We now pass to the final archetype of the epic tableau, the keepers of the innermost room. The more radical Enlightenment writers, alert to the implications of scientific materialism, moved to reassess God himself. They invented a Creator obedient to His own natural laws, the belief known as deism.
Edward O. Wilson, Consilience (1998), p. 32
This is the language of movie advertising, of the sort aimed at youngsters who chew gum.
An alternate view:
Some bored aristocrats found it amusing to cock a snook at tradition and decency; they were not forced into this stance by any recent or irrefutable findings of science; but in the context of the time, it helped them get laid. For the philosophy of reductive materialism, the world did not have to wait until the days of Newton (who in any event was not a materialist) -- they could get it way back with Thales. But let it pass, let it pass; the Enlightenment figures frequented all the best salons, and heard the old ideas as wittily retwittered by the fops of fashion. “If you want me,” says Voltaire, bearing off a large plate of sandwiches, “I shall be in the innermost room… “ (a moan and a shiver passes among the assembled ladies) “... on a porcelain throne ... disinventing God”.
Some bored aristocrats found it amusing to cock a snook at tradition and decency; they were not forced into this stance by any recent or irrefutable findings of science; but in the context of the time, it helped them get laid. For the philosophy of reductive materialism, the world did not have to wait until the days of Newton (who in any event was not a materialist) -- they could get it way back with Thales. But let it pass, let it pass; the Enlightenment figures frequented all the best salons, and heard the old ideas as wittily retwittered by the fops of fashion. “If you want me,” says Voltaire, bearing off a large plate of sandwiches, “I shall be in the innermost room… “ (a moan and a shiver passes among the assembled ladies) “... on a porcelain throne ... disinventing God”.
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