During the Age of Enlightenment, the tools of reason that had been used to support faith for centuries began to erode the very foundations of religious authority.

Topics Discussed:

• The Fragility of the Cartesian Bridge: Examining why Descartes' reliance on a benevolent God to escape skepticism left his project vulnerable to the "Great Erosion" of the 18th century.
• Naturalizing the Supernatural: The Enlightenment shift from divine intervention to naturalistic explanations for phenomena like lightning, witchcraft, and demonic possession.
• The Deep Time Crisis: How geological discoveries and "cooling experiments" challenged the traditional biblical chronology of James Usher.
• Biblical Criticism and Authorial Doubt: The birth of modern textual analysis as Spinoza, Newton, and Reimarus began to treat sacred texts as human historical records.
• The Rise of Materialism and Atheism: Analyzing the emergence of open atheism and materialism in the radical works of Jean Meslier and Baron d’Holbach.