The Eighteenth-century European thinkers of the...

The Eighteenth-century European thinkers of the Enlightenment opposed the traditional Christianity of the institutionalized Church by rejecting ‘non-rational’ factors of traditional spiritual authority and faith, and they viewed reason as contrasted with ‘feeling’ or ‘emotion’.

Modern notions of reason and of rationalism arose out of this spirit of anti-supernaturalism, being an anti-religious and anti-clerical movement of utilitarian outlook stressing historical and scientific arguments against theism.

Thus, the notion of ‘ soul ’ is now considered problematic due to its spiritualistic connotations, and the term ‘ mind ’ has replaced ‘soul’ in current western discourse.Presently the term ‘rationalism’ appears on the way to being replaced by ‘humanism’; while the term ‘irrational’ conveys a (negative) connotation of ‘spiritual’ or ‘supernatural’ being linked to transcendent Values. Previous…