Different Eras Have Developed Different Knowledge on the Subject of God
A recent book on Leibniz is the 1982 translation of Remnant and Bennett on "New Essays on Human Understanding.’ Christian Wolff (1679-1754), a student of Leibniz, became a founder of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in Russia. When returning to the University of Halle, Wolff became chancellor under Frederick II the Great (1712-1786).
When John Locke (1632-1704) and Queen Anne (1665-1714) passed on, Leibniz’s debate against Locke’s empiricism and his debate against Newton’s space and time universe would not occur and Leibniz would not become England’s Prime Minister. So, in the first two decades of the18th century, the debates between empiricism and rationalism had no leaders. The absence of leaders led to political action. Eventually, the people of France, Germany, and America began to prepare for trouble against British empiricism. The key contact person in America was Ben Franklin who traveled regularly to learn the rationalism of French and German philosophers and scientists.
What did Ben Franklin learn? He learned that British empiricism will build a despot, will apply the divine rights of kings, and will destroy rationalism. The US founders prevented the installation of British empiricism in America with the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence. In the first paragraph, the statement ‘Laws of Nature and Nature’s God’ is a statement about the development of natural science and morality with pure reason.
The US Supreme Court is wrong when it says that the Declaration of Independence is not a law of the land. The Court was also wrong to support atheism beginning in 1967. Further, the US Department of Education and many school teachers are supporting the godless theory of evolutionary theory. This theory rejects pure reason and uses British empiricism. With the help of Sam Harris’ Project Reason, one might conclude that the increasing materialism in the USA will turn many young US citizens away from God? Should we soon expect the Crown of England to move its castle to the United States? Perhaps, we ought to hunt for another Ben Franklin.
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