Basically, the enlightenment is a lie. This is not to say it didn't happen, it did, but it was not very enlightening. It's the idea of the enlightenment, casting off the shackles of faith and embracing reason; that's what never happened. The enlightenment, like all heresy, is based off a false dichotomy. In this case, faith verses reason. It claims you can only have one, and then rejects faith as mere superstition. It claims to champion truth but in actuality it brings only doubt.
A dichotomy is a choice involving only two options. It is an either/or statement with no alternatives. There are real dichotomies; life and death, truth and falsehood, women... But most of the time they are false.
A false dichotomy tries to present an either/or when in actuality there may be a third option or some middle ground. I would say Protestantism presents a false dichotomy in contrasting faith and works, Catholicism responds with the correction; faith and works are really the same thing and they are both gifts of grace. Marketing campaigns love to present a false dichotomy of spend less here or more somewhere else; how about I keep the car I have and not spend anything? The enlightenment presents the false dichotomy of faith and reason. It fails to recognize that these are not in opposition to each other. How can truth conflict with truth?
The entire idea of the enlightenment presupposes a conflict between faith and reason. It claims that now man can be free of religion by embracing science, that before the enlightenment man hid from reason, behind a curtain of faith, but in the enlightenment that curtain is torn away and the light of truth is shown upon the earth.
In reality the enlightenment obscures. It shifts the focus from the why onto the how. As i discussed last week, there is nothing wrong with asking how, but it shouldn't distract from asking why. The question of how can't give meaning or purpose. In denying faith the enlightenment mindset goes to an unbelievable extreme, it denies the ultimate question of why altogether. It says this is all there is and there ain't no more.
In the name of this falsehood man's eyes are blinded from all but the material, only the purely natural can be acknowledged. Faith is not hostile to reason but the proponents of reason seem to be very hostile to faith. Perhaps it is because faith claims to answer questions pure reason cannot and the principles of the enlightenment cannot acknowledge that possibility.
If you challenge a proponent of the enlightenment and ask for examples of faith conflicting with reason, they have nothing. They may bring up the myth of Galileo, that he was excommunicated for believing the earth revolves around the sun. (Although he was excommunicated, and he did support heliocentrism, it was not the direct cause of his excommunication.)
Perhaps they will bring up evolution, a theory the Church has never condemned, which I happen to support, but which has many holes in it nevertheless.
Perhaps we could respond with Nicolaus Copernicus, a devoted Catholic and Canon Lawyer who developed the heliocentric theory. (He was not the first to propose it, but he expand it into a true scientific theory.)
We could point to the modern university system, developed within the Catholic Church.
To Brother Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian friar, who first developed the entire field of genetics! His work was ignored for 72 years by the enlightened Darwinists because it ran contrary to their materialistic philosophy.
To Father Georges Lemaître, a Catholic priest, who developed the hypothesis of the primeval atom, which would later became known as the Big Bang theory. Somewhat humorously, his theory was largely dismissed by the scientific elite as well, partially because of his religious background and partially because the enlightened materialist worldview runs at odds with the universe having a beginning. (Perhaps because it implies a beginner.)
Sometimes defenders of the enlightenment will try and paint Christianity or religion in general as violent and barbaric. Some modern historians claim that Christianity has been responsible for 3 million deaths in the last two millennia. I personally would contest this number as far too high, and every few years a new study comes out to prove me right and it drops. However, lets go with this number, take them at their word.
Now consider the French Revolution, which flowed directly from enlightenment principles and constitutes the first modern genocide. Over a quarter-million faithful Catholics were massacred for being just that, faithful Catholics. They refused to disavow their religion; namely, their allegiance to the Pope.
These deaths, however, constitute less than one fifth of one percent of the total victims of the enlightenment. When we reject a reason for our being, deny any value to life, and focus solely on how to reach our goals, morality drops away. Any faith would find these number abhorrent, but in the name of reason...
- From Nazi's enlightened eugenics program - 26 million
- Under Mao's new enlightened China - 38 million
- Under Russia's enlightened communism - 62 million
- From other communist nations (Cambodia, North Korea, Vietnam, etc.) - 11 million
Not counting war, preventable famine or abortion, that's 137 million people.
(The worst killer of all, abortion - 1.5 billion deaths since World War II (But we can leave the Enlightenment out of that and just attribute it to man's inhumanity.))
Even when we compare the high estimate for Christianity to the middle estimates for enlightenment philosophy, we get a number 45 times higher, in only one tenth the time.
It is truly ironic that this idea should be named Enlightenment. Rather than ushering in an age of light it brought darkness, such that the true dark ages are not the time that came before, but rather every day since.
Perhaps one day the world will realize that reason alone is insufficient. Reason, unfettered by faith, won't take us anywhere we want to go.
A dichotomy is a choice involving only two options. It is an either/or statement with no alternatives. There are real dichotomies; life and death, truth and falsehood, women... But most of the time they are false.
A false dichotomy tries to present an either/or when in actuality there may be a third option or some middle ground. I would say Protestantism presents a false dichotomy in contrasting faith and works, Catholicism responds with the correction; faith and works are really the same thing and they are both gifts of grace. Marketing campaigns love to present a false dichotomy of spend less here or more somewhere else; how about I keep the car I have and not spend anything? The enlightenment presents the false dichotomy of faith and reason. It fails to recognize that these are not in opposition to each other. How can truth conflict with truth?
The entire idea of the enlightenment presupposes a conflict between faith and reason. It claims that now man can be free of religion by embracing science, that before the enlightenment man hid from reason, behind a curtain of faith, but in the enlightenment that curtain is torn away and the light of truth is shown upon the earth.
In reality the enlightenment obscures. It shifts the focus from the why onto the how. As i discussed last week, there is nothing wrong with asking how, but it shouldn't distract from asking why. The question of how can't give meaning or purpose. In denying faith the enlightenment mindset goes to an unbelievable extreme, it denies the ultimate question of why altogether. It says this is all there is and there ain't no more.
In the name of this falsehood man's eyes are blinded from all but the material, only the purely natural can be acknowledged. Faith is not hostile to reason but the proponents of reason seem to be very hostile to faith. Perhaps it is because faith claims to answer questions pure reason cannot and the principles of the enlightenment cannot acknowledge that possibility.
If you challenge a proponent of the enlightenment and ask for examples of faith conflicting with reason, they have nothing. They may bring up the myth of Galileo, that he was excommunicated for believing the earth revolves around the sun. (Although he was excommunicated, and he did support heliocentrism, it was not the direct cause of his excommunication.)
Perhaps they will bring up evolution, a theory the Church has never condemned, which I happen to support, but which has many holes in it nevertheless.
Perhaps we could respond with Nicolaus Copernicus, a devoted Catholic and Canon Lawyer who developed the heliocentric theory. (He was not the first to propose it, but he expand it into a true scientific theory.)
We could point to the modern university system, developed within the Catholic Church.
To Brother Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian friar, who first developed the entire field of genetics! His work was ignored for 72 years by the enlightened Darwinists because it ran contrary to their materialistic philosophy.
To Father Georges Lemaître, a Catholic priest, who developed the hypothesis of the primeval atom, which would later became known as the Big Bang theory. Somewhat humorously, his theory was largely dismissed by the scientific elite as well, partially because of his religious background and partially because the enlightened materialist worldview runs at odds with the universe having a beginning. (Perhaps because it implies a beginner.)
Sometimes defenders of the enlightenment will try and paint Christianity or religion in general as violent and barbaric. Some modern historians claim that Christianity has been responsible for 3 million deaths in the last two millennia. I personally would contest this number as far too high, and every few years a new study comes out to prove me right and it drops. However, lets go with this number, take them at their word.
Now consider the French Revolution, which flowed directly from enlightenment principles and constitutes the first modern genocide. Over a quarter-million faithful Catholics were massacred for being just that, faithful Catholics. They refused to disavow their religion; namely, their allegiance to the Pope.
These deaths, however, constitute less than one fifth of one percent of the total victims of the enlightenment. When we reject a reason for our being, deny any value to life, and focus solely on how to reach our goals, morality drops away. Any faith would find these number abhorrent, but in the name of reason...
- From Nazi's enlightened eugenics program - 26 million
- Under Mao's new enlightened China - 38 million
- Under Russia's enlightened communism - 62 million
- From other communist nations (Cambodia, North Korea, Vietnam, etc.) - 11 million
Not counting war, preventable famine or abortion, that's 137 million people.
(The worst killer of all, abortion - 1.5 billion deaths since World War II (But we can leave the Enlightenment out of that and just attribute it to man's inhumanity.))
Even when we compare the high estimate for Christianity to the middle estimates for enlightenment philosophy, we get a number 45 times higher, in only one tenth the time.
It is truly ironic that this idea should be named Enlightenment. Rather than ushering in an age of light it brought darkness, such that the true dark ages are not the time that came before, but rather every day since.
Perhaps one day the world will realize that reason alone is insufficient. Reason, unfettered by faith, won't take us anywhere we want to go.
