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Between the 1720’s and the 1760’s rise of the Enlightenment in America which mostly appealed to the more educated men and women from wealthier upper class of society like artiest and planter families which ever quite wealthy in that time period. Deism was on the rise being that it was based off the ideal that there is reason for everything that happens in the world. This was a huge controversy at that time because most religious afflictions’ only believed in God and that the higher power controls the universe, this would be a direct conflict towards deisms ideals.
This created a revolutionary way of looking the world and how it’s governed by forces other than a higher power, which lead to a vast amount of discoveries and ideals which still affects today. Colonies at first held strong to their religious values in spite of the deist way of thought or the scientific revolution. Which posed a threat to the religious communities with their many discovers and explanations’ on how the world works without the idea of it being an act of god.
It started in the 1530’s with a astronomer named Copernicus, first discovered that the earth traveled around the sun rather than the sun traveling around earth making it seem that our earth rather ordinary than we had seen it before. This opened a theory devised by Isaac Newton “Principia Mathematica”, which explained the movements of the planets around the sun. And so with Newton’s theories of gravity and the laws of motion together could explain how the universe works without God. Eventually Scientific reasoning came into play and discover about ourselves and our bodies.
Throughout the rise of deism there came the advances in four fundamental main beliefs: laws of the natural world which comply with how and why things are in the world, the reasoning that can go behind anything in order to understand how it functions in our world, and finally rights that every individual naturally has. This could be stretched to rights of self ??? government and the progressive development of society. Slowly but surely our understanding of our rights as humans’ beings in society comes to us from John Locke in the 1690’s.
A brilliant English professor who comes up with the idea that individuals in society have natural humanly rights such as life, liberty and property. And monarchs are not chosen by divine right through the passage of god but rather through agreements among individuals to cooperate for greater security ego a social compact. Also our right to form a government or change polices through a verdict of a majority. The rise of another deist comes in the 1700’s, Benjamin Franklin who believed that “God had created the world but allows it to operate in accordance with the laws of nature. , and that God is only a spectator in the world’s events never to interfere. And by rejecting the biblical ideals he came to the conclusion that “natural reason” or “inner moral sense” to choose between right and wrong. Both Benjamin and Thomas Jefferson held strong belief against slavery. Both questioned the morality of enslavement and found it unfair to be judge by racially would seem unethical. Benjamin later invented his famous lighting rod and the Franklin printer and his book on electricity in the year of 1751, which lead to the first publication about a nonreligious even in the colonies.
The deist ways of thought started a new way of thinking in the colonial life, this came over seas from the European Enlightenment. It brought a great American contribution for all who wanted live a life of peace in society ran by the people for the people. When religion no longer supported explanation for the worlds events society come up with a solution, that all are equal and that everything in this world happened behind a reason and “natural law” govern how the world is shaped today not by the acts of God.