” Enlightenment Philosophers & Belief In God”

(A worth reading review on book by Anthony Gottleib ” The Dream Of Enlightenment”. F. Sheikh)

“However, most of the key Enlightenment philosophers – probably the only exception among the main figures is David Hume (1711-1776) – believed in God. So, in the modern sense, in our sense, they were religious. After all, we tend to think of someone as fairly religious if they believe in God, and those who attack religion today tend to attack the belief in God itself. Of course, none of these figures could openly attack the belief in God, but most of them, I think, really did believe in God. Although, in some cases, their Gods were so unusual that they hardly resembled God at all. Spinoza, as has been mentioned, identified God with nature, which was a very radical idea, and really doesn’t fit with the traditional idea of God at all. Because if God is in some sense the same thing as nature then God can’t have created nature. Another example is Hobbes who, because he was a thoroughgoing materialist, thought that God had to be a physical being, which runs counter to the traditional spiritual conception of God. So their gods were unusual, but I think all of them believed in God. Indeed, the key Enlightenment thinkers were not anti-religious, because they were not denying the existence of God.”

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f. Sheikh

 

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