the oppositional dynamic that developed when scientific materialism began to form itself into an holistic and semi-exclusive worldview that necessarily contradicted religious dogmas. The contradictions may not have been acknowledged in these mystical, fraternal orders (such as the rosicrucians) but I'm sure there's lots of other examples of religious groups - that is, those actually concerned with tending to the flock, rather than religiously inspired secret societies - condemning and persecuting scholars who contradicted a certain aspect of their theology.
I'll have to check out some of Frances Yates books, though. I've always been interested by hermetic societies and their contributions to social and political history.
The fact that literal (and some not so literal) interpretations of Judeo-Christian dogma became readily falsifiable is definitely at the crux of this oppositional dynamic. Sounds a bit like Hegel's historical dialectic. I think people acting in the name of science and religious institutions have "tended the flock" both successfully and unsuccessfully. It's when either one begins to feel existentially threatened (personally I don't see a need for that fear) that they begin to have an agenda seeking to thoroughly discredit and exclude the other, and thereby instilling a bias in their adherents. Although I suppose that depending on your experiences and how you grew up, chances are you might find yourself having a bias one way or another.
And it's 'Dame' Frances Yates!
------
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions."
"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"
This meant, to Nietzsche, looking for foundations that went deeper than Christian values. He would find a basis in the "will to power" that he described as "the essence of reality."
"In Kant's terms, a good will is a will whose decisions are wholly determined by moral demands or as he often refers to this, by the Moral Law. Human beings view this Law as a constraint on their desires, and hence a will in which the Moral Law is decisive is motivated by the thought of duty. A holy or divine will, if it exists, though good, would not be good because it is motivated by thoughts of duty. A holy will would be entirely free from desires that might operate independently of morality. It is the presence of desires that could operate independently of moral demands that makes goodness in human beings a constraint, an essential element of the idea of �duty�. So in analyzing unqualified goodness as it occurs in imperfectly rational creatures such as ourselves, we are investigating the idea of being motivated by the thought that we are constrained to act in certain ways that we might not want to, or the thought that we have moral duties."
First Church of the Almighty Dollar
Stained glass in the lobby of the Standard Chartered Bank Building. Standard Chartered is one of the three banks that print Hong Kong Dollars, which they apparently consider a divine duty.
Topic: Atheism (Read 27894 times)