Intro to Humanism, Part 5: Enlightenment Precursors to Secular Humanism

The influence of materialism lead straight to the movement of political freedom and human equality espoused by the Democrats, supporters of democracy. In his book Freethought Across the Centuries, Gerald Larue describes Enlightenment thinkers' view of reason as "the key to understanding the universe" that could solve human problems. Since knowledge rested on reason, these thinkers argued that legitimate political and religious authority should rest on consent. Democrats such as Rousseau, Voltaire, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson opposed arbitrary authority and restraints on how we should think. They rejected the notion of humans having an evil nature. They also rejected the divine right of kings, as well as its related notion that some people were inherently superior to others. Like Humanists, the Democrats believed in humankind controlling its own destiny and that all humans should have equal rights.

Thomas Jefferson wrote:

"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand and hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change. . . institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

Francois Marie Arouet (1694-1778), better known by his pen name, Voltaire, was another prominent Democrat, as well as an Encylopedist and Philosophe. Voltaire demonstrated through his writings that the greatest advancements in knowledge and civilization took place during periods of the greatest freedom of thought. He was a Deist, and very critical of the clergy, so much so that he was exiled from France during much of his life.

Voltaire wrote in favor of international peace, human freedom, democracy, and human social progress. He used public opinion to reopen the case of an innocent Huguenot who was tortured to death for the "murder" of his son Mark Anthony Calas, who had actually committed suicide. Voltaire argued that the conviction was grounded in religious bigotry. Three years later the verdict was reversed and the man's children, who had been sent to live in a monestary, were set free. The case had undermined the belief in the divine right of the state.

In 1690 he wrote Two Treatise of Government" in

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