Deism in England and France in the 18th century
Deism, the religious attitude typical of the Enlightenment, especially in France and England, holds that the only way the existence of God can be proven is to combine the application of reason with observation of the world.
[1] A Deist is defined as "One who believes in the existence of a God or Supreme Being but denies revealed religion, basing his belief on the light of nature and reason.
However, Betts argues that the accounts of Deists at Lyon suggest quite a different interpretation, namely that the origin of the term Deism lies in the anti-Trinitarian movement which was then an important phenomenon in the religious life of Europe.
Corfe argues that since Deists have no theology, appointed priests or elders, and so no hierarchy in imposing any kind of authority, there is a wide differentiation of personal beliefs among its members.
Deism is a rational-based attitude which affirms the existence of God through the use of reason as opposed to revelation or dogmatic instruction of revealed religions.
Deists believe that human beings have free will and have responsibility for choosing how they live in relation to natural laws that govern the world.
The Deistic arguments intended to eliminate the belief in a supernatural revelation through the criticism of the trustworthiness of the canon of the Scripture created by humans, as sources of final truth.
The view that while the 'propagandists of the Enlightenment were French, its patron saints and pioneers were British: Bacon, Newton and Locke had such splendid reputations on the continent that they quite overshadowed the revolutionary ideas of a Descartes or a Fontenelle'.
Newton's successes in explaining terrestrial and celestial mechanics led to the rapid development of the idea that nature and the universe could be thought of as a great machine, operating according to fixed laws.
The physical world, according to Newton, was explicable in terms of uniform natural laws that could be discovered by observation and formulated mathematically.
Close though he was to Deism, Newton differed from the strict Deists insofar as he invoked God as a special physical cause to keep the planets in stable orbits.
[6] The philosophes of mid-eighteenth century France developed this mechanistic view of the universe into a radically revised version of Christianity, Deism.
Drawing on Newton's description of the universe as a great clock built by the Creator and then set in motion, the Deists among the philosophes argued that everything—physical motion, human physiology, politics, society, economics—had its own set of rational principles established by God which could be understood by human beings solely by means of their reason.
Herbert's notion of natural religion and innate truths served as the grounds for English Deism until its decline in the middle of the eighteenth century.
John Locke provided a new epistemology for Deism based on empirical foundations while keeping an open mind to matters above reason.
Lockean and theological commitments explain Toland's peculiar reading of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica, which has long attracted interest from historians of science.
A theological motivation for Toland's worldview sheds new light on the underlying assumptions of his natural philosophy and on English Deism more generally.
In contrast to the providentialism and, in some cases, the Deism of the moderate, Newtonian Enlightenment, the radicals postulated pantheism – or another commonplace term, materialism - and it horrified the liberal exponents of the new science who invariably brought their influence to bear against them.
Gilbert was a provincial lawyer, Lahontan an aristocratic adventurer, and the Militaire philosophe a professional soldier; at the social level there seem to be no connecting link.
There are three common factors of these early works, as Betts explains: the experiences of travel, divisions within Christianity, and the idea of natural religion.
Gueudeville, Lahontan and the Militaire philosophe all traveled and witnessed and experienced the conflicts produced by dogmatic intolerance backed by the resources of the nation-state.
Voltaire attacked faith in a Christian God and the superstitions in the teachings of the Catholic Church, raising an element of doubt over many old practices of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
He also provides biographical and descriptive notes to introduce each writer and a brief account of some of the main lines of attack developed by the opponents of deism.
He concludes that Montesquieu's and Voltaire's moral philosophies altered deistic expression far more than anything original in their "religious" criticisms or theological speculations.
On all of these issues, and on a large number of minor topics of scholarly interest, he engages prior historical and literary studies with fairness.
The most traditional way of looking at the movement is to see it primarily as a French or English Phenomenon but Israel focuses on the philosophical and scientific developments in two countries in the seventeenth century.
In terms of discussion about deism he indicates some radical fringe elements– atheists, freethinkers, democrats – and shows how they lead to the expansion of toleration and the advance of reason over faith.
They were assured of a hearing in the tolerant atmosphere of post-Revolution England, and the orthodox welcomed the challenge to defend their religion with the weapons of logic and science.
"Deism" as a positive Religion of Nature, based on a neo-classical surmise of the sameness of man and reason everywhere, the simplicity and eternality of moral rules was of little account.
He shows how English deists like Toland and Tindal made their way into the minds of Voltaire and Diderot and thus into a larger place in history than they earned in their homeland.
