Although this was all very reasonable, it also tended to make God an atheist, a do-nothing deity—a symbolic, absolute monarch in the sky. Thisrole was not only unflattering and emotionally unappealing to Him, but worst of all, it rendered Him intellectually useless. While an ideology of reason and nature was enough for religious radicals, it was not enough for God and most of His most devoted groupies. As unenlightened as it seemed (and although materialists found Him unnecessary and atheists considered Him a nonexistent evil), during the eighteenth century, God remained personable, a little quirky and occasionally illogical.

God may have been fairly safe in Heaven, but here on earth, Christians came under further attack from rationalists. Adherents of the burgeoning religion of reason devoted themselves to rooting out what they considered to be established evils and were decidedly anti-clerical. Misery and suffering were everywhere and obviously existed because people were not behaving naturally. Those who were enlightened were going to eliminate unnaturalism by eliminating its causes (be they secular or sectarian), and the Church was just such a cause. Through its corruption, Christians had become Satanic. The new faith would prove its worth by providing knowledge about God's perfect, mechanical universe so that reasonable people could live in accordance with His perfect, natural ideals.

In general, the rationalists and particularly the philosophes (i.e., the French philosophers who joined the attack on Christianity) were thus not anti-religious: They just wanted to replace Christianity with a belief in reason. In more general terms, they (and, later on, the romantics) abstractly wanted to eliminate all the evil institutions—be they religious, political or whatever—which were keeping people from behaving naturally. In fact, as independent thinkers, philosophers were disposed to believe that institutions per se were an evil and perhaps the evil. They believed the removal of institutions would permit people to be good, whereas it actually would allow them to be monsters. The beliefs of the rationalists (and romantics) notwithstanding, civilization depends upon institutions. They can be good or bad and may be made better or worse, but if they go, civil behavior goes with them.

In the eighteenth century, when institutional ineptitude was promoted by traditions of holy indifference and hallowed neglect, the priests of the new religion were certainly justified in criticizing inefficiency. Nevertheless, they misplaced their faith in thought when they criticized established institutions as well as conventional customs according to the new standard of logic, because while the Enlightenment was grounded on reason, it floundered in subjectivity.

stupidity.com

Notes