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. Many intellectuals, who found that the doctrines of orthodox religion offended their reason, turned to 'natural' religions founded on the belief of a Deity as evidenced by nature, which the rational man could observe and study for himself.
The central feature of the Enlightenment is its questioning of social tradition and established order found within society, its heritage, principles and values. The Enlightenment placed as its foundational principles, firstly, the belief in the capacity of human reason to gain knowledge independent of any revealed truth (i.e.
English: Thomas Hobbes Македонски: То...
English: Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
Graeme Garrard traces the origin of the Counter-En...religion), secondly, the autonomy of the individual and thirdly, the belief in the human capacity and indeed its obligation to shape the future of society. None of these points are incompatible with established religion, indeed much of Enlightenment thought was directed at harmonising revealed truth (i.e. scripture) with rational knowledge. They are incompatible, however, with the idea that the only source of truth and knowledge comes through divinely inspired scripture . The Enlightenment was opposed therefore to the idea of Religion having exclusive access to truth. Many Enlightenment thinkers saw the two streams of knowledge, both religious and secular as being separate and independent from each other. This belief ushered in the new age of secularism .
The conception of the separation of the Church and the Secular was in many ways conceived in the earlier development of Absolutist monarchies.