The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.
Umberto EcoRead
When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that losing faith in God leads to a broader belief system rather than a void of belief.
Umberto Eco's quote reflects the idea that when people abandon traditional religious faith, they do not necessarily become nihilistic or lose their capacity for belief. Instead, they might seek meaning in a diverse array of ideologies, beliefs, or even secular philosophies, suggesting a shift towards a more pluralistic worldview that embraces a multitude of ideas and values.
In practice
During a discussion on spirituality in a philosophy class.
The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.
I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.
But why do some people support [the heretics]?" "Because it serves their purposes, which concern the faith rarely, and more often the conquest of power." "Is that why the church of Rome accuses all its adversaries of heresy?" "That is why, and that is also why it recognizes as orthodoxy any heresy it can bring back under its own control or must accept because the heresy has become too strong.
You die, but most of what you have accumulated will not be lost; you are leaving a message in a bottle.
"Then we are living in a place abandoned by God," I said, disheartened. "Have you found any places where God would have felt at home?" William asked me, looking down from his great height.
The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.
Do you suppose you will look the same when you are an old woman as you do now? Most folk have three faces—the face they get when they’re children, the face they own when they’re grown, and the face they’ve earned when they’re old. But when you live as long as I have, you get many more. I look nothing like I did when I was a wee thing of thirteen. You get the face you build your whole life, with work and loving and grieving and laughing and frowning.
Why set your heart on a piece ofearth,seek out the source which shines forever.
I learned a long time ago that reality was much weirder than anyone's imagination.
Everything that is not eternal is worthless in eternity.
Lord, stamp eternity on my eyeballs.
Our first and most pressing problem is how to do away with warfare as a method of solving conflicts between national groups within a society who have different views about how the society is to run.
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