The Ways of the Worldviews (Part 41): Let Me Introduce You to the So-Called Enlightenment

For the past 200 years, ever since the so-called “Enlightenment,” there has been a false narrative that has held sway over Western culture. Consider the very terms we just take for granted as being historically accurate: the Dark Ages, the Enlightenment—these were terms coined by secular atheists who were hell bent on convincing successive generations that Christianity equaled ignorance, superstition, and unscientific darkness, whereas the ideals of their self-proclaimed “Enlightenment” equaled reason, logic, science and light. Never mind the fact that such a depiction of “the dark ages” is an utter fiction—the propaganda of the so-called “Enlightenment” didn’t care about facts; it had an agenda.

Enlightenment Propaganda, and the Light Going Out in the West
Ironically, it has been the success of such propaganda that has contributed to an alarming ignorance of history. It has been the propaganda of the “Enlightenment” that has plunged modern western society into darkness and ignorance of history. The fact is, if you can control the historical narrative of the past, you not only control the present, but you can influence and shape the direction of the future. In many ways, our modern politics is still being pulled by the strings of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Spinoza. Our modern culture as a whole as further strings attached to it—those of the “Enlightenment” thinkers of the 18^th century.

It’s time we shed some real light into the darkness, ignorance, and failure of the so-called “Enlightenment”—only then will we be truly enlightened by the truth about our history.

The truth is there really was no such thing as the “Enlightenment.” During the period most often associated with the so-called Enlightenment (i.e. 1700s), what we see in Europe was more of a frustrated reaction to the “religious wars” that had engulfed Europe for almost two centuries. Now, as I pointed out in the previous posts, these “religious wars” were often actually propagated by secular rulers to suit their own ends. In effect, secular rulers ended up using the religious divisions that came about after the Protestant Reformation as way to secure their political power. Not surprisingly, after two centuries of this, “religion,” and more specifically Christianity, began to leave a bad taste in society’s mouth.

The tragedy of all this was that it was the decidedly Christian worldview that pulled Europe out of the darkness of a brutal and ignorant paganism. In the name of Christ, it provided the light of education, the arts, music, literature, technology and philosophy. For all its faults, the Church during both the Byzantine and High Catholic Ages had built up a societal structure that was able to translate the Gospel of Christ into all areas of life, for the betterment of society.

It should also be emphasized that despite the fact that many cultural advances grew out of the Protestant Revolution, the way in which the Protestant Revolution came about and continued on (namely by allying with secular leaders and allowing those leaders to apply Machiavellian tactics to subvert the Protestant cause) ended up cutting out the religious legs from under Western society.

The Culture War…And So It Begins
Ever since the so-called Enlightenment, therefore, there has been an ongoing cultural battle throughout Western society. On one hand, there are the acolytes of the likes of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza, and the proponents of the so-called Enlightenment (whom we will be looking at in the next few posts) who advocate for increasing secularism and philosophical materialism in the public square, and who claim that things like democracy and science are rooted in their atheistic worldview.

On the other hand, there are the religious adherents of a decidedly Protestant (and in modern day American, Fundamentalist/Evangelical) worldview, who suffer from a kind of cultural schizophrenia. They call for a return to the “religious roots” of our society, but fail to see that many of their values are rooted in the very Enlightenment worldview they claim to be against. Simply put, in their attempts to bring society back to Christ, they are unwittingly using the Enlightenment rule-book (as will become obvious).

But before we get ahead of ourselves, we need to take the time to understand this particular time period. And to understand this time period we need to look at two converging story-lines:  the scientific revolution and the rise of the Enlightenment philosophers.

The Scientific Revolution…Sort of a Christian Thing
The Scientific Revolution was not the sole property of one group. It wasn’t a Protestant phenomenon, it wasn’t a Catholic phenomenon, and it certainly wasn’t a secular phenomenon. For that matter, it wasn’t even purely a Christian phenomenon. That being said, though, the extent to which scientific study took root in Western Europe was certainly the result of the predominant Christian worldview that came out of the High Catholic Age. As Alfred North Whitehead said:

“The greatest contribution of medievalism to the formation of the scientific movement [was] the inexpugnable belief that…there is a secret, a secret which can be unveiled. How has this conviction been so vividly implanted in the European mind? It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher. Every detail was supervised and ordered: the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith in rationality.”

Simply put, it was the Christian conviction that nature was good and orderly because it was created by a God of order; and therefore, it was worth investigating and discovering. And it was that conviction that led to the explosion of innovation and scientific advances during the not-so-dark “Dark Ages.” The “Scientific Revolution,” therefore, wasn’t so much of a revolution, as it was a continuing of the true scientific revolution that had begun much earlier.

And this leads to a rather ironic curiosity about the Enlightenment thinkers we will be discussing over the next few posts: men like Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Hume, and Gibbon. These men, the ones who boldly proclaimed the rise of science as the sign of the end of Christianity, weren’t scientists. They were writers and literary men…and, no surprise, either atheistic or simply irreligious.

What’s the irony? The actual scientists who brought about such advances in science were Christians. In fact, many of the men who actually ushered in the scientific revolution were men from the previous generations, before the so-called “Enlightenment” of the 18^th century. Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543 AD), the man who showed that the earth travels around the sun, and thus upended the Ptolemic model of the universe and put in its place the heliocentric model, was a devout Catholic. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630 AD) was a Protestant mathematician and astronomer who built upon Copernicus’ theories. And then there was obviously Galileo Galilei (1564-1642 AD), a Catholic mathematician and astronomer (as well as a few other things) who further confirmed Copernicus’ findings.

Following these men was the great Isaac Newton (1642-1727 AD), considered the greatest scientist who ever lived. Not many people realize that Newton’s religious writings actually dwarfed his scientific writings. Far from being some sort of champion for secularistic, enlightenment thinking, Newton was a deeply religious man. For Newton, the wonders he discovered in creation was simply further proof that there was an intelligence behind the universe. He stated, “it’s unphilosophical to seek for any other origin of the world, or to pretend that it might arise out of a chaos by the mere laws of nature.”

Such an analysis of the created order obviously is not held by many modern scientists. In fact, one of the main ideas that came out of the so-called Enlightenment—that of deism, and the seeing God as some sort of divine clock-maker and the world as a giant clock—was utterly rejected by Newton on the grounds that it denied the freedom and activity of the divine will. In other words, deism reduced God to be subservient to nature. And that, for Newton, was sheer nonsense. In his book, Galileo Goes to Jail: And Other Myths About Science and Religion, Ronald L. Numbers puts it this way:

“Manifestly, Newton’s God was not Enlightenment absentee clockmaker. Rather he was free to make a world of any sort he pleased, and if he chose to alter it later, then that was the prerogative of an omnipotent, providential governor who exercises his dominion over all that comes to pass—who are we mere mortals to question his foresight?” (121).

Conclusion
As we now go forward to look at the time-period known as the Enlightenment, I just want to make one thing clear: the fundamental narrative that has stemmed from the time of the Enlightenment is, quite simply, based on a lie. The false narrative of the Church and the Christian Era (labeled as the “Dark Ages”) being hostile to science and reason was concocted by deeply irreligious men who had no experience or expertise in science.

I guess we can say that “alternative facts” and “fake news” is not a brand-new phenomenon. As we will see, many of the main assumptions we have today in our modern western world are based on the “alternative facts” and “fake news” that men like Voltaire and Rousseau so cleverly injected into the bloodstream of Western Culture over 200 years ago.

And, not to sound like Morpheus, but if that is the case, it is about time we realize that we have been “living in a dream world.” “It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” No, we’re not talking about computer programs…but we are talking about the propaganda that as shaped the Western worldview for the past two centuries.