1. During the Enlightenment, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing wrote 'Nathan the Wise,' (1779) which was an attempt to bridge the major religions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The play takes place during the Crusades, in Jerusalem. A Jewish merchant, with an adopted Christian daughter, vies with a Templar who wishes her hand in marriage. The problem is settled by Saladin, who sides with the merchant's view of a non-sectarian God. Nathan the Wise - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2. In that Enlightenment view of the malleability of religion one can see the good intentions, but history has shown the intentions are easily corrupted.
The French Revolution, a direct result of the Enlightenment, produced the slaughter of 600,000 human beings, and the pathway to every totalitarian revolution of the 20th century.
3. That fact aside, one can see the Lessing's idea as based on the monotheism of the three religions, and the three distinct forms can be seen as converging avenues to a single God.
Lest any deny the possibility of same outside of fiction, consider Article 9 of the Lebanese Constitution,(1926):
"There shall be absolute freedom of conscience. The state in rendering homage to the
God Almighty shall respect all religions and creeds and shall guarantees, under its protection the free exercise of all religious rites provided that public order is not disturbed. It shall also guarantees that the personal status and religious interests of the population, to whatever religious sect they belong, shall be respected." http://www.presidency.gov.lb/English/LebaneseSystem/Documents/Lebanese Constitution.pdf
What, in fact, has been Lebanon's history?
4. The premise of the Enlightenment was that millennia of human interactions, condensed into the lessons of the Bible, were no longer necessary. Now, reason, science, should be the basis of human governance.
Perhaps a way to avoid conflict, but less than satisfactory as it reduces God from the realm of the heart to one of the head.
Such is the concept of Lessing, Voltaire, Hume, Kant....removing individuals from the details of specific religion to a background position, a citizenship based on the law, the social contract, and enforced by a secular power.
Good idea or bad idea?
5. Once religion is of this secular variety, morality becomes whatever the government says it is. Fine, unless one objects to the morality of the Nazis, the communists, the American politicians who endorse infanticide, adultery and murder.
But, heck...citizens can still have football, fast food, and food stamps.
Actually.....what does one have to give up?
6. "As God retreated from the world, people reached out for a rival source of membership, and national identity seemed to answer to the need. Although the French revolutionaries paid homage with their heads to the Citizen, the Constitution, and the Republic, their hearts were capture by the Nation,...defined in terms of a visceral membership that demanded one thing above all else- namely, human sacrifice."
Scruton, "The West and the Rest," p.43.
7. "... understand the French Revolution.....as primarily a religious phenomenon. The inner compulsion was to dethrone the gods of the monarchical order, and to erect a new community in its place- but a community demanding sacrifice, devotion, and slaughter, establishing a right to obedience through the spilling of blood."
Ibid, p. 44.
8. Saint Just (1794) more crudely said: What constitutes a republic is the total destruction of everything opposed to it (8 Ventôse). Like an echo Lenin repeats, It would be the greatest stupidity and the most absurd utopia to suppose that the passage from capitalism to socialism would be possible without constraint and dictatorship (May 28, 1917).
It is impossible, he continued, to defeat and extirpate capitalism without the pitiless repression of the resistance of the exploiters, who cannot accept being suddenly deprived of their fortune, of their advantages in organization and knowledge, and who over a long period of time will consequently and inevitably attempt to shake off the domination of the poor.
To the Mountain of 1793! To the Pure Socialists, its True Heirs! by Auguste Blanqui 1849
9. We can see exactly what happens when man's 'reason' is put in place of a higher form of morality.
Lenin believed in Utopia, a harmony reached only after certain groups of people are killed: the 'War of Classes'.
'Initially, wherever communists come to power, Russia, Cuba, Poland, Nicaragua, China, it doesn't matter- they destroy about 10% of the people. They are not enemies...best intellectuals, best workers, best engineers...doesn't matter. It is to restructure the fabric of society, a form of social engineering."
Vladimir Bukovsky.
a. "Hang at least 100 hostages, execute the kulaks, do it in such a way that people for hundreds of miles around will see and tremble." Lenin (document shown) He took power in 1917.
b. "Nobody knows how many were people were killed...we're talking about10 million or more..."
Norman Davies, Historian, Cambridge University.
10. There was resistance to the communists, especially in the Ukraine.
September 11, 1932, Stalin wrote to assistant, 'We must take steps so we do not lose the Urkraine.' So, 1932-1933, all food supplies in the Ukraine were confiscated. Those who tried to leave were shot, those who remained, starved to death. Men, women, children. (film footage as proof) They died tortuously slowly. NKVD squads collected the dead. They received 200 grams of bread for every dead body they delivered; often they didn't wait until the victim was dead.
- The Soviet Story (Docu) - Full Movie / English - LivingScoop
None of the above is deniable.
So, what has history taught?
Those capable of learning from history will see that replacing religion with 'reason' is merely instituting a different, more intolerant religion: totalitarianism.
That 'religious tolerance' may not be all that it promises, and allowing man's rationalization of religion, replacing God with reason....has not shown salutary results.
2. In that Enlightenment view of the malleability of religion one can see the good intentions, but history has shown the intentions are easily corrupted.
The French Revolution, a direct result of the Enlightenment, produced the slaughter of 600,000 human beings, and the pathway to every totalitarian revolution of the 20th century.
3. That fact aside, one can see the Lessing's idea as based on the monotheism of the three religions, and the three distinct forms can be seen as converging avenues to a single God.
Lest any deny the possibility of same outside of fiction, consider Article 9 of the Lebanese Constitution,(1926):
"There shall be absolute freedom of conscience. The state in rendering homage to the
God Almighty shall respect all religions and creeds and shall guarantees, under its protection the free exercise of all religious rites provided that public order is not disturbed. It shall also guarantees that the personal status and religious interests of the population, to whatever religious sect they belong, shall be respected." http://www.presidency.gov.lb/English/LebaneseSystem/Documents/Lebanese Constitution.pdf
What, in fact, has been Lebanon's history?
4. The premise of the Enlightenment was that millennia of human interactions, condensed into the lessons of the Bible, were no longer necessary. Now, reason, science, should be the basis of human governance.
Perhaps a way to avoid conflict, but less than satisfactory as it reduces God from the realm of the heart to one of the head.
Such is the concept of Lessing, Voltaire, Hume, Kant....removing individuals from the details of specific religion to a background position, a citizenship based on the law, the social contract, and enforced by a secular power.
Good idea or bad idea?
5. Once religion is of this secular variety, morality becomes whatever the government says it is. Fine, unless one objects to the morality of the Nazis, the communists, the American politicians who endorse infanticide, adultery and murder.
But, heck...citizens can still have football, fast food, and food stamps.
Actually.....what does one have to give up?
6. "As God retreated from the world, people reached out for a rival source of membership, and national identity seemed to answer to the need. Although the French revolutionaries paid homage with their heads to the Citizen, the Constitution, and the Republic, their hearts were capture by the Nation,...defined in terms of a visceral membership that demanded one thing above all else- namely, human sacrifice."
Scruton, "The West and the Rest," p.43.
7. "... understand the French Revolution.....as primarily a religious phenomenon. The inner compulsion was to dethrone the gods of the monarchical order, and to erect a new community in its place- but a community demanding sacrifice, devotion, and slaughter, establishing a right to obedience through the spilling of blood."
Ibid, p. 44.
8. Saint Just (1794) more crudely said: What constitutes a republic is the total destruction of everything opposed to it (8 Ventôse). Like an echo Lenin repeats, It would be the greatest stupidity and the most absurd utopia to suppose that the passage from capitalism to socialism would be possible without constraint and dictatorship (May 28, 1917).
It is impossible, he continued, to defeat and extirpate capitalism without the pitiless repression of the resistance of the exploiters, who cannot accept being suddenly deprived of their fortune, of their advantages in organization and knowledge, and who over a long period of time will consequently and inevitably attempt to shake off the domination of the poor.
To the Mountain of 1793! To the Pure Socialists, its True Heirs! by Auguste Blanqui 1849
9. We can see exactly what happens when man's 'reason' is put in place of a higher form of morality.
Lenin believed in Utopia, a harmony reached only after certain groups of people are killed: the 'War of Classes'.
'Initially, wherever communists come to power, Russia, Cuba, Poland, Nicaragua, China, it doesn't matter- they destroy about 10% of the people. They are not enemies...best intellectuals, best workers, best engineers...doesn't matter. It is to restructure the fabric of society, a form of social engineering."
Vladimir Bukovsky.
a. "Hang at least 100 hostages, execute the kulaks, do it in such a way that people for hundreds of miles around will see and tremble." Lenin (document shown) He took power in 1917.
b. "Nobody knows how many were people were killed...we're talking about10 million or more..."
Norman Davies, Historian, Cambridge University.
10. There was resistance to the communists, especially in the Ukraine.
September 11, 1932, Stalin wrote to assistant, 'We must take steps so we do not lose the Urkraine.' So, 1932-1933, all food supplies in the Ukraine were confiscated. Those who tried to leave were shot, those who remained, starved to death. Men, women, children. (film footage as proof) They died tortuously slowly. NKVD squads collected the dead. They received 200 grams of bread for every dead body they delivered; often they didn't wait until the victim was dead.
- The Soviet Story (Docu) - Full Movie / English - LivingScoop
None of the above is deniable.
So, what has history taught?
Those capable of learning from history will see that replacing religion with 'reason' is merely instituting a different, more intolerant religion: totalitarianism.
That 'religious tolerance' may not be all that it promises, and allowing man's rationalization of religion, replacing God with reason....has not shown salutary results.
