Deism

In Our Time: Philosophy

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2020

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea that God created the universe and then left it for humans to understand by reason not revelation. Edward Herbert, 1583-1648 (pictured above) held that there were five religious truths: belief in a Supreme Being, the need to worship him, the pursuit of a virtuous life as the best form of worship, repentance, and reward or punishment after death. Others developed these ideas in different ways, yet their opponents in England's established Church collected them under the label of Deists, called Herbert the Father of Deism and attacked them as a movement, and Deist books were burned. Over time, reason and revelation found a new balance in the Church in England, while Voltaire and Thomas Paine explored the ideas further, leading to their re-emergence in the French and American Revolutions. With Richard Serjeantson Fellow and Lecturer in History at Trinity College, Cambridge Katie East Lecturer in History at Newcastle University And Thomas Ahnert Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Edinburgh Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:52.0	Hello in 17th century England, the public hangman would burn banned books.
0:57.0	He could warm his hands on anything published by deists.
1:01.0	There were free thinkers who argued that God began the universe and then stood back
1:05.8	and people could only understand God by reason and not by revelation. It was part of an enormous
1:11.8	wrench away from the church.
1:14.0	Dayis were attacked by clerics who dealt in revelation and by philosophers who thought that reason had its limits,
1:20.0	but their ideas were influential as the church began to lose importance in the state during the Enlightenment.
1:26.0	With me from their homes to discuss deism are Katie East, a lecturer in history at Newcastle University, Thomas Arnut, Professor of Intellectual
1:36.3	History at the University of Edinburgh, and Richard Sargenson, fellow and lecturer in history
1:41.2	at Trinity College at Cambridge.
	...

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