Secular Superstitions

This post over at Uncommon Descent pretty much confirmed my view of the so-called 'Enlightenment': the 'Enlightenment' simply replaced one set of superstitions (Dark Age beliefs) for another set of equally superstitious beliefs. From the post:

:::QUOTE:::

The reality is that the New Atheist campaign, by discouraging religion, won’t create a new group of intelligent, skeptical, enlightened beings. Far from it: It might actually encourage new levels of mass superstition. And that’s not a conclusion to take on faith — it’s what the empirical data tell us.

“What Americans Really Believe,” a comprehensive new study released by Baylor University yesterday, shows that traditional Christian religion greatly decreases belief in everything from the efficacy of palm readers to the usefulness of astrology. It also shows that the irreligious and the members of more liberal Protestant denominations, far from being resistant to superstition, tend to be much more likely to believe in the paranormal and in pseudoscience than evangelical Christians.

:::END-QUOTE:::

During the Renaissance, men who rejected the authority of Rome went one of two ways. They either reformed their beliefs by conforming to Scripture and got rid of many of the superstitions of the Middle Ages, or they rejected propositional revelation altogether and were left to figure out the nature of reality (a universal) starting with only their own 'reason' and experiences (particulars). Seeing that one cannot validly reason from a particular to a universal and having cut themselves off from the only Source that could possibly give them answers to the nature of reality since He alone possesses complete knowledge of it, they were left with nothing but fear of the unknown.

Thus, instead of believing in elves and fairies, they now believe in UFOs and little green men.

Instead of believing in spontaneous generation of flies from trash, they simply add billions of years with the same belief and declare it to be 'scientific'.

Instead of believing in astrology, they now believe in multiple-universes.

Instead of believing that a frog can turn into a prince, they simply add a few million years and call it "our hominid ancestry."

Argument for Church Infallibility...Again

Jason Engwer deals with the argument that if the Protestant uses the church fathers to determine the New Testament canon, then he ought to accept the fathers' belief in the infallibility of the church, here. [Of course, both parts of the above statement are disputed.]