2. • Belief that human reason and careful
observations were the only sure way to know
the truth
3. Rene Descartes
• Proposed doubting everything except basic
axioms (statements about which there can be
no doubt)
• His approach is a from of rationalism
• Rationalists questioned whether miracles
were reasonable
5. Benedict de Spinoza
• Used Descartes ideas to question the Bible
• Spinoza thought almost everything in the
Bible was contrary to reason
• He wanted secularism – society free from
religion
6. • Christians feared that a government without
religious influence would be unjust and evil
• Christian support for religious toleration and
representative forms of government
developed first in the North American colonies
8. John Locke
• Argued in favor of empiricism – belief that the
best way to find true knowledge was through
experience rather than through human reason
• Empiricists wondered why miracles were not
observed today if they had happened before
10. • Debates raised during the Enlightenment have
not, even to this day, been resolved with one
side clearly victorious over the other.
11. Consequences of the Enlightenment
• Science seemed to be able to explain in
natural terms events that people had long
considered supernatural
• Began to study the Bible as another religious
book rather than as scripture
• Started looking for evidence of contradictions
• Spinoza pioneered this approach to Scripture.
Editor's Notes
Argued for toleration of ALL ideas
Purpose of the state was actually to protect the citizen’s freedom.
Argued that it was the responsibility of the state to limit the influence of Christianity in education
Instead of arriving at truth through a sequence of careful reasoning, the empiricist observes the world around him to determine truth
