1 - The War Against Religion

"The leaders of science see themselves as locked in a desperate battle against religious fundamentalists, a label which they tend to apply broadly to anyone who believes in a creator who plays an active role in worldly affairs… Darwinism plays an indispensable ideological role in the war against fundamentalism. For that reason, the scientific organizations are devoted to protecting Darwinism rather then testing it, and the rules of scientific investigation have been shaped to help them succeed." 
- Philip E. Johnson, California University 

1. The abolition of all monarchies and methodical governments. 
2. The abolition of all "theistic" religions. 

The society was in fact a Masonic lodge. Weishaupt was a senior freemason and he arranged the society according to the traditional organization style of the Masonic lodges. Illuminati grew in an astonishing speed. Weishaupt, established a great authority over hundreds of intellectuals who participated in the society. A very minor part of the society members could be able to see the "big master" Weishaupt, face to face. In 1780, with the participation of Baron Von Knigge, one of the biggest masters of the German Masonic lodges, the power of the society extended extremely. Weishaupt and Knigge started preparations for making a revolution which would be defined as “socialist”. Yet, when the government discovered the setup, Illuminati masters Weishaupt and Knigge decided to participate only in their regular freemason lodges and dismiss the society. The union was realized in 1782. 

In the first years of 1800’s, a new society was established in Germany trying to preserve the Illuminati tradition. The name of the society was “the Association of the Honests". By time, its name turned to be “the Association of the Communists”. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote the Manifesto of Communism with the instructions of the so-called Association of the Communists. As known, the Manifesto defined religion as the “opium of public”, asserting that one the conditions of an ideal society should be a “society without any class”. He considered this to be the only way for the salvation of humanity  with the elimination of all religious beliefs. 

In fact, the Illuminati society found by Weishaupt and its extension, The Association of Honests. These were only the two of  similar organizations established in Europe during the 18^th century. The common characteristics of all these associations or organizations established in parallel to the Enlightenment philosophy dominating the age, was their vigorous opposition against monotheistic religions. Since, the Enlightenment philosophy imposed the idea that the sole guidance of human beings was their own free reasoning, they acclaimed that there was no need for Divine guidance (that is, divine inspiration). According to the Enlightenment advocates, human reasoning and science were two magical powers which would solve all the problems of humanity. In their opinion, religion was defined as an obstacle slowing down the progression of humanity. 

The most important political consequence of Enlightenment was the French Revolution. 

The most evident trait of the French Revolution was the hatred it acquired towards the Church and further, directly to religion itself. In the most chaotic days of the Revolution, a widespread movement of “freedom from religion” advanced as a result of the intense propaganda of the Jacobins, who were pioneering the Revolution. Moreover, a new “religion of mind” was brought up to the public. Consequently, the “Revolutional Worship” which was first witnessed in the Festival of Federation on the 14^th of July, 1790, began spreading by propaganda. Robespierre, the famous leader of the Revolution, had brought some rules to this “revolutional worship”. He defined the principals of this worship in a report that he called “Worship of Superior Being". A remarkable consequence of this development was the transformation of the Notre Dame Church into the “temple of reason”. As a result, the Christian figures on the walls of the Church were torn down and a statue of a woman was placed in the middle of the church which was defined as the Goddess of Reason. 

In fact, these circumstances, proceeded into a predetermined consequence. There was always a tricky aspect involved in the propaganda of the enlightenment philosophy directed at abolishing religion. Although a Providential religion, Christianity, was being abolished and it was sought to be replaced by another religion such as “the religion of reason”. In other words, the slogans of the Enlightenment advocates like; “to set human mind free from all kinds of rules” did not reflect the real mentality. On the contrary, the rules of the monotheistic religions were removed, but they were replaced by other rules. 

In short, the war against religion during the Enlightenment period, was in fact a war against all Divinely inspired religions. It was considered that the only way to win this war was replacing these Providential religions by other artificial human made religions. 

As a matter of fact, both during the French Revolution and before, many attempts were made to bring back the multi-god (Pagan) religions which existed before Christianity in the European societies. Nearly all of the symbols used in the French Revolution were selected from the old Pagan cultures. As the old Greek and Roman cultures were being reawakened, the religious concepts of these cultures were also acquired. 

In summary, Europe experienced a big fracture from religion during the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The enlightenment belief, which took for granted that progression could only be possible by abolishing religion, produced great effect both due to the contributions of  philosophers spreading this thought to different societies and  French Revolution having subsequent political developments. 

Well, who were the social powers behind this great reformation? Who had fought such an organized war against religion? 

Order and Change

The changes in thoughts and beliefs on "philosophical" matters - that are related with the meaning and purpose of this world and human life - have always resulted in social, economical and political changes in middle and long term. Because of this, the only way to create a fundamental and permanent change in socio-political order, is to change the thoughts and beliefs expressed by the term “philosophical”. The obligatory way to retain a socio-political order, is to prevent the alteration of the so-called “philosophical” intellectual infrastructure 

If you only make a political change - that is “revolution”- in the society, but let the “philosophical” ground society stands on unchanged, the new order you establish cannot be long lasting or stable. For example, a socialist state can be found in consequence of a revolution, but if the majority of the society does not possess the characteristics of “dialectic materialism”, this newly built state would collapse in the next political clash. The rise and fall of socialism in the 20^th century is in fact an evidence of this matter. In the same manner, you can constitute a “nation state” after pulling down a monarchy at the end of a revolution, but unless the society sees itself as a new “nation”, the new constituted state would find itself in vacillation. 

This socio-political theory leads to the following conclusion; If "some people" are trying to create a permanent change in order, they definitely have to make an intellectual revolution besides the political revolution. (The “cultural hegemony” concept we mentioned in the introduction bears the same meaning). It is of course possible to reach at the following logic setting out from this conclusion: Behind the intellectual changes and fractures in history, there may lie the will of “some people” who want to establish a new socio-political order. 

If we evaluate the war led against religion within this broad frame, we come across with some concrete social powers pioneering the ideology behind the war. 

Power and Opposition in Europe 

The power of the Church relied on quite sound and stable social basis. Because the “philosophical” ideas of people had provided for the justification of this religious authority. Before all, religion was accepted as the biggest guide of people. People believed that the universe they live in and all mankind inside it were created by God. Also, it would be terminated again by God and they would be judged by Him after death. The social order was built on this belief, that is, on the reality that the man and universe were created. Naturally, a social authority could only be legitimate if it received its power from God, which means, if it was governed by His rules. 

But some secular powers formed an opposition against the Church because they were unable to find sufficient “opportunism” or “life area” within the Catholic European order. Doubtlessly, a certain part of the aristocracy and particularly the Kings can be mentioned among these opposers. However, they were aiming at a very limited change in order. They wanted the power of the Church to be weakened - not to be abolished - and aimed at filling in the space opened by this deficiency. Because of this, they were first to make an allience with some social groups which were the real pioneers of the transformation, but then became the victim of this transformation themselves. 

The most important social power behind the transformation was the new class which got rich by mercantalism and achieved a considerable material power at the end of the Middle Ages. The new rich class defined as “aristocracy” by the terminology of political science, could not get rid of living under the political and cultural dominance of the church even if they had attained a considerable economical power. So, what they had to do was to start a major change that would enable them to carry their economical power to the political and cultural arena as well. 

They well made so. The intellectual revolutions which blew strokes on the Church such as Humanism, Protestanism and Enlightenment, were always realized by the support of this power. Because of this, both the French Revolution, and the other revolutions realized by the effect of the Enlightenment Philosopy are defined as “bourgouise revolution” in political science. 

But there were some specific groups and organizations within the “bourgouisie”. One of these groups were the Jews who were excluded by the European religious order and therefore had a considerable animity towards that order. They used the wealth they obtained through usury, to support the political and social transformations that would abolish the Church. 

The organizations that brought together the non-Jewish constituents of the “Bourgouisie” - and which were supported by the Jews most of the time - were secret or open societies found on the basis of the Enlightenment philosopy. Freemasonry, which we have mentioned at the beginning of this chapter occupied the center of nearly all these societies. This organization which provided the participation of an important part of the Western statesmen and intellectuals in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, pioneered the Enlightenment thought and the war fought against religion. Most of the other societies and organizations that took the same side - just like Illuminati - were related with Freemasonry in one way or the other. 

In short, Freemasonry occupied the center of the social powers which led the way for the order change in Europe and which formed a secular (anti-religionist) order abolishing the Christian social order. 

The Role of Freemasonry

A great majority of the enlightenment philosophers, particularly those with a rigid anti-religionist view, were freemasons. The forerunners of the French Revolution and its pioneers, the Jacobeans were also members of the freemason lodges. 

Freemasonry’s role in French Revolution was confessed at those years by an “agent-provocateur” named Comte Cagliostro. Cagliostro was arrested by the Inquisition in 1789 and confessed everything he knew to save his life. The most remarkable of what he told was that the freemasons planned to start a chain of revolutions in Europe. He also declared that their main purpose was to abolish Papacy or to take it under control. Cagliostro also drew attention to another aspect of “bourgeoisie”: In his confessions, he had mentioned that the international Jewish bankers had supported financially all these revolutionist activities and that the Jewish originated cash took great part in the French Revolution. 

These two most significant components of “bourgeoisie” which are the most radical ones against the church authority, naturally played a major role in French Revolution, the biggest “bourgeoisie” revolution in history. 

The anti-church alliance guided by the leading Freemasons and Jews in cooperation, blew the final stroke on the authority of the Pope. Having retained its existence until 1870 in central Italy, The State of Papacy was pulled down by three big “freemason masters” as Mazzini, Garibaldi and Cavour after a very long political and military struggle.  Thus the authority of the church was thoroughly ruined and the State of Papacy was squeezed within the tiny borders of today’s Vatican. Mazzini and his other freemason friends were primarily supported by Rosselli and Nathan, the wealthy Jewish dynasties of Italy. 

According to the author of the book called “The Roman Catholic Church and the Craft”, the master freemason Alec Mellor “After the midway of 19th century, opposition to Papacy was the major policy of Italy and it was directly  managed by the masonic lodges” 
. 

The Regime of the New Secular Order

The name of the new order established right after the deposition of the religious authority was scratched on the Big Seal of U.S.A. which was allocated as the “first Freemasonic republic of the world”. On the back face of the seal were seen two Latin sentences of “Annuit Coeptis” right above and “Novus Ordo Seclorum” right below, also the Freemasonic symbol of “eye within the triangle”. The first meaning of this was the “Completion of the already started.... The New Order of the Age”. But the word “seclorum” gained a second meaning over time which was “secular”, that is, “non-religious”. In this circumstance, the message around the Freemasonic symbol could be read as follows: “The Completion of the Already Started... New Secular Order”. 

Being established after a very long struggle, that is, by “the completion of the already started”, the New Secular Order was indebted to the weakening of the religious beliefs for its existence. Doubtlessly, it would rely on the same thing to maintain its existence. For this reason, War Against Religion continued well after the political defeat of the Church. The goal was to depose the human mentality induced by the religious values and criteria, to replace it with an entirely non-religious mentality and create a homogenous society made up of people with the mentality of the latter type. Thus, the “retrieval” chance of the religious authority was absolutely lost. 

This also meant that the New Secular Order was utterly totalitarian. But this totalitarianism would be practiced in a very sophisticated way. That is, not by force but by brainstorm. The society would not even be aware of the totalitarian aspect of the order. They would think that “they were administering themselves”, but the decisions they give while “administering themselves” could not be able to pass beyond the borders of a circle determined by the New Secular Order. Because their mind would be programmed to be unable to think outside of this circle. 

Actually, this is the most successful and effective method of totalitarianism. Because opposition is reduced to minimum. It is possible to oppose to a harsh totalitarianism, but who would stand against an ambiguous one? 

Such a world was designated by the English author Aldous Huxley in his well-known science fiction novel, Brave New World. In his book published in 1932, Huxley was describing a World State, a totalitarian administration dominating all the world in the future. The World State was totalitarian, but it did not use force against people. Because it did not need primitive totalitarianism methods such as force. People were being programmed by the order to obey. In the 1946 edition of his book, Huxley drew attention to this subject and wrote that “in an effective oppression regime people can be managed and controlled without force, because people will be accustomed to being slaves anyway”. A similar totalitarianism depiction was made in George Orwell’s science fiction book named 1984. 

The totalitarianism models in Brave New World and 1984 had a very significant common aspect: The distortion of history. In both of these models, history was eliminated by the will dominating over the current order to serve its interests and then re-written. Thus people were convinced that all the social orders preceding the “revolution” were unjust, oppressive and “dark”. They thought that the totalitarian order they lived in was the most advanced, most just, most free and the most “brilliant” of all the orders existed until then. 

The New Secular Order established right after the overthrow of the religious socio-political order in Europe assumed this sophisticated totalitarianism depicted in Brave New World and 1984 as its “regime”. The name of the “regime” was “liberty, fraternity, and equality”; but it was all the more totalitarian for imposing its ideology on the minds of people. 

19^th century passed by with the New Secular Order fortifying itself with the regimes and techniques mentioned above. 

19^th Century; The Peak of the New Secular Order

Materialism was a thought system which asserted that the only reality was only matter itself and nothing existed other than the matter. According to this, matter was existing right from the beginning of the world and it would continue to exist eternally. Therefore, God’s existence and the fact that He created all the living things were being denied. In this circumstance, the whole human life was being established on matter and “meaning” had no share. People were coming to a point where they only thought of consuming more and more and possessing more worldly materials. The sole meaning and value of life was material wealth, that is, money. This situation was very convenient for the power centers which held good amounts of material wealth in their hands and wished people to obey themselves. 

Positivism and determinism were natural outcomes of materialism. Developed by Auguste Comte, positivist thought asserted that only those, which could be proven by experiments were real and existent. Everything should pass through the strain of experimental knowledge and only those that are approved by the experimental knowledge should be regarded as true. On the other hand, determinism defended that all incidents were outcomes of the interrelations between matters and that the whole universe was working in a mechanical way within a cause and effect relationship. 

With the admittance of these thoughts, Europe reached the extreme point in breaking out from religion. In the 19th century, there were quite a few people thinking that religion was an antique doctrine lost in the dusty pages of history. Being almost worshipped, “science and reason” was believed to be a pathfinder which would solve all the problems of the human being. 

Moreover, it was thought as necessary to export the New Secular Order to other civilizations. Religion had to be scraped off from the face of the world, not only of Europe, so that it could not emerge again. Fortunately, the political and economic conditions required for the order exportation were ready. The Western civilization had acquired a great material power thanks to the idols of capitalism, “capital accumulation and production”. The developed industry necessitated to find new raw material sources and for this end, the Western powers extended to all corners of the world in terms of military and political means. And the civilizations dominated in political-military means could also be taken under control in intellectual means. The order exportation was necessitating this intellectual invasion. 

This was the reason why the secularist Western thinkers who became abundant in the 19th century had a single goal: To praise the New Secular Order and to induce that the other civilizations are equally compelled to admit this Order. These thinkers such as August Comte, Emile Durkheim, Ferdinand Tönnies, Herbert Spencer and Karl Marx started defining and classifying the societies and history. Their theories had an interesting common feature: Despite the fact that they were defining the transformation of the societies according to different criteria, actually they were all saying that the most “progressed” societies were the “secular” (that is, non-religious) ones. For example, according to the French Jew Durkheim, the societies were within a transition period progressing from “organic cooperation” towards “mechanic cooperation”. One of the most important properties of “mechanic cooperation” was its secularism. As a German Jew, Marx had based the progression of societies on economic criteria, but he also asserted that the most advanced stage of humanity was a communist society which was secular. Comte had divided human development into theological, metaphysic and positivist phases. The most important characteristic of the positivist society considered as the most advanced phase was its secularism. 

In reality, all of these philosophers meant the same thing. All set out by praising the period of retreat from religion realized in the West. Then they put forward that this duration was an unavoidable outcome of the “invariable rules of history” and asserted that the other civilizations would definitely go through the same period. The New Secular Order they called as “Modernism” or “Modernity” would unavoidably dominate over the other civilizations as well. So the other civilizations should not insist on clinging on to their religion and they should be “modern”. 

The philosophical basis laid by these thinkers provided justification for the non-sacred alliance to export the New Secular Order. The alliance started to export its own Order called “modernism” and move forward to its goal of “world domination”. In the non-Western civilizations, having entered under the influence of thinkers like Durkheim, some intellectuals with distorted consciousness welcomed the exportation of New Secular Order with gladness. 

This ambiance of victory in the 19^th century gained great acceleration with a significant “discovery” made in the midst of the century. Because prior to this discovery, the New Secular Order thought it had an important handicap. It had employed various propaganda methods to overthrow the religious order, it had presented the religious authority to be identical to “darkness” and it had succeeded. It had put forward that religion was only a “spiritual” subject and succeeded to convince people about this subject. Asserting that there was no need for the guidance of a Holy Bible and that man could find the right way without a divine inspiration, it had made this idea confirmed by people. Finally, going further, it had denied the existence of God and said that “all that exist consist of all that you see”. Even this was accepted by at least a major part of the elite of the Western society. 

But there was always a gap in the open: How come has this living world come into being? How could such perfect beings come into existence without a Creator? 

The new secular order should find an answer to this critical question to ensure its existence and permanence. And the answer should convince people that the living things were not created but came into existence somewhat by “themselves”. Because if people perceived that themselves and all other things were created, they could concentrate on the question of “who created us”. Then they could think of their responsibility against God. They even could decide to live according to His rules. They could further start not to obey any other being but Him, and be only at His service. This would be the end of the New Secular Order. It would lose the philosophical ground it is based on and would break down in the slightest socio-political impact. 

For this reason, the New Secular Order was obliged to explain the existence of the living things in terms of “not being created”. And then it had to make masses believe in this explanation through the “cultural hegemony” means. 

In fact, life could in no means be explained in terms of “not being created”. Just like the impossibility of proving an insensible assertion claiming that a car produced in a factory had come to existence “by itself”, it is as likely as to prove a nonsense assertion claiming that the whole universe had come into existence “by coincidence” or by itself. 

But the power centers establishing the non-religious order were determined to find a non-religious reply to the question of how the living things came into being. This reply would certainly not be a true one, but it could be presented as true to people. Therefore this would not be one with an evidence or proof but it could be presented to be so to people. Consequently, what was important was to strip people off from religious beliefs; this should be realized regardless the due. Because the political hegemony would remain groundless unless the cultural hegemony was established. 

The theory of evolution was put forward to meet that need. The biggest totalitarian order in history was devising the biggest “scientific” deception in history. 

SOURCE: http://www.harunyahya.com/evolution_introduction.php (Note: I do not endorse the Muslim religion, but the information published here is very truthful concerning the evils of evolution. —David J. Stewart)