Early modern philosophers were all atheistic but had to include god in their system to appease the plebs

I've never seen someone claiming Newton wasn't religious. He also dedicated a huge part of his life to occult studies.

This whole "every smart man in the past was a crypto-atheist" reminds of the LGBT community's "every handsome dude in Hollywood is secretly gay" thing.
"Yeah, he says he's straight, but that's just so his career won't crash"
"Pretty much openly showing his Wife/Fiancee/Gf?"
"She's a beard."
"Kids?"
"Either playing along, or not his"

>Blacks
>WE WUZ KANGZ N SHIET!

>Gays
>WE WUZ ACTORS N SHIET!

>Athiests
>WE WUZ SCIENTISTS N SHIET!

[citation needed]

Kek

It's a New Atheist meme. Most of the people in the "New Atheist" movement come from science backgrounds, so it's pretty hard for them to understand why philosophically literate people have no problems believing in a God.

Of course, these days, the culture in university philosophy departments is atheistic by and large, but Id' argue that philosophers can make quicker leaps to God than those with science backgrounds.

>they were not atheists but I will pretend they were without any shred of evidence because I can't accept that my fedora beliefs are wrong

Those early philosophers had no other explanation to the forces they encountered, and they didn't want the common man to associate these forces with demons and such. so their only option was to guise the force as a divine action by the gods. So as not to scare their followers.

Saz who? In all seriousness are you pulling this out of yer arse or do you have some sources to back it up?

What "forces" exactly? Most 17th-18th century philosophers thought about god in terms of abstract being without any physical relation to the world (exceptions exist).

Actually it was a snippet of a tedx video. About how Crete associated earthquakes with minotaur. and I just assumed that all ancient Greek society had a god that explained unnatural occurrences.

Here's the vid youtu.be/2aoIs-5zqoI

Natural disasters, weather events and stuff like that.

Well, one of the things that gave philosophy a serious boost was the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. It was precisely the absurd and pointless disaster that made them reassess the whole idea of a benevolent omnipotent creator. But that is still not to say they were atheists, just that they were not dogmatic apologists of any kind.

implying plebs could read

>the culture in university philosophy departments is atheistic by and large

I don't know how it is in other countries, but here nobod told me that Descartes put God in his system just to appease the church, it's bullshit I hear only outside of the academia.

I would not make the generalization that OP does, but I wonder if Socrate did not say that Gods exist but do not meddle with Earth, in a way to exclude Religion from the discourse without proclaming himself as an atheist.

>Descartes put God in his system just to appease the church

That's not at all an unreasonable hypothesis. Descartes' central ideas pose a pretty obvious threat to church dogma, and his "and god is real too" bits don't really fit and are basically just awkward paraphrasing of existing, politically correct theology (Anselm, etc).

It could just as easily be his own biases at work, though.

Descartes specifically wrote himself to this corner with his dualism. God might make awkward entrance in his theory but it's kinda required. Spinoza I think is a better example, as his """god"""" is almost nothing but a semantic distinction.

I agree with

>God might make awkward entrance in his theory but it's kinda required

it's a necesessary step to put the res extensa back into existence, now it can debated how much he's successful in escaping the "loneliness" of the cogito, but that's the way it is.

I agree to a certain extent to with your description of the God of Spinoza but for example Aristotle God as thought of thought, first principle, is completely different from the notion of god(s) usually found in religion and theology, but its a god nonetheless.

Maybe 2 people on that list are early modern

Some of them probably did just do it to please the readers. It's definitely possible. Outright denial of God's existence led to social pariah-hood. But, these alleged atheists wouldn't leave any evidence in their works of their atheism because that's how you get caught.

Singling out any single person as sprinkling God in their works for appeasement though is baseless conjecture.

>but its a god nonetheless

Is it though? Why use the same term for such completely different concepts, if not to be deliberately misleading through equivocation?

Deists kinda sound like that. I can imagine Paine tipping fedora right now

The Conflict Thesis has probably held scientific advancement back more than religion.

I feel that way desu
Some people that come to mind are Hobbes, Rene Descartes, And all the "Deists"