Robespierre and The Reign of Terror

In the aftermath of the French revolution many leaders in France were sent to the guillotine due to supposed injustices. After much turmoil one leader in particluar rose to power whose law was absolute and killed on whims. When King Louis XVI was executed, Maximilien Robespierre rose to power.
He attempted to wipe out all traces of the old monarchy. In one instance you could be friendly with him an in another he could be sending for your execution.

He was the very first dictator of that kind to rise to power. He was suspicious of everyone and trusted no one. In the end he fell by the same guillotine he used to execute so many of his enemies

"Robespierre, with his cruel moral relativism,
embodied the cardinal sin of all revolution, the hearlessness of ideas."
Paul Johnson
"The Spectator"
On July 28, 1794 he fell.

The French Revolution: Social Causes

The Fench Revolution was caused by unrest within the third the Estate of the nation's people's social laddder. The three class system imposed a tax on the 98 percentile of France. The third house consists of peasants, lower nobles, and the latter. The second Estate and upwards are nobles, monarchas, mechants, kings, and Queens.
The anger of the lower class was incited, due to the taxation laws. The first and Second Estates who were more wealthy paid the least taxes whilst the majority of debt was left to the Third Estate who owned and consumed far less. People began to protest and soon the fight became more outright violent than purely political.
Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke very much influenced the Revolution. It provided such things as a basis for personal freedoms we are to be born with and certain inaliable rights. These being freedoms and the pursuit of happiness. Mr. Locke believed these things were given to coexist in modern civil society.

Due to men like King Louis XVI;

"Feudalism and Unfair Taxation

No one factor was directly responsible for the French Revolution. Years of feudal oppression and fiscal mismanagement contributed to a French society that was ripe for revolt. Noting a downward economic spiral in the late 1700s, King Louis XVI brought in a number of financial advisors to review the weakened French treasury. Each advisor reached the same conclusion—that France needed a radical change in the way it taxed the public—and each advisor was, in turn, kicked out."- http://www.sparknotes.com/history/european/frenchrev/summary.html

Reasons for Revolution were abundant and abound.

On July 14, 1789 The delegates of the 3rd Estate stormed King Loiu's Bastille and took his life establishing the day as equivalent to America's 4th of July.

Copernicus and the Trial of Galileo

Coperncius was an astronomer of the 16th century who was the first to conceive the heliocentric model. This meaninng; that the Earth revolved around the sun. The sun is the center of the Unverse. His first major published work was known as De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres). In 1536 the archbishop of Capua Nicholas Schonberg expressed much praise for his work in a letter;
"Some years ago word reached me concerning your proficiency, of which everybody constantly spoke. At that time I began to have a very high regard for you... For I had learned that you had not merely mastered the discoveries of the ancient astronomers uncommonly well but had also formulated a new cosmology. In it you maintain that the earth moves; that the sun occupies the lowest, and thus the central, place in the universe... Therefore with the utmost earnestness I entreat you, most learned sir, unless I inconvenience you, to communicate this discovery of yours to scholars, and at the earliest possible moment to send me your writings on the sphere of the universe together with the tables and whatever else you have that is relevant to this subject..."


Copernicus, however was not the originator of these theories, for far back in the annals of history people of cultures around the globe have come to similar conclusions. An Indian philosopher wrote in the texts of the Vedas;"The sun strings these worlds - the earth, the planets, the atmosphere - to himself on a thread.".



Galileo Galilei was an Italian Renaissance man of the highest order. He was a philosopher, astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. He is known as "the father of modern observational astronomy, the "father of modern physics",^[4] and the "father of science". Galileo followed the creed of Copernicus and very much agreed with his findings. Doing so ignited the wrath of the Inquisition of the Church whose teachings held that the Earth, not the Sun was the center of all things.

Abandoning Aristotle's Geocentric model that was commonly accepted for centuries he embraced the heliocentric model. His persecution was so great that for the latter part of the end of his days he stayed under house arrest; retracting prior statements on June 22, 1633.
It was not until 1992 that the Roman Catholic Church accepted the validity of his research.

The Scientific Revolution

Before the 15th Century scientists developed their theories based upon the ideas of the Greeks and Romans or upon Christian doctrine.
The ancient Greeks and Christianity taught that Earth was the center of the Universe and that the sun revolved around the earth. The development of the Scientific method changed this methodology.
After 1500, instead of accepting what was taught scientists began to test methods for their validity and the origin of the current doctrine was born which is thus; assume to know nothing and merely state that something is what it appears to be based upon the data that is given. As time moves on theories are tested in different circumstances and conditions; improved upon and tested to see if they remain true. This was quite possibly the greatest revolution in all of modern science. " Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work. " -- James Randi
Now science is built upon theories that can instantaneously be proven or disproven throughout the ages as time wears on rather than being accepted as pure fact, but based upon data available at any given time.
a theory is a conceptual framework that explains existing observations and predicts new ones
A hypothesis is a theory that hasn't been proven, but guessed.
An example of changing what is accepted as true can be seen in the legend of Italian Galileo who disproved Aristotles theory that heavier objects would drop at greater speed. It is said that he dropped stones of different weights to the ground from atop the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He proved that objects of different weights fell at the same speed.
In Science it is now accepted that when an old theory cannot explain new observations than a new one must be conceived. There is often a blurry line between fact and speculation as time wears on and Man catapults himself with higher knowledge.
The line must be drawn when one accepts this statement; "When a theory is said to be ``true'' it means that it agrees with all known experimental evidence"
The same truths have always been since the begginning of time, but we gather more of them as time continues in its never ending trek.
Ocham's Razor
Ockham's Razor simply means to keep it simple when two or more theories conflict with each other based upon different assumptions. They may both be valid in some respects, but to test which one is to be used by the the one that yields the most accurate data.

Creation vs Evolution

Creationism or Intelligent Design is the idea that the world in which we live and the cosmos is derived from one single source of supreme consciousness; God if you will. Creationists vary in their respective theories, but all postulate that the forms of life found on earth are not accidental and are all part of a grand scheme devised by an omnipotent creator. Creationist ideas usually stem from common belief in the Abrahamic God and the first book of Genesis.

"And God said Let their be Light!"


There are many nuances found in Creationist ideas, but they usually fall under 1 of three categories. These are ; Young Earth Creationists Old Earth Creationists, and even Theistic Evolution which supports Darwin's theories.. Young Earth Creationists uphold belief in a literal interpretation of Genesis. They would say that the Earth was created in what we know as a week and that the Earth is only around 6000 years old. However, Old Earth Creationists accept the geological findings as true, but reject Darwinian theory. The most liberal of them would be those who accepted Theistic Evolution; a subset of Old-Earth Creationists who believe that Evolution was set in place by God.
In the West; up until the early 1920's Creationism is what was taught to students in schools as fact in Science class generally accepted as "the beginning".
Today, Creation Science is often considered pseudo-science due to a recent resurgence of religious right wing fundamentalists taking center stage in conservative politics. It is of my opinion that all creation science is not taken seriously for good reason even though it may have validity to me, because religion and government must always be separated. The scientific community rightfully fears creationism taught in schools, because of what the Church was able to do to well-meaning scientists during the beginnings of secular society and the Renaissance. Case in point ; The Trial of Galileo Galilee.
No matter what I believe about the purposeful transcendent existence of Man as opposed to other creatures is merely my OPINION and therefore, a line must be drawn in order to adequately function in the world that we live in. The truly unexplainable is not to be explained by science, but the philosopher.



Evolution is another theory proposed by the geologist Dr. Charles Darwin. He concludes through scientific research that all forms of life on the planet earth originate from a few common ancestors. He believed that life on earth has gradually changed through mutations rather than being created in the same manner of separation each of a different "kind" and that creatures all used to be the same "evolved" out of a pool. Darwin made a trip to the Galapagos where he observed the distinctions between different types of Finches. Where a long, beak was necessary in an environment the Finch would possess a long beak and have adapted. If a sharper or shorter or sturdier was necessary it would be so.

Many theists accept the microevolution proposed by Darwin, but macroevolution as unacceptable. Micro evolution would be a slight alteration in genetics due to environment. Macro evolution, however is a large unexplainable leap in a creature. Such as the spark of consciousness in what we define as man. Another example of macro evolution is for instance humans descending from monkeys or dolphins. Or that pidegons are descendants of the dinosaur pterodactyls. Despite heavy opposition the wide range of biologists commonly refer to macroevolution as the "fact of evolution" all leading to common descent.
Natural Selection explains the mechanics of preserving species. If a small number of a particular creature developed wings that trait would be passed on to the generations that followed and all kinds of the creature unable to develop said wings would simply die out. Simply put this is "Survival of the Fittest".
"…Natural selection acts only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a great and sudden leap, but must advance by short and sure, though slow steps."

If there were ever to be found a complex organism or mechanism in that organism created wholly complex without a trace or lead back somewhere to s simpler form of life Darwin's theories would essentially fall apart. He called it an "irreducibly complex system" Evolution is noted to be extremely gradual. This complex system simply is one made up of many parts. If there is any slight alteration then it falls apart.

"Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10^-12 grams, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machinery built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world." - Molecular biologist Michael Denton

The quote above merely implies how Darwin's theory may be in crisis due to the large amount of evidence that not all fit his model He even states the obvious reflecting the human heart and eye has always "been" in itself the way it is. Attempting to explain the phenomena through natural selection would be "absurd in the highest degree", according to Darwin. The complexity found in the tiniest of bacterium has yet to be explained.

In conclusion it should be advised that the reader draws his or her own conclusions based upon what allows them to live their lives in the most beneficial way. This debate wil likely continue for centuries after us therefore, it is essential that we live life the way we see fit. That's the purpose of free will in all respects. I for one will admit that I DO believe in God as much as the Sun sets and the moon rises. It is important that religion and science eternally distinguish themselves from the other and that one is NEVER taken as in higher regard than another. As purposeful creatures it is important that we are allowed to live the way WE each see fit to the highest degree. Only a fool works in his own absolutes. The standard of what is Good and what is Bad man has always been in constant struggle with. The question I pose to you is who do you suppose posed the first question and made us desire?

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