Jonathan Pugh Deacon Sam Religion/Period 4 8 February 2015 Positive outcomes of the Enlightenment The age of reason took place during the late 17th century. Scientists like ISAAC NEWTON and writers like JOHN LOCKE challenged the way things where always understood and done. Newton's laws of gravity and motion gave the world natural laws beyond any spiritual force. In the wake of political turmoil in England, Locke asserted that the purpose of government is to protect the natural rights of life, liberty and property. If government did not provide these things, it should be changed or over thrown. People were beginning to doubt the existence of God. The view of god at the time was a being who could predestine human beings to eternal damnation …show more content…
On the other side of the Atlantic, Enlightened ideas of liberty and individual rights flourished without the shackles of European rule. Religious leaders began to challenge their positions that had remanded the same since the dawn of the church. The new Enlightened European leaders began to look at the similarities of the Anglican Church and the Puritan Congregationalists which relaxed tensions between the two. Even Cotton Mather, who was a Massachusetts minister that wrote and spoke about the existence of witches, advocated his congregation to learn science as a way to immunize themselves against smallpox. Harvard ministers became so liberal that Yale College was founded in New Haven in 1707 in an attempt to retain old Calvinist ideas. This attempt failed horribly and the entire faculty of Yale College converted to the Church of England in 1722. By the end of the century, many New England ministers would become Unitarians, doubting even the divinity of …show more content…
The thinkers of the Age of Reason brought a whole new way of thinking to the world. This new way championed the accomplishments of humankind. Science was looked at as something that could bring happiness and progress through reason. Kings did not rule by divine right. Their power was granted to them by the citizens. These rulers now had an obligation to serve their subjects. This European idea was put in practice first by the forming of America. The Age of Enlightenments watermarks are still visible on many of the world's most important documents. In fact, without the enlightenment, the United States as we know it would likely not exist today. While visiting Europe, many of America’s founding fathers rubbed elbows with many great Enlightenment thinkers. The founding fathers then brought those Enlightenment ideas and values back across the Atlantic to a nation that was just