I would like to close this series on the enlightenment with some thoughts on the philosophy’s impact on religion. The philosophy of the enlightenment is generally thought of as an anti-religious movement and that is not entirely accurate. While many of the philosophers of the time were specifically anti Catholic, the movement itself was less anti-religious than it was anti many aspects of religion as practiced at the time. It was anti superstitious, anti-fanatical, and generally anti authoritarianist. The philosophers who did believe in religion wanted one that was more natural and rational in keeping with the general philosophy of the movement. They saw the Catholic church in particular as one of superstition in both practice and belief, as well as an authority to be distrusted just as they distrusted other forms of authority.
One can think of the Protestant movement itself as an enlightenment movement in that it was rebelling against the Catholic Church and claimed that the individual, using his rational powers, could interpret the Bible without the help or authority of the Church. Protestantism finds its authority in the scripture itself which, ironically, has its authority also challenged by the movement. That said, a significant number of enlightenment philosophers, including Newton himself, believed that the order of the universe strongly implies the existence of God. The British philosopher Samuel Clark, writing in the early 1700’s, uses this concept, as well as the enlightenment concept of sufficient reason, in order to argue for the existence of God. He takes it one step further saying that the existence of God naturally implies the existence of divine justice that rewards good and punishes evil.
The founding fathers were influenced by John Locke who, while not a supporter of Samuel Clark, argued that reason and Christianity were compatible. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson in particular follow the logic of both Locke and Clark in their writings, and see both the order of the Divine and the natural logic of Christianity as demonstrably real. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, as the French Revolution becomes increasingly violent, Robespierre makes the “cult of the supreme being” the official religion of the new French state.
In a departure from this rationalistic view of the existence of God, Rousseau believed that religion is formed as a natural human sentiment in that love of the divine, and humility at the sight of his creations, are natural for humans to feel and that there is no need for any form of worship beyond that which man feels in his heart. Rousseau writes quite passionately about the overflowing gratitude he feels toward the creator who put all of this in place. This is a significant departure from the rationalism of previous enlightenment philosophers in that Rousseau seems to be saying that our knowledge of the divine comes from our heart. David Hume, writing in the late 1700’s explores some of these apparent contradictions in the nature of God in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Using the style of Plato, he sets up a conversation where he debates the nature of God. In it we get the argument of nature as a machine, in that the existence of a watch presupposes the existence of a watchmaker, as well as the counter argument that there are many dissimilarities between the machines of man and the larger “machine” of nature.
Further, if the machine analogy is correct, then God is much like man (even given that the analogy itself allows that nature is much more complex than is a watch) and therefore hardly divine. In his counter argument for the existence of God, Hume uses the enlightenment concept of “sufficient reason”[1] to say that, the existence of nature implies the existence of God even as it does not prove so. In the end it is generally thought that Hume was an atheist even as he believed that it was impossible to disprove the existence of God. He seems to settle on the idea that for man to believe in God is, in itself, natural even as it is not entirely rational. Or even more bluntly put, rationalism is defenseless in the face of belief but neither should rationalism concede to belief.
That is not to say there was not a significant atheist movement as part of the enlightenment philosophy. The writings of Dennis Diderot and Barron D’Holbach, argued that religion does nothing to further our understanding of nature, but rather limits it by providing answers in superstition rather than in science. While many of the other enlightenment philosophers argued that morality required religion, D’Holbach argued for a sort of ethical naturalism or “enlightened self-interest” while his critics argued that he was tearing down traditional morality without any substitute for “ought” that was previously held by God.
The enlightenment as a philosophical movement is sometimes difficult to understand in that many of the arguments seem to be contrived in the style of the Sophists that so angered Plato. Plato’s objection to their methods was that they seemed to be engaged in clever word games rather than a search for some larger truth. That said, this is still an important movement because it was the natural result of the advances in science and math. These advancements called into question beliefs that had held sway for centuries and it was completely natural that these foundational thoughts would need to be reassessed. As such, the philosophy of the enlightenment was an inflection moment in human history. The challenge to the authority of religion, the concept that men are naturally equal (as opposed to the Christian philosophy of being divinely equal), the adoption of the scientific method of “prove it” to the larger philosophical world, are all concepts that we owe to this philosophical movement.
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Good Article.
The “Protestant” movement involved more than just who interprets the Bible. It, like everything else, involved property, money, and power.
In England, King Henry confiscated most if not all the property belonging to the Catholic Church and gave it to his supporters. The same occurred in the German city states.
Of course there were those concerned about the Bible, but the “Bidens/Clintons/Obamas/Bushies” pols of the day saw it as the opportunity to make money and power.