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cbayer

(146,218 posts)
Sun Jun 29, 2014, 09:03 AM Jun 2014

'Nature's God' explores 'heretical origins' of religion in U.S.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-jc-matthew-stewart-20140629-story.html


The book "Nature's God" focuses on Ethan Allen, left, and Thomas Young, two notable revolutionaries who were outspoken deists. In the book, deism is considered to be what philosophically drove the American Revolution. (MPI / Getty Images)

WENDY SMITH
June 27, 2014

Matthew Stewart wants to make one thing perfectly clear: The United States was not founded as a Christian nation. The principles that inspired the American Revolution, he argues in "Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic," belong to an intellectual tradition dating to ancient Greece and reviled by every variety of Christian — early church fathers, Catholic clergy and Protestant divines alike.

Rooted in the philosophy of Epicurus, who saw happiness as the highest good, this tradition flowered in the 17th century to produce wide-ranging inquiries into the nature of God, humanity, religion and society that got Benedict de Spinoza labeled "the atheist Jew." Meanwhile, the more circumspect John Locke (careful to mask his iconoclasm with boilerplate declarations of conventional piety) ended up praised by historians as "the single greatest intellectual influence on America's revolutionaries."

Yet Spinoza the radical, no less than Locke the moderate, shaped an agnostic world view that shook America loose from Britain. Stewart pays particular attention to two fire-breathers — Ethan Allen, surprise conqueror of Ft. Ticonderoga, and Thomas Young, instigator of the Boston Tea Party — as the most outspoken proponents of a heterodox creed shared by (at minimum) Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. Contemporaries called them deists when not calling them infidels or atheists, and Stewart devotes considerable care to explaining that Deism, the philosophical engine of the Revolution, is not the Christianity Lite some 21st century conservatives have proclaimed it.

"America's revolutionary deists," Stewart writes, "saw themselves as — and they were — participants in an international movement that drew on most of the same literary sources across the civilized world." His detailed explication of those sources ranges from Epicurus and his Roman popularizer, Lucretius, through early modern Italian freethinkers Giordano Bruno and Lucilio Vanini (both executed at the stake for their apostasy) to the diverse array of English and French intellectuals reacting to Spinoza and Locke.

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'Nature's God' explores 'heretical origins' of religion in U.S. (Original Post) cbayer Jun 2014 OP
link to the article? NT alfie Jun 2014 #1
Fixed. Sorry about that. cbayer Jun 2014 #2
Thanks, interesting article, NT alfie Jun 2014 #3
I love this! It resonates with me. Particularly like this from the link: freshwest Jun 2014 #4

freshwest

(53,661 posts)
4. I love this! It resonates with me. Particularly like this from the link:
Sun Jun 29, 2014, 01:10 PM
Jun 2014

Last edited Tue Jul 1, 2014, 11:07 AM - Edit history (2)



Natural law was the basis for the core ideas of the Revolution: People are free and equal in nature. Government is a compact between human beings, not something handed down from above.

Most important, we must always have the liberty of thought to examine received wisdom, evaluate its utility, and change our ideas — and our institutions.


In particular this part:

People are free and equal in nature.


Got a chuckle from this:

"Jefferson's vision for the future of American religion … featured nothing but Unitarian churches from sea to shining sea."

A better America than one divided into various cults with their supporters and enemies. Very close to what I grew up with.

From the first Amazon review, but all of them are very good:


“Splendid… imaginative but never fanciful, even at its most surprising. What lends Nature’s God a good deal of its verve is Matthew Stewart’s unabashed attachment not only to the revolutionaries as they really were but to the skeptical rationalism they embodied. This is partisan scholarship as it should be written, and much needed service to the public.” (Alan Ryan, author of The Making of Modern Liberalism)

http://www.amazon.com/Natures-God-Heretical-American-Republic/dp/0393064549/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1404062887&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=Nature%27s+God%3A+The+Heretical+Origins+of+the+American+Republic

Thanks for posting this. I'm also interested in on of his other books listed below the Amazon page on Nature's God...

The Management Myth: Debunking Modern Business Philosophy

"Here he (Matthew Stewart) brilliantly sets about unpicking the central tenets of management thinking... Elegant hatchet job on the management consultancy industry and the damage it's done." Director CNBC Business

"Business Schools turning out MBA graduates are big business, and they are not going to love Stewart, whose thesis is that 'the modern idea of management is right enough to be dangerously wrong'...serious and valuable polemic." The Times - The Wall Street Journal.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Management-Myth-Debunking-Philosophy/dp/0393338525/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1KS89TEB0G5GE70S6Y3F

Randian business methodolgy needs to be rooted out. At one time we had true community oriented business models (not the faux ones to deceive us) that gave us stability and business owners who were accountable to more than just their shareholders.

The Supreme Court and the conservatives are trying to write the most regressive practices in stone and destabilizing the USA. It's going to be a long haul to reverse this and it starts NOW in 2014 to put the reactionaries out of office. Or we're done.

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