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The Enlightenment Attributed To God Essay, Research Paper Measuring the function of God in Enlightenment idea is non an easy undertaking, the chief ground being that the bulk of the great Enlightenment minds did non really address ( or onslaught: the two verbs at this clip being synonymous ) the issue of God specifically ( the noteworthy exclusions being the atheists d # 8217 ; Holbach and Jacques-Andr # 233 ; Naigeon ) . What the philosophes did reference and onslaught was organized faith, normally Catholicism ( although Christianity as a whole was ferociously criticized ) . In order therefore, to detect their perceptual experience of God, it will be necessary to analyze their statements refering faith. However, even this is non every bit simple as it appears. The Enlightenment was a really wide motion which included minds of differing beliefs and thoughts and hence, there was no unvarying consensus on the topic # 8211 ; some ( such as vitamin D # 8217 ; Holbach ) were atheist, others deeply spiritual ( notably Rousseau ) , whilst the bulk were freethinkers of one sort or another ( free thought was a motion that ran parallel to the Enlightenment although it had originated prior to it ) . Clearly though, the bulk of the philosophes were spiritual, which is important # 8211 ; the Enlightenment did non assail God nor did it assail faith ( as Nicolson puts it, # 8220 ; it was non faith that they attacked, but superstitious notion: non faith but priesthood. # 8221 ; ) yet this was purportedly a motion that advocated rationalism, ground and cognition, thoughts which are non, to my head, compatible with faith. It would look hence that the Enlightenment # 8217 ; s stance on faith was societal instead than theological. This so would explicate the campaign that was waged against Christianity ( the celebrated # 233 ; crasez cubic decimeter # 8217 ; inf # 226 ; me ) . To the philosophes, Christianity was a societal establishment which was the antithesis of everything that they stood for. As Porter writes, for Diderot, Voltaire et Al. # 8220 ; emancipation of world from spiritual dictatorship had to be the first blow in a general political relations of emancipation. # 8 221 ; The altering position of faith was doubtless influenced by the altering philosophical and scientific ambiance of the Eighteenth century. The diminution of Cartesian doctrine and its positions of the existence and society, to be replaced by Newton had a enormous impact on the Enlightenment ( as did the work of other great English minds, particularly Bacon, Hobbes and Locke ) . It seems in hindsight that struggle with Christianity was inevitable, as scientific cognition increased, yet the sheer fierceness of the onslaught that followed simply reinforces the thought that the struggle was more than merely science against religion. It is easy to see why Newton appealed to the philosophes # 8211 ; the thought that nature could be explained through scientific discipline but ( on a metaphysical note ) that even scientific discipline could non detect all causes and affects and Newton # 8217 ; s ain ( freethinker ) belief that God personally intervened to modulate nature # 8211 ; all could be incorporated into a positivist religion. The impact of Newtonianism is evident. For Voltaire, ( who has been described as a Newtonian freethinker ) # 8220 ; the whole doctrine of Newton leads of necessity to the cognition of a supreme Being, who created everything # 8230 ; # 8221 ; The influence of English thought on the Enlightenment was non confined to science. The deist motion, which was a important constituent of Enlightenment idea, had originated in England in the Seventeenth century, around the clip of the Civil War and had a vigorous followers, its head propagandists being Hobbes, Locke, Paine, Toland, Tindal and Collins. As with their Gallic coevalss, they used ground and rationalism against the Church, composing books which criticized all facets of Christianity. The interesting thing to observe is the chronology # 8211 ; was the societal and political ambiance of the Civil War and its wake a direct cause of English free thought, or would it hold occurred anyho w? The impression that true faith was merely obeying God # 8217 ; s moral jurisprudence ( and nil else ) and that everybody had a right to idolize as they saw tantrum, would non be out of topographic point in the Enlightenment yet it began in England ( as Gay right points out when, # 8220 ; in the 1760s Voltaire mounted his # 8230 ; run to # 233 ; crasez cubic decimeter # 8217 ; inf # 226 ; me he invented nil. He bought out into the unfastened a conflict that had been fought underground for more than half a century ) . Deism # 8217 ; s significance, hence, was that it was a societal and rational reaction ( in this illustration, against organized faith ) , mirroring societal and rational reactions in other countries of human life, e.g. political relations. Thus the state of affairs in England was now being repeated in Enlightenment France ( it should be remembered that the philosophes wrote on all facets of life including the humanistic disciplines and scientific disciplines ) and so many of the Enlightenment minds had read the plants of Toland. Collins et Al. and been later influenced. Of all the Enlightenment polemists who assailed Christianity, Voltaire is likely the best known. His hate of the atrociousnesss committed in the name of faith ( The Crusades, The Inquisition, St.Bartholomew # 8217 ; s Eve Massacre, Wars of Religion ) added to his experience of faith in England, led him to reason for spiritual tolerance for all religions, even Jews and atheists. Like other Enlightenment figures Voltaire recognized the map that faith played in society, that of modulating people # 8217 ; s behavior, i.e. encouraging justness and morality within society ( which was the footing for Voltaire # 8217 ; s observation that if God didn # 8217 ; t exist, it would be necessary to contrive Him ) . This seems to be a contradictory place # 8211 ; the philosophes appeared to be assailing Christianity but besides reasoning that it was a necessary portion of society. T his is presumptively an elitist attitude though # 8211 ; ordinary people who didn # 8217 ; t know any better could hold Christianity whilst the more enlightened could hold their rational and benevolent free thought. The onslaught on Christianity was echt plenty though # 8211 ; Hume applied his scepticism to the belief that God’s existence could be proved from creation and also to the idea of miracles, whilst Fontelle and Boulanger launched a thinly veiled attack on Christianity’s â€Å"magical† and sacrificial elements (under the guise of a study of primitive religions). Whilst Voltaire and Diderot were considered fierce critics of the Church even they were frightened by the radical atheism of the Baron d’Holbach, whose views, expounded in his book, System of Nature were described as being a â€Å"thundering engine of revolt and destruction†, (this illustrates the need to remember that Enlightenment thought was not uniform) and who was, according to Diderot, â€Å"raining bombs upon the house of the Lord.† d’Holbach made his views clear when he stated, â€Å"to discover the true principles of morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods, they have need of commonsense only †¦ men are †¦ w icked only because their reason is insufficiently developed.† Why should Voltaire and Diderot be concerned by this though? It cannot be denied that Voltaire disapproved of atheism – his work Jenni, or the sage and the atheist, was clearly an attack on d’Holbach and he reaffirmed his position when he stated, â€Å"the philosopher who recognizes a God has on his side a mass of probabilities which are equivalent to certainty †¦ the atheist has only doubts.† I would suggest that d’Holbach represented the Enlightenment taken to its extreme form – a belief in pure materialism, empiricism and sensationalism (the idea that we can only know what we can sense). It should be remembered that d’Holbach had criticized deism as merely being Christianity in a different form. This issue seems to me to be centred around whether or not â€Å"God is needed to provide a divine sanction for morality† (Voltaire) or if religion actually â€Å"ext inguished happiness and peace in the very heart of man† (d’Holbach). Is this what worried the deists – no god, equals no morality and justice? It should be pointed out that d’Holbach was not the only disparate element in this conflict – Rousseau appears to take an ultra-deist stance, arguing in the Social Contract that since religion and society are inextricably bound, any citizen who does not practice any form of religion is unreliable and should not be tolerated (i.e. atheists), thus Rousseau seems to be arguing that society will always need religion. What makes this perspective ironic is that as they became older, both Diderot and Voltaire gradually shifted from deism towards either full-blown atheism or a form of agnosticism. Whether they finally succumbed to the continual advancement of science (which previously they had argued did not disprove God’s existence) or the obvious fact that the concept of bienfaisance was wrong (Candide was w ritten to refute not only the idea that everything in society must be good since God created it but that everything was created for the benefit of man) I don’t know. What it says about the Enlightenment is also unclear – possibly that the growing realisation that the ills of society were not as easy to cure as previously imagined? What then was the significance of the Enlightenment’s treatment of religion? First and foremost it was an attack on state religion – the idea that the Roman Catholic church could outlaw other religions, had a monopoly on education, enforced rigorous censorship (Voltaire’s Dictionnaire Philosophique, which asked God, â€Å"creator of all worlds†, to forgive christians for their blasphemy, was condemned and burnt by the Church) laws and attempted to block the progress of knowledge (notably their treatment of Galileo) was anathema to a movement that advocated freedom in any form. It was therefore a political struggle – the dominance of the Church and the power it exerted over peoples’ lives and minds was unacceptable (thus the maxim of the philosophes was O tantum religio potuit saudere malorum: how great the evil which religion induces men to commit). Some have argued that the Enlightenment â€Å"decisively launched the secularization of European thought.† I would agree with this – the move from a monotheistic society to one which allowed deism and atheism to flourish must be seen as significant. It seems a strange coincidence that d’Holbach died in 1789, the same year the French Revolution occurred, a revolution which appeared to absorb his general philosophy on religion (especially the memorable Goddess of Reason) – does the French Revolution have the Enlightenment to thank for its own views on religion (or indeed the rest of society)? If you see the Revolution as enforcing Enlightenment ideals then you would have to agree. What stands out above all e lse is that the Enlightenment attempted and partially managed to remove the greatest block to freethought and progress — Christianity. It attacked superstition and ignorance, advocated (on the whole: I’m not sure if Rousseau can be classed as an Enlightenment figure) religious toleration and encouraged freethought and scientific progress – as mentioned earlier, the Enlightenment covered all aspects of life and aspired to apply the same tenets to all of them. To them religion was no exception and they regarded their religion as being the best it could be – free, rational and individualistic.BibliographyP.Gay, The Enlightenment: an interpretation. (Weidenfeld Wicolson, London, 1967). N.Hampson, The Enlightenment. (Penguin, England, 1982). M.Hunter D.Wooton (Ed.), Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992). H.Nicolson, The Age of Reason. (Constable and Co.Ltd., London, 1962). M.Perry, An Intellectual History of Moder n Europe. (Houghton Mifflin Company, U.S.A., 1993). J.Plamenatz, Man and Society: Political and Social theories from Machiavelli to Marx Vol.2 (Longman, U.S.A., 1963). R.Porter, The Enlightenment. (The Macmillan Press Ltd., Hampshire, 1990). J.M.Robertson, A Short History of Freethought. (Swan Sonnenschein and Co.Ltd., London, 1899).