Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost has done it yet again. This time he's posted an excellent piece in defense of the thesis that modern materialists are not the true heirs of the enlightenment and that it is actually the "neo-creationists" who should lay claim to that pedigree. He writes:
Whatever else might be said about the Enlightenment, it's rather obvious that the advocates of intelligent design are the philosophical heirs to the period's natural theology. For anyone to claim that materialism is the true progeny of that period is laughably misguided and a sad example of the decline in liberal education. Anyone with even a basic grasp of intellectual history should see where the truth lies. While they may not be direct descendents of that period's thinkers, these "neo-Creationists" could certainly be considered the illegitimate children of the philosopher and deist Voltaire.
The attempt to found science on atheistic materialism is not a new development. During the Enlightenment, atheists often championed the idea that the universe could have been created without a Creator. The French philosopher Voltaire, for one, was quite aware of that point of view - and rejected it thoroughly.
Read the rest of his fine essay at the link.