THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE "DEATH OF GOD
Kenan Malik
Writer, Lecturer and Broadcaster
The ‘death of God’ seemed to be, until the final decades of the 20th centuryth century, one of the defining features of post-Enlightenment Western societies. Today, in the age of the worldwide jihad and the march of the Creationists, the idea that God is dead seems about as believable as the story of Jesus’ resurrection.
It was in the Enlightenment that the God-ordained order truly began to crumble. So what can the Enlightenment tell us about both the death of God and His contemporary resurrection? That is the question at the heart of this lecture.
The lecture will explore Enlightenment ideas about God and about human nature. It will suggest that key to Enlightenment thinking was not so much disbelief in God as the emergence of a new faith in human capacities. And it will argue that it is loss of such faith that has most shaped the post-Enlightenment world.
Moderator:
Philipp Blom, Author and Historian
Partner:
The Standard Album
Rainer Rosenberg, Campus Radio
This series is supported by:
Daniel Kapp, Strategic Consulting & Responsible Cooperation GmbH
ithuba CAPITAL
Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich AG