Eshnar said:
they have values. They don't believe in God. I'm an atheist but I feel Italian and I belong to this group of people that share a common tradition. How does that involve religion at all.
It does not involve it, it IS religion. Rousseau's "general will" is the old Christian God. Nothing more and nothing less, which the author even said.
Eshnar said:
Human beings of this age I said. Not religious. Religious people indeed should not change their view. And their view about money (for Christianity, for istance, was always the same in the centuries: take as much money as you can. (and as an Italian I can guarantee you that, for the Catholic church)
OK and you had the audacity to argue I was trolling. I had the weakness to think discussion was possible with you but apparently not. Be happy with your guarantees and you views !!
Eshnar said:
Nazists were Christians and discouraged atheism.
A little bit of doubt won't hurt.
rhubroma said:
Since the Enlightenment democracy and secularism have at least begun to liberate society from the tyranny and obscurantism that reigned over it for centuries
What? The Encyclopedists were the tyrants (allied with the Jansenists) and the Church was being tyrannized. There were plenty of counter-powers in the old feudal monarchies like the Parliaments, there were no absolute control, that's a myth. Louis XIV had much less control than Buonaparte, than Pétain and even less than some of our democratically elected governments.
The Enlightenment was not the driving force behind it? But read Voltaire's work. He approved of free-market economy - it's even his ideal -, he approved of slavery and torture - seconding Beccaria for that -, he approved of the Guarani massacre (who had been protected by the Jesuits), believed in education strictly for the elite, rejected the Sunday rest and most of all he had this quote that speaks volume about him:
"A well-organized country is one in which the small number makes the large number works, is fed by him and governs him."
That is thus Voltaire speaking. A big name in the Enlightenment, calling himself a 'Deist' but anti-Christian through and through.
So you claim that all the horrors that came afterwards were only "negative outcome" of all that? But everything was already in the work of Voltaire.
We've now had two centuries of this "Civilization of Progress" and, despite technological advancement, we've never had so much ugliness, so much destruction, so much bestiality and so much misery in the history of mankind and we would like to spread 'human right' to all corners of the Earth? How are we legitimate for that?
Two World Wars, concentration camps (invented by the Brits!), two atomic bombs, Chemical agents spread all across South-Vietnam of which the consequences are still felt, the failure of Communism, the invention of racism, colonial empires that pathetically failed, etc. The best authors of the 1920's and 1930's already questioned this Civilization of Progress leading to WWI but had they seen what has happened since what would they have said?
What is our assessment?