A Blurb from Ron Wells

Though it came out over 20 years ago, Ron Wells' book History Through the Eyes of Faith is a good read and by no means outdated. Not meant to be detailed or technical, it provides well thought introductory material covering many centuries of history (particularly Western history). In some ways his words fit into what I wrote concerning the Star Trek Philosophy. Below are a few paragraphs from his chapter on "The Enlightenment: A Worldview in Action." Keep it in the back of your mind when saying that line in the Pledge of Allegiance that comes after "one nation."

Deism is the name given to rationalist religion. Given the rationalist's view of nature and of humankind, their formulation of religion is unsurprising. They believed that God could be known through his work in nature and that belief would issue in moral behavior because the more one was in harmony with natural law, the more one acted morally toward one's neighbors. Religion was "disenchanted" in that the supernatural and mysterious were rejected in favor of the natural and the explicable.

The God of nature or, as Thomas Jefferson put it, "Nature's god," was the God ("god") of all, whether they be Christians of any denomnination or adherants of other world religions. The unique in various religions was attacked  by the philosophes (for example David Hume's attacks on Christian miracles as empirically unverifiable). What they sought was a tolerant, morally useful religion that would unite, not separate, all humankind...

As we have seen, science is not, and cannot, provide a worldview. Only in the attempt to make science do what it cannot do (Rationalism) can a cosmology be provided. Moreover, Rationalism makes certain assumptions about God and about humankind in the universe, that, taken together, are a kind of religion. So we come now to the first part of the conclusion: We who are Christians must not allow the setting of a false agenda that states that religion is outmoded and scientific-rationalism is progressive.

We insist that Rationalism be called for what it is: an alternative religion. It is not merely playing with words to insist on this, but it is following the logic of Rationalism itself. It is a "religious faith" in that it gives explanations for the origin, development, and future of humankind. It might hope to start with empirically verifiable facts, but it goes well beyond the realm of facts to cosmic explanations about life.