but one shouldn't be surprised that atheism never became a fashionable cause there. To conclude that atheists were scarce based on your reading of Voltaire and Diderot would be equivalent to thinking that the vast majority of Americans slept in separate beds based upon the depictions of married life in the movies of 1940's and '50's.
posted on 08.29.2007 3:11 AM21
By the way, I always thought Voltaire was something of an obnoxious crank.
He did a real service to the Enlightenment by reporting to the French developments in British letters and science, but I found many of his critiques of Christianity and religion to be over-the-top, mean-spirited and hypocritical.
If Voltaire was a Deist and not an atheist, then that is fine by me. He couldn't hold a candle to Chris Hitchens and his work.
posted on 08.29.2007 3:21 AM22
Same problem. You still can't say "this system is true".
So what? The system could in fact be true, it would just sit slightly outside of language's capacity.
Or
Is that true?
Yes but as far as words go its truth is relative. In different contexts the correct answer to that question would be 'NO' and the 'system' would maintain its truthfulness. Now you know what it feels like to be a Zen Master.
If Voltaire was a Deist and not an atheist, then that is fine by me. He couldn't hold a candle to Chris Hitchens and his work.
I liked Candide but it's clear that Voltaire was a product of his times. If his critiques seem over-the-top, mean spirited and hypocritical it's probably because the people of his time he was attacking were themselves pretty noxious. Like Thomas Paine, it's a credit to his ideas that nowadays we scratch our heads wondering what he was getting so puffy about.
Hitchens himself does a good job of getting over-the-top. But he knows how to argue and he knows how to be witty about it. He is also stunningly well read. I'd love to see him get a blog and just list what he reads every week.
posted on 08.29.2007 7:42 AM23
Eh, it's no good to answer ignorance of history with... ignorance of history. I'm sure you're aware of the laws, particularly in England, against atheism. Even without such laws (some of which prescribed death as the punishment for atheism), it was social and professional suicide to be openly atheistic. It's not surprising, then, that many who have been suspected of atheism proclaimed themselves deists or actively criticized atheism. But there is pretty strong evidence that at least some of them, particularly in Europe, were in fact atheists.
I'm sure you know the story of David Hume's dinner at D'Holbach's house. D'Holbach was one of the few openly atheist intellectuals in Europe at the time, and Hume, sitting at the table with other 18 intellectuals (some of whom are on your list), remarked that he'd never met an atheist. D'Holbach responded by sweeping his arm around the table to include all of his guests and said that he could show Hume 15 atheists, and 3 others who were undecided.
And of course, it's historically inaccurate to treat the Enlightenment as an 18th century phenomenon. It took place at different times in different countries, and on the whole, lasted well into the 19th century, when atheism became somewhat more fashionable.
It's silly for atheists to blindly declare that the Enlightenment leads directly to their intellectual position, but it's equally silly to argue that one can't get from the Enlightenment to atheism fairly easily.
posted on 08.29.2007 2:17 PM24
Even without such laws (some of which prescribed death as the punishment for atheism), it was social and professional suicide to be openly atheistic.
Am I to understand that the Enlightenment atheists were hypocrites who didn't even want to give up their jobs for what they believed?
So either the Enlightenment thinkers despised atheism, or they were total hypocrites. That's nice. Atheists sure have a knack for picking out their intellectual heroes.
posted on 08.30.2007 6:43 AM25
Turgonian,
So let me get this straight... in a pick between religious persecution (or irreligious persecution) and muted philosophical beliefs you pick the advocates of unjust laws over those who are bullied into silence? That's pretty, well, ignorant.
I'm a Christian, but even I can admit that a climate of fear that perpetuates a state-mandated theism makes the state look bad, not closet atheists. Jeez.
Unless you posted your comment from the Sudan and under threat of death, I'm going to take your comment with a grain of salt.
posted on 08.30.2007 1:52 PM26
Am I to understand that the Enlightenment atheists were hypocrites who didn't even want to give up their jobs for what they believed?
Technically I suppose the answer is yes but instead of 'jobs' you should probably use the word 'lives' or at least 'freedom'.
posted on 08.30.2007 5:34 PM27
"Atheists sure have a knack for picking out their intellectual heroes."
Pot kettle black. Isn't there a denomination known as Lutheran? Didn't Luther say nasty things about Jews? Aren't some Christians Calvinist? Didn't Calvin have some guy burned for disagreeing with him?
posted on 08.30.2007 7:26 PM