The word "obscurantism" is often accompanied by the epithet "religious". Sometimes they even put, without hesitation, an equal sign between obscurantism and religion. Meanwhile, obscurantism is not always religious, and religion is not always tantamount to obscurantism.
The very word "obscurantism" was born as a Russian, or rather - Church Slavonic translation of the Western term "obscurantism". The root "besie" in Church Slavonic means insanity. Thus, obscurantism is "obscurity in the dark." This is quite consistent with the semantic content of the word "obscurantism", derived from the Latin obscurans - obscuration.
The birth of the term
In the 16th century, a satirical book appeared in Germany, published anonymously. However, its authors are known, they were humanist thinkers Mole Rubean, Ulrich von Hutten, Hermann Busch and Muzian Ruf. The pamphlet ridiculed the ignorant and immoral clerics and scholastics.
The Latin title of the book, Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, has a double meaning. It can be translated both as "Letters from Unknown People", which emphasizes the insignificance of the characters, and as "Letters of Dark People", ie. unenlightened, uneducated.
With the light hand of the German humanists, people rejecting science, enlightenment, progress began to be called obscurantists, their life position - obscurantism, and this word was translated into Russian as "obscurantism".
The ratio of obscurantism and religion
If we consider the historical development of human thought, we can see that obscurantism often turned out to be hand in hand with religion. To a certain extent, this is natural: religion by its nature is conservative, one of its tasks is to preserve the moral foundations of society, therefore, a wary attitude to everything new on the part of religion is inevitable.
But this position of religion does not always develop into obscurantism. For example, not so long ago, religious people called the Internet a "devil's network", and then there appeared the official websites of dioceses, individual parishes, and many other resources of religious content. Religion has adopted a technical innovation without any obscurantism.
Undoubtedly, we can talk about religious obscurantism, when "under the banner" of religion they start lawsuits against teaching Darwin's theory in schools. But not every believer is an opponent of evolutionary theory. Reasonable, educated Christians do not see the contradictions between faith and scientific theories and therefore do not reject science. On the other hand, there are many people who are not religious, but they can be safely ranked among the obscurantists.
Non-religious obscurantism
There are many reasons that lead a person to reject science and progress. One of them is thoughtless admiration for "old times". For example, some women reason like this: “Our great-grandmothers did not go to any doctors, gave birth in a field on the border without any obstetricians, so why should we go to doctors? In maternity hospitals, only children and women in labor are maimed! " Not trusting science, such women doom themselves and their children to the cruel lottery of natural selection, from which scientific medicine could protect.
Another example of non-religious obscurantism is pseudoscience. Water, supposedly capable of perceiving information, astrological predictions, vague reasoning about some abstract "energies of the universe", telekinesis, etc. - there is no shortage of such ideas. Science rejects them for lack of evidence, which infuriates defenders of such theories: science is too conservative, scientists are bound by a general conspiracy! Such reasoning can also be called obscurantism.
So, obscurantism is any rejection of science and progress, no matter what motives it may be dictated.