Anti-Catholic Bias

[SJBurgess]

this is in my global business textbook under ‘global business ethics’:

“Modern political and economic philosophies trace their roots back to the Reformation and Enlightenment. The Reformation was a period of European history in the sixteenth century when Protestant thinkers, led by Martin Luther, challenged the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. As a result of the Reformation, the Catholic Church lost its control over all scientific and intellectual thought. While there were a number of debates and discussions over the ensuing decades and century, the Reformation is widely believed to have led to another historical period called the Age of Enlightenment, which refers to a period in Western philosophical, intellectual, scientific, and cultural life in the eighteenth century. The Enlightenment, as it is commonly called, promoted a set of values in which reason, not religion, was advocated as the primary source for legitimacy and authority. As a result, it is also known as the Age of Reason.”

Does this make anyone else’s skin crawl, or am I being to sensitive?

 

[SilverShadow22]

It’s a typical, somewhat subtle, dig at the One True Faith.

One should not expect anything else from modern secular education.

 

[1neophyte]

Is there any further commentary about how the exaltation of “reason” has led us to the current modern “Enlightenment”, known as the Age of Men Using Women’s Bathrooms?

 

[Crusaderbear]

It was actually an anti religious bias. People were burned at the stake for their beliefs, yet people like Newton and Galileo kept finding out things about the natural world that the church hadn’t approved. Yes, the church went overboard on these discoveries, but eventually came around and are now supporters of science and discovery in many areas.

On the important things, those to do with God, the church has remained steadfast, on the things to do with the natural world (physics, astronomy, etc…) the church supports science.

 

[LeahTherese]

I think it’s a matter of personal opinion - my skin doesn’t crawl, but I guess I can see why others’ might.

Nothing in the quoted statement is actually demonstrably false. It is very very mainstream historiography to link the Reformation (for better or worse), over a degree of human intellectual progress.

However the Enlightenment, of course, very much included staunchly Catholic countries and individuals (whatever personal animosity Voltaire might have had towards the Church). The Enlightenment, it might be true to say, could be a direct result of the Reformation. However Catholicism benefited and contributed to it just as much (i.e. the Reformation may have produced very beneficial effects in the Catholic Church as well, of course, as immediately negative ones).

 

[victrolatim]

High school and college are minefields. This is tiny compared to other stuff I have heard and seen.

 

[Rhubarb]

Well modern political and economical philosophies do trace back to the Enlightenment, where thinking did turn away from the religious to the rational.

However I think that there’s a lot to be said for the post-Enlightenment late 1800s to early 1900s thinking where there was a turn away from cold rationalism back to the spiritual. Not necessarily Catholic spirituality, but, spirituality and non-rational. I don’t know if a talk about modern economic philosophy is complete without Max Weber’s iron cage.

 

[total_Catholic]

Protestantism has led to rationalism which has led to atheism and downright hatred of God, particularly in the West.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Well modern political and economical philosophies do trace back to the Enlightenment, where thinking did turn away from the religious to the rational.

However I think that there’s a lot to be said for the post-Enlightenment late 1800s to early 1900s thinking where there was a turn away from cold rationalism back to the spiritual. Not necessarily Catholic spirituality, but, spirituality and non-rational. I don’t know if a talk about modern economic philosophy is complete without Max Weber’s iron cage.

This is creating a false dichotomy as if religion was somehow irrational prior to the enlightenment. That is simply not true. The use of reason has an historical provenance dating back even before Greek philosophers, Jewish scholars and eastern sages.

The myth that somehow rationality started with the Enlightenment or the Reformation is patently incorrect. Read the Scholastics, Augustine, the Church Fathers, Boethius, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius and Lao Tse among others.

Now some enlightenment thinkers may have viewed themselves as the progenitors of reason, but that perspective is definitely a myth and (more likely) an intentional deception. The reason it still has traction is because it provides the mythical narrative by which modern atheist thinkers legitimize their rejection of religion.

There is no finding the “rational” by “turning away from the religious.” There isn’t that kind of bifurcation to be had in the application of reason. That would be mistaking the worst kind of fundamentalism for rationalism.

Your apparent distinction between “cold-rationalism” as opposed to some other kind which includes “the spiritual” seems an acknowledgement that something crucial is missing in the “Enlightenment” myth, but perhaps it would be better to dispense with the false narrative altogether.

 

[anon98328916]

Nothing new here, Christ’s church is always being attacked. It is annoying but sadly I’ve learned to live with it.

 

[anon98328916]

it’s a typical, somewhat subtle, dig at the one true faith.

One should not expect anything else from modern secular education.

 

[Polyphony]

I would describe the paragraph as being overly simplistic, and I would encourage people to keep in mind that it contains a roughly valid outline of history, but that it’s sloppy and maybe not all that useful or deep or insightful or even-handed.

I’m not sure it makes my skin crawl, though.

 

[Entwhistler]

Ah, the Age of the Enlightenment. The Age of Hobbes, Rousseau, Hume and Hegel. Not to mention the French Revolution. Wonderful times. Wonderful thinkers.

 

[Rhubarb]

This is creating a false dichotomy as if religion was somehow irrational prior to the enlightenment. That is simply not true. The use of reason has an historical provenance dating back even before Greek philosophers, Jewish scholars and eastern sages.

The myth that somehow rationality started with the Enlightenment or the Reformation is patently incorrect. Read the Scholastics, Augustine, the Church Fathers, Boethius, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius and Lao Tse among others.

Now some enlightenment thinkers may have viewed themselves as the progenitors of reason, but that perspective is definitely a myth and (more likely) an intentional deception. The reason it still has traction is because it provides the mythical narrative by which modern atheist thinkers legitimize their rejection of religion.

There is no finding the “rational” by “turning away from the religious.” There isn’t that kind of bifurcation to be had in the application of reason. That would be mistaking the worst kind of fundamentalism for rationalism.

Your apparent distinction between “cold-rationalism” as opposed to some other kind which includes “the spiritual” seems an acknowledgement that something crucial is missing in the “Enlightenment” myth, but perhaps it would be better to dispense with the false narrative altogether.

I apologize. I didn’t mean to imply that religion is without reason. I meant “irrational” in a very broad way. It’s distinct from the very cold materialistic thinking of the Enlightenment era. I didn’t mean to say that there is bill devotion, or that reason isn’t applied. It’s the apollonian and the dionysian. It’s a very well recognized distinction in the patterns of thought before the Enlightenment to during the Enlightenment. And I tend to agree with the post-Enlightenment thinkers who say that Enlightenment thinking doesn’t quite capture the sum of the human condition.

 

[Kay_Cee]

As a result of the Reformation, the Catholic Church lost its control over all scientific and intellectual thought.

Wow, I didn’t realize the Church ever had control over all intellectual thought.

Makes you wonder how all those earlier heresies arose in the first place.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I apologize. I didn’t mean to imply that religion is without reason. I meant “irrational” in a very broad way. It’s distinct from the very cold materialistic thinking of the Enlightenment era. I didn’t mean to say that there is bill devotion, or that reason isn’t applied. It’s the apollonian and the dionysian. It’s a very well recognized distinction in the patterns of thought before the Enlightenment to during the Enlightenment. And I tend to agree with the post-Enlightenment thinkers who say that Enlightenment thinking doesn’t quite capture the sum of the human condition.

I am not sure you have anything to apologize for, but I do suspect that it is in presuming a dichotomy between the true and the good/beautiful that we get ourselves into trouble. It is, perhaps, in the incapacity to grasp the good/beautiful that reason loses its mooring. Yet, it is also in the unprincipled pursuit of the aesthetic that things go awry.

Wisdom, as opposed to reason, is found in the integration of of the Apollonian and the DIonysian, perhaps?

I would suggest that original sin has a great deal to do with this severing of the true from the good as if the truth were a mere intellectual exercise that need not be grounded in existence itself. Or that unfettered pursuit of the sensual or emotional divorced from truth or the Tao will lead to some kind of ultimate fulfillment without regard for what truly is or what is the Truth.

Reason is a formal enterprise, the content is provided through the immediacy of being. Reason doesn’t provide its own content – it must apprehend its basic principles immediately to begin appropriately.

 

[edwest2]

Are you saying being an atheist is more rational than being a Christian?

And how does atheism lead to a hatred of God?

I don’t know any atheists who hate God, mainly because you can’t hate something that doesn’t exist. So I don’t see the link there.

I know a lot of atheists who do not like when theists tell them they should lives lives according to their God. But theists don’t like when atheists do that, too. So that’s pretty even.

The atheists I know don’t hate god…but I sure read about a lot of religious people who “hate” other religions and other people who are of another religion.

.

I saw the author of The God Delusion rail against a being he does not believe exists on TV.

Then we have: amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446697966

Ed

 

[JimG]

Ah yes, the age of Reason, the Enlightenment. No doubt an excess of rationality explains why the French revolutionaries led nuns to be carted off to the guillotine for no other reason than that they were nuns. The Reign of Terror was a sacrifice to the god of Reason.

 

[Nixbits]

JimG, you’ve found an example of an event that proves that everyone in the world didn’t act entirely in accordance with Reason during the so-called Age of Reason! Well done. The history books will all need to be re-written now.

Maybe you should investigate other eras too. Perhaps there might be evidence that someone in the Bronze Age made something out of a material that wasn’t bronze. If so, they’ll have to re-name that period of history too!

 

[Peter_Plato]

JimG, you’ve found an example of an event that proves that everyone in the world didn’t act entirely in accordance with Reason during the so-called Age of Reason! Well done. The history books will all need to be re-written now.

Maybe you should investigate other eras too. Perhaps there might be evidence that someone in the Bronze Age made something out of a material that wasn’t bronze. If so, they’ll have to re-name that period of history too!

I think you misunderstand the “reach” of reason. Reason is a formal enterprise, it doesn’t provide the first principles. It merely unpacks them to arrive at what follows from them. Just as in computing, ‘garbage in garbage out’ applies. The so called “Age of Reason” forgot this and assumed that the presumptions of that age were unassailable, the current age with its focus on diversity and egalitarian first principles believes these are beyond dispute. As a result, “reason” arrives at rather bizarre conclusions.

At one time, reductio ad absurdum would have been a legitimate antidote to beginning with dubious first principles. Today, the ridiculousness of the conclusion derived from those first principles makes no difference since the first principles are infallible aspects of the received social justice narrative. Yet, those first principles are never subjected to rigorous scrutiny by those who push them the hardest.