RE: A Deist wrote this?
April 17, 2012 at 2:07 am
(This post was last modified: April 17, 2012 at 2:16 am by radorth.)
(April 17, 2012 at 12:44 am)orogenicman Wrote: I've been reading (actually, re-reading) several books on the enlightenment recently. Particularly "Science and the Enlightenment, by Thomas L. Lankins, and The Revolution in Science 1500-1750, by A Rupert Hall. Hall notes on page 24:
"Protestantism is totally irrelevant to the initiation of the scientific revolution. The influence it had on the character of seventeenth-century science is another matter. But no historian has failed to see an essential continuity from Vesalius to Harvey, from Copernicus to Kepler, from Galileo to Netwon, bridging firmly over any stretch of time in which the new protestant spirit might be supposed to infiltrate. Those historicans who wish to write any kind of generic account of the scientific revoluton (or of the enlightenment), or to trace its evolution from small beginnings through successive accretions and modifications, are surely right in looking back to the universally Catholic Fifteenth Century in the youth of Leonardo and Copernicus, for the first portents of what was to come."
So it is not true that the enlightment began or was was led by protestantism (Luther, who was a butcher, certainly didn't lead the enlightenment, and neither did Calvin, who was known for burning scholars at the stake).
It certainly is true. What was Newton, another Deist? Bacon?
Who were Jefferson's 3 heroes of the Enlightenment?
You miss the point anyway. The claim that "deists" led us out of the Middle Ages is pretty much nonsense. Some "Catholics" helped but they were disowned by Mother church, so they were more like default Protestants than Catholics. The great thinkers fled the church and the vast majority became Protestants. Atheists who can't stand the thought of a believer leading us out of the darkness simply mislabel Protestants as deists, and it happens often enough to appear intentional.
Oh, I see, so he believed exactly what fundies believed, but this doesn't mean he wasn't a deist at heart, and his fundy beliefs had no effect on his politcal views. When facts fail us, we turn to mind reading of course.
Or maybe he read Jesus' mission statement in Luke 4 and decided to do likewise? Like a thousand abolitionists did?
Well I'll take the above comments as a tacit admission that fundies led the enlightenment even though their beliefs had no effect on their political views. When were fundies like Locke become able to separate their politcal from their religious views?
