The Rise Of Secularization In 19th Century

The Rise Of Secularization In 19th CenturyThe secularisation of 19th nose candy England was multicausal. Various factors contri moreovered to this process. Among them were post-effects of The Enlightenment namely benevolentistic philosophy that manifested itself with the send of deism and Enlightenment aesthetics. Other factors included acquaintance and natural faith. intrinsic religion was the attempt of the church building to stave off secularisation, however in fact hastened the process. Cl origin aloneyhand(predicate) experience was more responsible for the secularization of nineteenth hundred England than Enlightenment humanistic philosophy. This essay will explore the catchment basin of natural theology and its demise in nineteenth century England.Recognizing the quick context and environment that existed at the turn of the 19th century helps sort why humanistic causes contributed to Englands secularization. There was, as Thomas Kuhn states, a ikon chemise in society. The industrial revolution led to massive urbanisation that often occupied previously ghostlike building for commerce and industry. Cathedrals, abbeys, and churches gradually became merely additional spots in a city and no longer the city centres or primary places of gathering. There was a shift from superstitions and spiritual explanations for different phenomena to corporal and reason-based explanations especially between the 17th century before 1660 and the Enlightenment of the 18th century. (155) For example, before this paradigm shift flock dealt with the insane via exorcism because their monomania was attributed to Satan. (Brook 1993, 155) Afterwards, stark naked medical elites deemed these practices madness and attributed insanity to non-spiritual causes. Among these events specific groups formed, which were led by this appeal of rationality everywhere stodgy religion such as the aesthetes and deists.The aesthetes, such as Irish origin Oscar Wilde, deists and other groups resented bourgeois society particularly the rigid conservatism, oppressive delusion and suppression of intellectualism of the church. Historians of prim intellectual life such as David J. DeLaura book recognized that numerous Victorian atheists and agnostics remaining the Christian church because they believed Christianity was bonny immoral.The loss of phantasmal faith in such representative early Victorian agnostics as F. W. Newman ( rear Henry Newmans brother), and J. A. Froude was non due to the usually suggested reasons of the get on of evolutionary theory in geology and biology. The dominant factor was a increase repugnance toward the ethical implications of what each had been taught to believe as essential Christianity the precepts authentic Sin, Reprobation, Baptismal Regeneration, Vicarious Atonement, and Eternal Punishment. (DeLaura 1969, 13).potatos journal clause The estimable turn ones stomach Against Christian Orthodoxy in Early Victorian Engl and (1955) in The American diachronic Review explains how it was predominantly ethical rejections of Christian Doctrine that led to the secularization of 19th century England. He presents case studies of deuce-ace individuals F. W. Newman (1805-97), J. A. Froude (1818-94), and Mary Anne Evans (1819-1880). Murphy explains that contrary to the popular views, that once Darwin and Lyell demonstrated that neither the origin of the priming coat nor the origin of man according to Genesis was congruent with scientific denudation that the majority of thinking people became agnostic or atheist, secularization occurred during the Victorian age predominantly due to conflicts between orthodox dogma and crusader ethical bias of the times. (Murphy 1955, 801) Murphy argues that light did provide important ammunition once the attack on orthodoxy had begun, but it did non produce the attack. The records of these three people leave no trace of having read Lyell and they all had left the church 1 0-20 years before Origin of Species was published. Newman grows up in a Christian home but later writes a book Phases of reliance where he describes that he is disturbed by the dominant Christian doctrines accept them to be unethical. Newman finds through critical reasoning that the sacrifice of Christ lot as atonement was not logical because attacking the infinite specialization of Christ was evading not satisfying justice as Christ was not really harmed. (Murphy 1955, 803) Murphy explains that Froude did not waste time on handsome forecasts of accomplishment or Biblical scholarship, but came straight to the main point the intolerable ethical primitiveness of the vicari-ous-atonement principle (808) Froude states the atonement principles claim that the guilt of a mans sin be transferred, even voluntarily, to an innocent Christ is a perversion of justice. Furthermore to then state that a mans sin is a loss that god suffers by which He would need satisfaction that postulate to be paid, without it mattering by whom, is an insult to Gods persona. Finally, Evans deviates from the faith because she believes that it is unethical and untrue that religious faith is a necessary prerequisite to attaining moral excellence. In an article entitled Evangelical Teaching Dr. Cumming (Westminster Review, October 1855) she writes about Dr. Cumming, a self-righteous admire London preacher to be teaching Christian doctrine appoint to be subversive of true moral development and therefore positively noxious. (Evans 1855, 1) Thus, these case studies demonstrate how the secularization of 19th century England occurred due to meliorist rejections of ethical issues found in church doctrine.However, what even more greatly contributed to the secularization of nineteenth century England was the development of science. Science was viewed as a vehicle of social and intellectual liberation. (Brooke 1993, 155) inbred devotion attempted to flip theological claims about the existe nce of God by observing character and drawing conclusions via the design argument kind of of making claims based on Gods own self-revelation via scripture. The design argument is proposed by Paley in his puzzle out inhering Theology (1802) There cannot be design without a designer device without a contriver order without choice arrangement, without anything capable of arranging. (12) Paley believes nature is a mechanism, and hence was intelligently designed. He made this connection because he was compose while England was experiencing the Industrial Revolution.American Philosopher Alston in Perceiving God defines natural theology as the enterp initiate of providing support for religious opinions by starting from expound that neither are nor presuppose any religious beliefs (Alston, 1991b, p.289) essential theology as defence of Christian theology proves fatal. Swiss theologian Barth rejects inhering Theology. He states that this belief causes a bifurcation of familiarity o f God into natural knowledge of God and revealed knowledge of the triune God, which is scientifically theologically intolerable. Barth argues that un slight rational coordinate is bound up with the actual content of the knowledge of God it renders a distorting abstraction.(Torrance, 1970, 128). American philosopher Platinga views indwelling Theology as an attempt to prove or demonstrate the existence of God. This is a problem because it supposes that belief in God rests upon evidential basis. Hence belief in God is not a basic belief and self-evident. Belief in God necessitates being grounded on a more basic belief, but doing this gives the more basic belief greater epistemic status than belief in God. Platinga argues that belief in God is itself basic and does not need justification with references to other beliefs.Natural theology provided deists and atheists new ammunition to establish their own arguments. If God could be explained exclusively with semi verifiable evidence, then His non-existence could also be explained exclusively with empirical evidence if that evidence could be attributed to another origin. Lyell in his Principles of Geology (1830) argues for uniformitarianism stating that the same physical and geological forces observed in the present have been active over a colossal span of time in the past. Darwin in On the Origin of Species (1859) poses a similar argument along with counter-teleological arguments of natural selection, presenting directiveness within nature without implying progression or purpose. (McGrath 2010, 36)Biologist Thomas Huxley and Physicist John Tyndall make significant contributions in delegitimizing natural theology and using science to secularize England. Huxley debates and rebukes Oxford bishop Wilberforce when Wilberforce denounces Darwins evolution theory in their debate of 1860 at the British Association meeting at Oxford. This was but one of many events concerning the clergys addled domination of intellectual life in Britain. When the British Association for the emanation of Science was founded in 1830 clerics composed 30% of its total members. During the period 1831-1865 forty-one clergy were in association. Then in the period 1866-1900 only three remained. (Brooke 1993, 50) betwixt 1660 and 1793 the scientific world established more than 70 official scientific societies (and almost as many private ones) in urban centres as far removed as St. Petersburg and Philadelphia. (Brooke 1993, 152) Huxley and his colleagues use the conflict thesis of science vs. religion to attack the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. Drapers History of the divergence Between Religion and Science (1874) and etiolates History of the Warfare of Science and Theology in Christendom (1896) made the Conflict thesis well know argue that it is the nature of science religion to be in opposition. Draper in his work states, The history of Science is not a mere record of discriminate discoveries it is a narrati ve of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditional faith and human interests on the other. (Draper 1874, vi) Northwestern University History Professor Heyck argues that Victorian scientists wanted nothing less than to move science from the periphery to the centre of English life (Heyck 1982, 87) Tyndall in 1874 gave a speech in Belfast, a very religious city, before the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He argues that science holds greater authority than religion or non-rationalist explanations. In his attack on religion Tyndall upholds rationalism, consistency and scepticism.Thus, at the close of the 19th century, the concept was cemented into the English psyche that science and religion were in grave conflict and that, as such, science needed to be divorced from religion or non-rationality. Natural theology had been warped into a new breed of natu ralistic science where the observations of nature provided evidence for an evolutionary origin not needing a religious explanation.Although post-effects of the enlightenment clearly did contribute to the secularization of 19th century England, they were not as significant as the contributions of science. Secularization in England had to do with ever-changing society so that it was no longer under the control or influence of religion. The argument that meliorist objections to the ethical components of Christian Doctrine were the capricious force that disempowered the church does not hold. Issues regarding ethics did decrease the membership of churches, but it did not disempower the church like science did. Science through the rise and fall of natural theology gave birth to a whole new generation of figures such as Huxley and Darwin who undermined the role of the church in society. Ethical grievances marginalized specific groups of people such as the aesthetes from the church but it did not remove the churchs influence over society to the same degree that scientific development did. The demise of natural theology led to a serial of publications and conferences that took away the churchs predominant role in the field of science and society. military position enlightenment effects such as questions on ethics acted as a catalyst for secularization, but it did not lead to significantly greater removal of church influence. The enlightenment and science are inextricably connect but the effects science and natural theology had on removing church influence and supremacy in Victorian England caused greater paradigm shifts in society than ethical conflicts as evinced by the sources.Thus, it is clear that science to a far greater extent led to the secularization of nineteenth century England. The evidence demonstrates that Natural Theology did not strengthen but instead weakened the church. By attempting to demonstrate Gods existence and presence by empirical analysis exclusively theologians provided a platform for a new outcome of deism and atheism. Lyell, Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall acted as catalysts to this process as they used the premises of Natural Theology to draw new conclusions about the origins the earth and living organisms. Draper and White towards the end of the nineteenth century concluded that science and religion had become enemies in their conflict thesis undermining religious activity as non-rational. expect effects of the enlightenment, such as the meliorist objections to the ethics of church doctrine and the emergence of new anti-religious groups such as the aesthetes did contribute to Englands secularization but to a lesser extent. Hence, science was the predominant factor in the secularization of England in the 19th century.Word Count 2054The above essay is all my own work the source of all material used in its compilation has been duly cited and all help received is acknowledged. The essay does not substantially duplicat e material previously or simultaneously submitted to academician staff at any academic institution.Jesse Alvarez