The Influence of Atheism in the Enlightenment

The Influence of Atheism on the Age of the Enlightenment While skepticism and doubt have had a presence in human thought for nearly as long as religious faith has existed, they have had a place within religious thought rather than in opposition to it for the vast majority of their existence. Doubt was generally employed by religious thinkers for the purpose of strengthening and explaining their faith, as can be seen in the numerous “proofs” for the existence of God formulated by the great theologians of the Middle Ages, such as Thomas Aquinas and Anselm of Canterbury. With the new science and philosophy of the Enlightenment, however, unbelief began to be seen as a viable alternative option that stood in opposition to faith. In addition to the popular deism of the Enlightenment, espoused by such important figures as Voltaire and Maximilien Robespierre, atheism also found its first explicit adherents among such figures of the French Enlightenment as Baron d'Holbach and Jacques André Naigeon. This new view of disbelief would have a major influence on subsequent generations of thinkers in the West as proponents of religion now had to contend with disbelief as a rival system of thought and many of the most influential philosophies, such as those of Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx, supported and often assumed this concept of disbelief. Among the numerous new concepts introduced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment, one of those which have had the longest lifespan and the greatest impact has been the introduction of disbelief as a viable alternative position to religious faith, Atheism.
One of the most central philosophical pursuits of the Middle Ages was the attempt to reconcile faith and reason. Medieval thinkers had inherited both the religious tradition of the ancient Middle East, which they saw as representative of faith, and the philosophical tradition of ancient Greece, which they saw as representative of reason. In their attempts to synthesize the two,