Skeptics and Believers: Religious Debate in the Western Intellectual Tradition (CD)

Synopsis

"For over a thousand years, the existence of God and the importance of religion had gone unquestioned in the Western world. Any discussion was confined to the best ways of understanding and putting into practice a religious truth that had already been revealed.
But beginning in the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation and the Scientific Revolution began to erode the position of authority held by religion. A new willingness to confront religious authority and a new respect for reason and its accomplishments began to counter established ways of thinking based on revealed religious truth.
As a result, modern philosophy began to separate from theology, and new philosophers began constructing a universal, human rationality independent of faith. For the first time in human history, it had become possible to not simply ponder faith and its forms of expression, but to challenge it as a fundamental truth-and to even question the very existence of God.
This schism fundamentally changed the course of Western civilization, and it has had consequences that remain with us to this day." [The Great Courses]

RefTags

Released

2009

Location

Global

Setting