Why did so many of the great thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment not question the reality of a deity?

What they said in their public writings and what they felt personally may have been two different things. Perhaps it was not politically wise, when one had a career.

Wouldn’t talk like that get you burned at a stake?

@dpworkin & @worriedguy Maybe there were still prices to pay. There are even today. There are a fair number of regular church goers who attend church because it is socially acceptable to do so, not because they believe the sermons. Consider the Don who goes to Mass then makes a call to have his cousin Luigi whacked.

I’m sure if you were a politician, a professional, an academic or a courtier it would have been best to have kept heresy to yourself.

Yes, there are hints in Thomas Jefferson’s writings that he really wasn’t a believer of any kind. But he kept up the facade of at least being a deist.

I think they did question it quite a lot – the questioned the nature of God and lots of details of what the Bible taught, as well as the divinity of Jesus.

@papayalily Given the common theologies of that day, I think it is safe to say that those who rejected church dogma for Deism did so because of questioning the nature of God. They had not gotten so far as outright rejection of the notion of a deity, but it was clear to them from observation that if there was a deity, it was one rather remote and uninvolved in the day-to-day happenings on Earth.

@ETpro
Because they were great thinkers.

You’re assuming that great thinkers must, by definition, by reason, by reason of their “great thinking” deny the existence of a deity. They did question how one thinks about a deity, and yes, many of them must have and did question the existence of a deity. And as others have mentioned, those who did question the very existence of a deity may have been constrained by the prevailing thoughts of the time. They were thinkers but they were also ambitious men who were intent on accomplishing certain things. They were revolutionaries but also politicians who were required to be politic.

All great thinkers accept that there is One God.

@lillycoyote I suppose that my question did beg that question. So answers to it are certainly fair game. Most of the great thinkers of this century do question or seriously doubt the existence of a deity. [EDIT] I should support that assertion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism#Among_the_Sciences

@SeventhSense I don’t accept that. It appears to commit the logical fallacy of argument by assertion. I would like to see you support your assertion without using a definitional fallacy, defining great thinker as one who thinks there is One God.

It’s perfectly logical.

@SeventhSense A second argument by assertion does nothing to support the first. I say it is highly illogical. If I am wrong in my assertion, you should be able to use logic and not unsupported statements to prove it, as that is the essence of what logic is about.

@ETpro :) Just keepin’ ya honest. :)

@ETpro
I can no more prove my assertion than you can prove yours so it will be decided on personal experience. But you want certainty. Alas, life is fleeting and the hour is late. Soon we will be dead.

I think it is a matter of working with they had at the time. Not so long ago, great thinkers were convinced the world was flat.

I asked a similar question, somewhat along the same lines about a month ago. Not sure I was entirely satisfied by the answers, but Niall always has some interesting things to say.

@SeventhSense the difference is that you continue to make the same unsupported assertion over and over, until one begins to feel a dull headache.

@SeventhSense I certainly can prove that asserting the confirmed existence of One God is illogical. I can’t prove the assertion is absolutely false, just that it is illogical and unsupported by any firm evidence. Must we step through the debate? It’s been held on Fluther numerous times.

I wouldn’t get too worried about enlightenment thinkers being deists. Many or them, and i’ll pick on Jefferson to be specific, thought of God as something that took no action over the world. They believed in neither heaven nor hell, and found the idea of god as the best way to describe how the world started, or at least couldn’t come up with a better explanation. God was the null hypothesis for how the world was created, and they had insufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis.

In effect, God was dead to them. Atheists merely go on to assert that God was never alive.

Does anyone know of evidence the enlightened thinkers had to support an alternative theory of creation?

@ETpro You obviously didn’t get the memo on truthiness. Evidence, logic, intellectual examination and facts are no longer needed.

@arpinum Excellent point, both. Thanks.

Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the inquisition procedures by the Roman Catholics and the Spaniards ended somewhere in the middle or near the end of the 19th century, so be that as it may have been, I’d still be pretty scared to expose things at that time which were punishable by death and torture not even 30 years ago, depending on where during the age of enlightenment you set yourself, know what I mean jellybean?
And anyways, it’s as you say; tradition. It’s always been important to people, regardless of beliefs, and most especially back then, I’ll bet.

Certainly is a shame though, that knowledge may have been surpressed by fear for so long.

You still can’t get elected president of the United States without pretending to believe in God.

^
Case in point, that.

@Symbeline You are quite right. I looked it up. The so-called Roman Inquisition was established by Pope Paul III in 1542 as the Catholic Church felt threatened by the Protestant Reformation. He set up a council of Cardinals called The Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition. It operated from 1542 till roughly 1860.

In 1906 Saint Pope Pius X renamed the organization: it became the “Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office”. Death sentences were no longer a part of the organization’s repertoire at this point, though. The Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office was renamed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1965, and continues to function under that name to this day.

Ratzinger was the head of it, busily protecting child abusers while he went after Nuns and Priests who tried to make a social difference in 3rd World Nations. He was rewarded with the Papacy.

@dpworkin An aptly named man. He also flagellates himself. For good reason, it would seem

He could go to rentboy.com and get someone to do that for him.

Because enlightened people know that the universe has a theistic interpretation and atheistic interpretation. Because enlightenment eliminated the concept of a God of the gaps, but not the possibility of God’s existence as such. Therefore enlightenment produced the first deists, but many great thinkers also realized that deism as such is pretty empty. There is no purpose or meaning, no community, no symbols, no rituals, no prayer, no vision, no code of conduct. This is why people of intellect such as Gandhi, Bonhoeffer, King, even Obama are religious.