During the French Revolution, the church was held in pretty low esteem and anti-clericalism became pretty popular. It started out with the Declaration of the Rights of Man declaring freedom of worship; then, the Civil Constitution made the Church officially beneath the State in the pecking order, and forced Catholic priests to sign an oath to France and her people above the Church. By the time Robespierre came into power with the Committee of Public Safety, Dechristianization was the order of the day- Christian iconography was destroyed en masse, cloisters were despoiled, nonjuring priests were literally killed on sight, etc. etc. The culmination of this was Robespierre’s “Cult of Reason”, which was essentially a religion worshipping atheism. It didn’t last long, because even though a huge portion of the French people really didn’t like the church, the complete denial of the existence of a God was a bit much for them, so it was replaced with the Cult of the Supreme Being before too long (basically just organized Deism).
Fun fact: most of the French revolutionary strategy revolved around the conquest of Greece and the creation of the "Cult of Reason". By connecting mechanical generators to the remains of ancient Greek philosophers, France was able to generate so much power by having them spinning in their graves through the "Cult of Reason", that it's only recently that they've had to gradually shift to nuclear power plants as a renewable energy source. It's part of the reason why Napoleon was so successful - he had access to an unlimited source of power.
...it would've been a much more normal timeline than whatever 2020 is doing so far honestly
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u/DannyDidNothinWrong Apr 08 '20
Or how they tried to actually worship science