A talk at Colet House on Monday 21 May at 7 pm from Dr Mike King . There will be a chance to meet Mike over light refreshments  in the Study from 6 pm.

The Spirit of the Enlightenment
 
If we make the distinction between a secular worldview, predicated on science, humanism, materialism and atheism, and a religious worldview, predicated on a sacred dimension of non-duality (and requiring in the Western tradition the term ‘God’), then the Enlightenment period is considered by both groups to be the source of divergence between these worldviews. But a close examination of some fifty key Enlightenment thinkers shows that only perhaps four of them wanted the end of the religious worldview. How secularism then emerged is something of a puzzle, but this talk will focus more on the spirituality of key Enlightenment thinkers and how it relates to Eastern concepts of non-duality. It will be shown that, for example, Descartes (most controversially), Spinoza and Leibniz all pursued a lyrical, transcendent, world-curious religiosity, as profoundly spiritual thinkers with a deep empathy for the non-dual. It will be argued that this is more typical of the Enlightenment than reductionist materialism or atheism.
 
Dr Mike King is the director of the Centre for Postsecular Studies at London Metropolitan University, a director of the Scientific and Medical Network, and author of fifty papers on art, science and the spiritual (www.jnani.org/mrking/writings). This talk is based on a section of his forthcoming book ‘The Hidden Origins of Secularism’ to be published by Lutterworth Press.