(My diction here is colored by the quick look I just took at what Wikipedia had to say on the subject.)
What it boils down to is that these thinkers believed that the human lot could be fixed: improved by human intelligence, by the right minds cooperating. Why that’s part and parcel of our most fundamental beliefs, is it not? Franklin, Jefferson ... that’s where they come from.
But notice: this all is an about face from the central doctrine of Christianity: we are born in Original Sin. Human Reason is not trustworthy. There is no hope in this world, and only Revelation can help us in the next.
Notice, the Eighteenth Century wasn’t the first to capitalize favored nouns. Also notice the sense of Reincarnation FOR THE SPECIES practiced by the Church.
That’s background. Here’s what I want to say: I love evolution. Therefore I love mortality. I love the idea that we are not the end, nor even any principal means. Without germs we couldn’t live, but some germs can kill us.
The central image of Christianity is a guy getting tortured. But another central image is that of a baby! There’s hope in the NEXT generation. But I love the fact that any of us may come with invisible potential flaws: birth defects. The seeds of our pathology are in our generation.
And therefore, among a host of other reasons, I love the sore thumb that stuck out in the middle of the Enlightenment: Jonathan Swift!
Right in the wake of Voltaire characterizing himself as reasonable (and everyone else a dunce) (right on, Voltaire) comes Jonathan Swift, whose Gulliver encountered not only Lilliputians, but a race that looked identical to our own: the Yahoos!
Swift also imagined a rational race, but they looked and behaved nothing like us. Not only did they not speak Latin; they didn’t even speak English!
What else I want to say in this wake, I’ll say separately, next, in pk: American Heretic. The set will be:
Swift Enlightenment
pk: American Heretic
Can Evidence Be Destroyed?
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