It was an intellectual movement in thinking, which moved society's thinking away from religious thinking, dominated by the Church, to rational thought dominated by science

The Enlightenment (or 'Age of Reason') is a term used to describe the philosophical, scientific, and rational attitudes, the freedom from superstition, and the belief in religious tolerance of much of 18th-century Europe. People believe the start of the Enlightenment period was between 16th and 19th century. However, cultural historians date the beginning of the enlightenment to the work of Newton, Pascal, Descartes and Locke. These thinkers however are drawing on predecessors that date well back to the 13th century. We can't, then really date the enlightenment. Do we still not live in an enlightenment world? While philosophers and cultural historians have dubbed the late 20th century as, "post Enlightenment", we still walk around with a worldview largely based on, Enlightenment thought. So in the spirit of not dating the Enlightenment, simply refer to the changes, in European thought in the seventeenth century as "Seventeenth Century Enlightenment Thought." Although there were many philosopher and scientists

Natural religion is the assumption that man is guided by the dictates of reason. Mind is the scene of the play of motive. The motives of man are quantitatively and qualitatively the same at all times and in all places. An empirical study of the nature of man, said Hume, reveals not an identical set of motives but a confusion of impulses, not an orderly cosmos but chaos. The basic passion, hopes and fears are the root of religious experience. Religions may be socially convenient but being rooted in sentiment, they lack the validity of scientific generalization. A rational religion is a contradiction in terms. Hume here comes close to demolishing the entire rationalist philosophy of the Enlightenment--its natural rights, its self-evident truths and its universal and immutable laws of morality. English deism, however, was more pervasive in the Enlightenment. It emphasized an impersonal deity, natural religion and the common morality of all human beings. Deism was a logical outgrowth of scientific inquiry, rational faith in humanity, and the study of comparative religion. All religions could be reduced to worship God and a commonsense moral code. The Enlightenment and the French revolution were about the rights of the common man.

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