Why did the Enlightenment fail? Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire and others believed that if you were rational and learned the natural laws of the universe, and espoused this information to the masses, you would make people more rational, and in a sense perfect them relative to how they were previously, believing in all manner of superstitions and dogma. Yet we all know it only take a few clicks on the internet to find people who deny science and scientific knowledge almost entirely. We put people through schooling, teaching them science and so on, but belief in conspiracy theories and pseudo-science is only increasing.