Category Archives: Science

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.

Why women are easily manipulated

Explained by a woman here.

Essentially, in the past women needed affirmation by the group much more than men, because of their inferior physical strength. Men, at least masculine men, can afford to stand up against the ‘herd mentality’ of a group when they think it’s wrong. Because, if they get cast out, they can, with some effort, survive. Women, on average, would have much more difficulty surviving. So they risk standing up against the group much less.

The amazing disappearance of GOLD from the American psyche

Article by ‘Schiff Sovereign’.

November 22, 2013
Dallas, Texas

In George Orwell’s seminal work 1984, there’s a really great scene early in the book between Winston (the main character) and Syme, a low-level functionary at the Ministry of Truth.

Syme is working on the 11th Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary, and he explains to Winston how the Ministry of Truth is actually removing words from the English vocabulary.

In Newspeak, words like -freedom- have been struck from the dictionary altogether, to the point that the mere concept of liberty would be incommunicable in the future.

I thought about this scene recently as I was testing out Google’s new Ngram Viewer tool.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Google has digitized over a million books that were printed as far back as 1500, and they’ve made the contents searchable within their own database.

The Ngram Viewer allows you to search for particular keywords. And you can see over time how prevalent the search terms were for particular years.

Out of curiosity, I searched for the term “gold” in English language books starting in 1776.

As one would expect back in the 18th and 19th centuries when gold was actually considered money, the instances of the word ‘gold’ favored prevalently in English language books at the time.

The trend continued into the early part of the 20th century.

But then something interesting happened in the mid-1930s. The use of the word ‘gold’ in English language books reached its peak… and began a steep, multi-decade decline.

Further investigation shows that the peak actually occurred in 1933. And as any student of gold in modern history knows, 1933 was the same year that the President of the United States (FDR) criminalized the private ownership of gold.

It remained this way for four decades. And by the time Gerald Ford repealed the prohibition on gold ownership, the concept of gold being money had been permanently struck from the American psyche, just as the Orwellian Newspeak dictionary had done.

By the mid-1970s (and through today), people have become readily accepting of the idea that money was nothing more than pieces of paper conjured at will by central bankers.

The good news is that, according to Google’s data, there seems to be slight uptick in the number of instances of the word ‘gold’ in English language books over the last 10-years or so.

No doubt, this probably has a lot to do with gold’s seemingly interminable rise relative to paper currency.

One can hope that the trend will hold… that more people will wake up to the reality that the central-bank controlled fiat currency system is a total fraud.