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The only animate thing in the entire cosmos was the thinking self, and it was here that we should look for incontrovertible proof.
16 How else could we know that we doubted and desired—that we lacked something and were not, therefore, perfect—if we did not have within ourselves an innate idea that enabled us to recognize the defects of our own nature?
Where Thomas had said that God was not a “sort of thing,” Descartes found no difficulty in calling God a being, albeit the “first and a sovereign Being.”
God had imposed his mathematical laws upon the atoms, so that when an atom collided with another, this was not a matter of chance but achieved by divinely implanted principles.22 Once everything had been set in motion, no further divine action was necessary, and God was able to retire from the world and allow it to run itself.
There was no awe in Descartes’ theology:
In the clear expectation that they would agree with him, Descartes calmly informed the most distinguished body of theologians in Europe that they were not competent to discuss God.
Mathematics and physics would do the job more effectively.
Citizens should submit to a rational government in the same way as the different parts of the cosmos obeyed the rational laws of the scientific God.
The English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) was convinced that the religious intolerance that had rent Europe apart was simply the result of an inadequate idea of God.
Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.30
A God who was merely “the author of mathematical truths and of the order of the elements” could bring no light to the darkness and pain of human existence. It would only cause people to fall into atheism.
“the heart” had its own reasons for faith.
Spinoza’s God was the sum and principle of natural law, identical with and equivalent to the order that governs the universe.
religion should be “experimental,” every one of its doctrines tested empirically against each person’s experience.
Newton argued that the universal science was not mathematics, as Descartes had believed, but mechanics, “which accurately proposes and demonstrates the art of measuring.”
The sun, planets, and comets had been positioned so precisely that they “could only proceed from the counsel and domination of an intelligent and powerful Being.”
Gravity could not account for the superb design of the cosmos.
But Newton had no doubt that his Universal Mechanics could explain all God’s attributes.
“It is the dominion of a spiritual being that constitutes a God.”
gravity was not simply a force of nature but the activity of God himself,
God’s existence was now a rational consequence of the world’s intricate design.
Science was the only means of arriving at a proper understanding of the sacred: “For there is no way (with out revelation)* to come to ye knowledge of a Deity but by ye frame of nature.”
Scientific rationalism, therefore, was what Newton called the “fundamental religion.”
Thomas Aquinas’s contemplation of the cosmos had revealed the existence of a mystery. But Newton hated mystery, which he equated with sheer irrationality: “‘Tis the temper of the hot and superstitious part of mankind in matters of religion,” he wrote irritably, “ever to be fond of mysteries & for that reason to like best what they understand least.”
Only mathematics and science could counter the arguments of atheists like Spinoza, so there could only be “One only Method or Continued Thread of Arguing.”
But the new scientific religion was about to make God incredible. In reducing God to a scientific explanation, the scientists and theologians of the seventeenth century were turning God into an idol, a mere human projection.
As Locke had argued, scientists had shown that the natural world gave sufficient evidence for a creator, so there was no further need for churches to force their teachings down the throats of their congregants.
For the first time in history, men and women would be free to discover the truth for themselves.
Behold, a Religion, which will be found without Controversy; a Religion, which will challenge all possible Regards from the High, as well as the Low, among the People; I will resume the Term, a Philosophical Religion; and yet how Evangelical!
His faith in scientific rationality had not been able to assuage his own inner demons or his conviction that evil spirits lurked everywhere, poised to overthrow the colony.
It is not true that Deism was a halfway house to an outright denial of God.
Deists were passionate about God and almost obsessed with religion.
They spread their rational religion with near-missionary zeal, preaching salvation through knowledge and education.
Deism was marked by anticlericalism but was by no means averse to religion itself. Deists needed God. As Voltaire famously remarked, if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
Reason was the only path to truth.
God was a scientific as well as a theological necessity. Disbelief in God seemed as perverse as refusing to believe in gravity. Giving up God would mean abandoning the only truly persuasive scientific explanation of the world.
There could be no true belief unless a person was emotionally and morally involved in the religious quest.
Most people retained traditional Christian beliefs but did their best to purge them of “mystery.”
The eminent doctor George Cheyne (1671–1743) had been an ardent Newtonian in his youth, but later became disenchanted with liberal, scientifically based Anglicanism and the new science, with its emphasis on induction and calculation. He became a disaffected anti-establishment Methodist.
the liberal clergy had invented a natural religion that was a mere simulacrum of authentic Christianity, and that Deism had “darkened the sun.”19 Mathematics could not provide the same certainty as revealed truth, and natural religion was simply a ploy to keep people in line. It had made “Christianity good for nothing but to keep societies in order, the better that there should be no Christ than that it should disturb societies.”20 Sadly,
Pietists who opted for the “religion of the heart” were not in revolt from reason;
they were simply refusing to reduce faith to merely intellectual conviction.
John Wesley (1703–91) was fascinated by the Enlightenment and tried to apply a scientific and systematic “method” to spirituality: his Methodists followed a strict regimen of prayer, scripture study, fasting, and good works. But he insisted that religion was not a doctrine in the head but a light in the heart. “We do not lay the main stress of our religion on any opinions, right or wrong,” he explained. “Orthodoxy or ri...
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But without discipline, the “religion of the heart” could easily degenerate into sentimentality and even hysteria.
rituals such as the Eleusinian mysteries had been skillfully crafted to lead people through emotional extremity to the other side. But in Northampton, the new American cult of liberty meant that there was no such supervision, that everything was spontaneous and free, and that people were allowed to run the gamut of their emotions in a way that for some proved fatal.
In England, Newton’s cosmology would be used to endorse a social system in which the “lower” orders were governed by the “higher,” while in France, Louis XIV, the Sun King, presided over a court in which his courtiers revolved obsequiously around him, each in his allotted orbit.
Vico had put his finger on an important point. The scientific method has dealt brilliantly with objects but is less cogent when applied to people or the arts.
religion works the other way around, and its insights come from practical experience.
“The fear of losing everything will prevent you from possessing everything.”
He was looking for the “God” that transcended the old doctrines, a deity that would be discovered by kenosis, compassion, and the humble contemplation of the majesty of the universe.
