> You say "enlightenment values as values of enlightenment government" but what you mean is the values of government in the period of the start of the enlighten

> You say "enlightenment values as values of enlightenment government" but what you mean is the values of government in the period of the start of the enlightenment movement. But as we all know, the process of replacing faith with reason was not something that was decided upon and implemented. I think you need to go back to the history books. That's pretty much what happened during the French revolution. Religion wasn't the only factor, of course, there was nobility + state versus poor + merchants class warfare involved. But religion was seen, in France, to be solidly on the wrong side, with "laicite" as the result. Problem is that they proceeded to place lots of people with no affection whatsoever to the religion, or the nation, or anything outside of themselves really, in control of the state. They literally threw out the existing people (usually after separating head and body of the individuals concerned), and replaced them near-wholesale. The result, as we all should know, but don't, was a monstrous, valueless, cruel and unlivable state, very quickly resulting in another revolution (generally referred to as "stage 2" or "stage 3" of the french revolution itself), which brought Napoleon to power, who was very much part of the wrong side in the previous stage of the revolution. People were clamoring for religion, values and the like because the valueless, morale-less bureaucrats behavior. I think the enlightenment, if you look at actual history is very much a lesson in both how a religious based society doesn't work, and a religion-less society doesn't work either. Not that these lessons apply directly today, but I do think it's fair to say that France demonstrated very clearly to everyone that you can't live dominated by a religion, but you can't live without religion either. You probably think that this "anti-religion" movement is something new, but I think once you study history, you'll find yourself to be on the very moderate anti-religious side of this argument (compared to the beginning of the 19th century). I think you'll also read about what happened when policies like the ones you're suggesting are actually implemented, and I think you'll agree that "enlightened" is certainly not universally better than what you'd probably call "stuck in the middle ages". Read about the rash of revolutions in Europe, how religion was involved, and what happened.