Re-enchantment: A New Enlightenment

by Paul Kurtz
secularhumanism.org

The term Enlightenment refers to a unique set of ideas and ideals that came to fruition in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It began with Bacon, Descartes, Locke, and other philosophers who sought a universal method for establishing knowledge. They looked to science as the model for knowledge and debated whether reason or experience was most important (actually, both are equally important). No doubt they took impetus from the remarkable discoveries of Newton and Galileo in mathematics, physics, and astronomy. The Enlightenment culminated with the French philosophes-Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet, and d'Holbach-who popularized its ideas in Parisian salons, pamphlets, and books, enabling those ideas to spread to a wider educated public.

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Unfortunately, there has been a massive retreat from Enlightenment ideals in recent years, a return to pre-modern mythologies. There has been a resurgence of fundamentalist religions
worldwide—Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, Roman Catholicism, and Orthodox Judaism. Added to this are occult-paranormal claims, which allegedly transcend the existing scientific paradigm.

In the United States—the preeminent scientific-technological-military superpower in the world—significant numbers of Americans have embraced primitive forms of biblical religion. These focus on salvation, the Rapture, and the Second Coming of Jesus. Evangelical Protestant Christians have made alliances with conservative Roman Catholics and neo-conservative Jews, and they have captured political power—power they have used to oppose secular humanism and naturalism. Incredibly, the Bush administration has rejected therapeutic stem-cell research based on the questionable theological-moral doctrine of "ensoulment": even discarded cells that have begun to divide are held to have "souls." Part and parcel with this is "evangelical capitalism," also allied with a triumphalist imperial foreign policy convinced that "God blesses" America in military adventures embarked upon abroad. As a result, many people are troubled by the present administration now in control of this country, and they have focused on the upcoming national elections of 2004—as they no doubt should.

- much more . . .

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/kurtz_24_3.htm