REASON WITHOUT TRUTH
Modern rationalism fully bloomed in the 1600s with Descartes who said, “I think, therefore I am”, Spinoza, and Leibniz. This line of thought led to liberalism and the bloody French Revolution of the late 1700s. It was a revolution against the authority of kings but also against the Catholic Church. While Martin Luther and others protested against the Catholic Church in the 1500s for spiritual reform, the French revolution was different. Very different! The French Revolution went as far as trying to de-Christianize the world with guillotines.
At the core was a belief in human reason versus Christ. The rationalists avoid thinking about the pitiful inability of the human mind to reason to truth. They refuse to think about the fact that reason without truth consists of making up stuff and calling the made-up stuff “true.” Of course, the Church has always been subject to putting human reasoning over divine revelation. Notice the warnings against false prophets in the Old Testament along with the promise that God would speak to them if they would stand in His presence.
And the conservatives who opposed the liberals weren’t looking to press onward with Christ. They just wanted slow or no change.
In 1789, during the early stages of the French Revolution, the Estates-General met to debate the future of France. Delegates had to choose sides—not just figuratively, but physically—on where to sit in the assembly hall. On the right sat the conservatives. The liberal radicals and revolutionaries sat on the left. This division was so clear and symbolic that newspapers and politicians started using “left” and “right” as shorthand for political leanings — and it stuck!