Enlightenment Attitudes to Religion

A discussion of the Enlightenment's attitudes towards religion is necessarily a complex one and cannot be answered without reference to historical influences on the social situation in Europe, and contemporary political and scientific developments. Absolute rejection of the existence of a God on the part of Enlightenment intellectuals was rare, while the concept of man as innately reasonable lead to a rethinking of established religious doctrine and the role of the Church within society. …