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Enlightenment And Religion Essay

454 Words2 Pages

Enlightenment like any great cultural change took time to develop. It all started in the eighteenth century. It was the time when numerous and various philosophers and intellectual thinkers emerged. The main disagreement on enlightenment is between established religious beliefs and values and a developing scientific body that is grounded, not by the will of god but by empirical evidence. Also it is important to note that the way in which true enlightenment is currently rationalized and thought about is very Western. Also in some places like more than others it is the impact of science and technology that has resulted in the death of God. Places like the Western region and the US. The phenomenon of enlightenment was mainly a Western phenomenon, …show more content…

Like the secularization theory, enlightenment was confronted with counter-enlightenment movements which are mostly religious, such as Catholic revivals. However, politics, economics and society continued the path to secularization. Nonetheless, Christianity started to occupy a small part of the West and over time it ceased to be the source of belief in the Western society. As soon as the West started to rely on religion the answers for all the questions was “God’s will.” It means that everything happens for a reason and it is always what God wants to happen (Willette, 2009). Overall, enlightenment thinkers claimed that enlightenment can be reached by freedom of thought, religion and politics. This can be very much related to a text titled “What is enlightenment?” by Immanuel Kant. In analysis and in response to the text “What is enlightenment?” (1784), by Kant, his definition of enlightenment with the connection between being mature and being enlightened will be discussed. The question then arises: Does being modern necessarily means being enlightened? One will argue about how modernity and enlightenment in societies are not necessarily

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