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anotherpath's review against another edition
4.0
Hey look more illuminaries society holds up as proof of accomplishment while ignoring everything they say.
3,000 years of civilization and we've yet to catch up with the ethic of an untaught child or a fed dog.
3,000 years of civilization and we've yet to catch up with the ethic of an untaught child or a fed dog.
hammo's review
5.0
Something which has confused me: why were so many past thinkers who seem very modern in a lot of ways very un-modern in their religious convictions? These lectures hint at an answer: atheism isn't as simple an idea as it appears, and actually has a lot of moving parts. It didn't develop into an MVP until about the 19th Century.
Inventing atheism requires lots of little innovations. The idea of rules of nature. Realising that with Rules of Nature, God doesn't need to be actively participating in the world. And that the traditional teachings aren't necessarily correct. And so maybe the miracles of the bible didn't actually happen. That there are other cultures, norms, and religions, so that one's religious affiliation depends on the accident of birth. That morality can be based on the pursuit of happiness rather than subservience to God. That utilitarianism can be a basis for the legitimacy of government.
Kors thinks Piere Bayle is probably the single person who's had the biggest post mortem decline from celebrity to obscurity. Apparently he was *the* most popular author in private libraries in 18th century France. And I had never heard of him before now.
His story is illuminating. He was fed up with people presuming to be able to rationally interpret the will of God. So he showed that you can refute even the most basic facts of religion using reason, thus proving that faith trumps reason. But then, in the 18th Century his arguments were used un-ironically, and pious old Bayle was became the figurehead of atheism.
Bayle compares God giving humans the freedom to sin to a mother taking her daughter to a ball where she knows the daughter will be "debauched at a dance, and lose her divinity and her soul", which I found hilarious.
"Presumptive authority of the past" is a good phrase to mean "our inherited intellectual work (especially Aristotle) is true until proven otherwise".
Mathew Tindal primarily known via his refutations.
A stirring summary of the new philosophers' perspective:
> The ancients are not from this perspective the wise, elderly minds of humanity. They came first; they are the children of humanity. _We_ are the elders of civilization. We are those who have learned cumulatively and added to the storehouse of human understanding.
Inventing atheism requires lots of little innovations. The idea of rules of nature. Realising that with Rules of Nature, God doesn't need to be actively participating in the world. And that the traditional teachings aren't necessarily correct. And so maybe the miracles of the bible didn't actually happen. That there are other cultures, norms, and religions, so that one's religious affiliation depends on the accident of birth. That morality can be based on the pursuit of happiness rather than subservience to God. That utilitarianism can be a basis for the legitimacy of government.
Kors thinks Piere Bayle is probably the single person who's had the biggest post mortem decline from celebrity to obscurity. Apparently he was *the* most popular author in private libraries in 18th century France. And I had never heard of him before now.
His story is illuminating. He was fed up with people presuming to be able to rationally interpret the will of God. So he showed that you can refute even the most basic facts of religion using reason, thus proving that faith trumps reason. But then, in the 18th Century his arguments were used un-ironically, and pious old Bayle was became the figurehead of atheism.
Bayle compares God giving humans the freedom to sin to a mother taking her daughter to a ball where she knows the daughter will be "debauched at a dance, and lose her divinity and her soul", which I found hilarious.
"Presumptive authority of the past" is a good phrase to mean "our inherited intellectual work (especially Aristotle) is true until proven otherwise".
Mathew Tindal primarily known via his refutations.
A stirring summary of the new philosophers' perspective:
> The ancients are not from this perspective the wise, elderly minds of humanity. They came first; they are the children of humanity. _We_ are the elders of civilization. We are those who have learned cumulatively and added to the storehouse of human understanding.
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