Category Archives: Atheism

The Intersection of the Enlightenment, Freemasonry, Illuminism, and the Religion of Humanity Represents a Profound Shift in European Thought During the 18th and 19th Centuries

Article by Charles Burris. Here it is:

The intersection of the Enlightenment, Freemasonry, Illuminism, and the Religion of Humanity represents a profound shift in European thought during the 18th and 19th centuries.

This era marked a transition from traditional, divine-right Christian orthodoxies toward secularism, reason, and human-centered moral frameworks.

Here is a breakdown of how these four movements connected, interacted, and shaped modern intellectual history.

1. The Enlightenment: The Catalyst

The Enlightenment (17th–18th century) was the overarching intellectual framework that made the other movements possible.

Core Idea: Replaced blind faith, dogma, and absolute monarchy with reason, science, and individual liberty.

Religious Shift: Shifted the cultural focus from a God-centered universe to a human-centered universe.

Deism: Many Enlightenment thinkers (like Voltaire and Thomas Jefferson) embraced Deism—the belief in a “Clockmaker God” who created the universe but does not intervene in human affairs, rendering traditional church rituals obsolete.

The Enlightenment was the overarching intellectual movement of the 18th century that championed reason, science, and individual liberty over dogma and superstition.

Human reason, rather than divine revelation, is the primary source of authority and legitimacy. It reframed the universe as a rational machine governed by natural laws (Deism) rather than a stage for constant divine intervention. It provided the philosophical foundation for political revolutions and the restructuring of society around human rights.

2. Freemasonry: The Networking Hub

Freemasonry emerged in its modern form in the early 18th century, acting as a crucial institutional vehicle for spreading Enlightenment ideals.

The Lodge as a Microcosm: Masonic lodges functioned as rare spaces where men of different social classes, religions, and political backgrounds could meet as equals (“on the level”).

Secular Rituals: Freemasonry stripped away sectarian Christian dogmas, requiring members only to believe in a vague “Supreme Architect of the Universe.” This allowed Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Deists to fraternize.

Spread of Ideas: Lodges became experimental labs for democratic governance, meritocracy, and free speech, deeply influencing figures like Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington.

The Shared Space: Lodges became neutral grounds where aristocrats, merchants, and intellectuals met as equals (“on the level”).

The Shared Creed: Freemasonry required a belief in a Supreme Being (the “Great Architect of the Universe”) but banned sectarian religious debates.

The Impact: It institutionalized Enlightenment ideals like meritocracy, religious tolerance, and self-governance, acting as a blueprint for democratic societies.

3. Illuminism: The Radical Fringe

“Illuminism” refers to various mystical, esoteric, or radical secret societies of the late 18th century, most famously the Bavarian Illuminati (founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt).

Radical Enlightenment: Unlike mainstream Freemasonry, which generally respected civic authorities, the Illuminati aimed to actively infiltrate Masonic lodges to covertly overthrow monarchies and religious institutions.

The Goal: Weishaupt sought to achieve a utopian state of nature where mankind would be governed by reason alone, free from princes and priests.

Reactionary Backlash: Though the Bavarian Illuminati was banned and dismantled by 1785, its existence sparked widespread counter-Enlightenment conspiracy theories, blaming secret societies for the French Revolution.

4. The Religion of Humanity: The Secular Climax

Developed in the mid-19th century by French philosopher Auguste Comte (the father of sociology), the Religion of Humanity (Religion de l’Humanité) was the logical conclusion of the Enlightenment’s secularizing trajectory.

God is Replaced: Comte argued that society had outgrown both theological and metaphysical thinking. He proposed replacing the worship of God with the veneration of Humanity itself (the “Great Being”).

Secular Religion: It copied the structure, rituals, and hierarchy of the Catholic Church but stripped out the supernatural. It featured secular saints (like Newton, Galileo, and Shakespeare), a calendar of festivals, and moral sacraments.

The Legacy: While Comte’s specific church ultimately foundered, the core concept deeply influenced secular humanism, positivism, and the modern belief that human progress and ethics can exist entirely independent of religious dogma.

The Interconnected Thread

The Enlightenment provided the theory (Reason over Dogma).

Freemasonry provided the social infrastructure (The Lodges) where these ideas could cross borders.

Illuminism pushed these ideas to their absolute radical, underground political extremes.

The Religion of Humanity attempted to institutionalize this entire trajectory into a formal, post-Christian moral system for the modern secular world.

Gnosticism: The Enduring Heresy and Menace to Western Civilization

Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, by James H. Billington

Heroes of the Enlightenment (Two Superb Documentaries)

Freemasonry (Book List)

Utopian Nightmares and Gnostic Political Religions

Explore utopian nightmares and gnostic political religions through essential books like Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium and The Black Book of Communism, revealing the dark history of ideological extremism.

Utopian Nightmares and Gnostic Political Religions II

Eva Vlaardingerbroek’s Stark Warning About the Future of the West

'We are dealing with an enemy who wants to play God'

Eva Vlaardingerbroek delivers a forceful warning (video, 14 minutes) about what she sees as a growing crisis in Western civilisation, arguing that conservatives cannot effectively defend their values without returning to faith, morality and belief in God. Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference, Vlaardingerbroek argues that the political and cultural battles facing the West are not simply about elections or policy, but about fundamental questions of truth, morality and human nature. She criticises what she describes as globalist attempts to reshape society and warns about the rise of transhumanism, pointing to technologies such as Neuralink and artificial wombs as examples of humanity increasingly attempting to alter or transcend the limits of human nature. Vlaardingerbroek also argues that conservatives should stop being hesitant about discussing religion in public life. In her view, younger generations are looking for moral clarity in a world that has become increasingly uncertain and relativistic. Among her strongest arguments is her warning that transhumanism could be presented as a technological solution to humanity’s problems while ultimately creating a new set of dangers.

Why the New Atheist Movement “Collapsed”

Video with Stephen Meyer.

Dr. Stephen Meyer joins Michael Knowles to analyze the cultural and intellectual collapse of the “New Atheism” movement that peaked in the mid-2000s.

Meyer argues that prominent atheist apologists overplayed their philosophical hand by chaining their worldview to strict Darwinian materialism while actively avoiding major modern scientific breakthroughs. He breaks down how 100 years of discoveries in cosmology, cosmic fine-tuning, and cellular biology have continuously challenged materialistic assumptions by pointing toward a definitive beginning and intelligent design. The conversation also explores the philosophical flaws in popular secular arguments, including the common misapplication of Occam’s Razor to the concept of God. Ultimately, they track the modern cultural shift that has led unexpected secular intellectuals, and even Richard Dawkins himself, to publicly re-evaluate the foundational necessity of the Christian worldview.

Gnosticism: The Enduring Heresy and Menace to Western Civilization

Article by Charles Burris.

Excerpts:

When people discuss the core foundations of Western Civilization they usually point to two primary contributions which are labeled Athens (Greek philosophy and the idea of cognition and rationality) and Jerusalem (Judeo-Christianity and the monotheistic faith in a transcendent creator God as opposed to pagan pantheism).

With this Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian intellectual inheritance (in addition to the various elements offered by the barbarian Germanic tribes and the Muslim world) Western civilization has developed as “logocentric” or reasoned speech-centered.

From the time of the Protestant Reformation, particular emphasis has been placed upon the written word as a means of transmitting and recording knowledge, away from the earlier “art of memory” or oral tradition of classic Greek and Roman antiquity.

But there has been a third constant element, sometimes hidden or underground and considered “heretical” or unorthodox, that has existed as a component of Western Civilization which we may label as Egypt (in reference to the Nag Hammadi Gnostic manuscripts found there in 1945).

Leftists, ultimately can be traced back to ancient pagans, particularly the Gnostics, who did not believe the Universe was created by a transcendent Other (which we call God). They are in total revolt and total denial of the very facts of Creatology and Cosmology. Like their Gnostic forebears, they hate the material creation of the Universe by this false “God” (whom the Gnostics called the Demiurge.)

This is most profoundly found in the writing of Karl Marx, who was a militant atheist who hated and was envious of “God” for creating the Universe. Marx, in his unfathomable, maniacal megalomania, wanted to destroy “God” and the world in which he lived and recreate a new world in his image.

From the seductive serpent in the Biblical Garden of Eden to Marx and his delusional followers, the essential message of the Left to humanity is believe in and follow us in our path of destruction and “You shall be as gods,” and create an athesied paradise of a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. This is the goal of the neopagan pantheist Left and its syncretistic, egalitarian vision of a Sophianic Millennium — the deification of humanity.

Murray Rothbard’s Karl Marx: Communist as Religious Eschatologist, recognizes all this and is therefore the most definitive analysis and destructive weapon against the ideas of Marx and the Left. Rothbard traces the malevolent historic legacy of the Left as no one before. Particular note his brilliant discussion of Reabsorption Theology.

Christianity and the West have been at war for hundreds of years with a succession of gnostic political religions and mass movements seeking to impose brutal elite rule and mastery of their subject peoples. These sinister efforts have been responsible for untold death, destruction, and misery. Over one hundred million persons alone perished in the 20th Century as a result of these murderous totalitarian gnostic regimes.

The study of the construction of pseudo-secular gnostic religions has been one of the principal obsessions of my life since I heard Gerhart Niemeyer of Notre Dame lecture on it in 1975 at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Western Summer School at Thomas Aquinas College. Niemeyer was a keen student of Eric Voegelin on these matters, as was Murray Rothbard. Today the leading popularized scholar in this area is the great James Lindsey.

I believe understanding this 2000 year battle between orthodox Roman Catholic Christianity and Gnosticism is the ultimate key to unlocking the history of the previous two millennia.

This is the penultimate menace that Western Civilization, and especially the United States, faces today. This is what has motivated the destructive riotous mobs of thugs and looters in the streets, the craven willfully ignorant “cancel culture” corporatists, the seditious professoriat in court academia, and the prestitutes in the establishment regime media.