Lucretius demonstrated that all things and beings are but the combining, breakup, and recombining of atoms. Atomism is perfect for science, being simple and deterministic (Barzun). .
The philosophes attacked organized religion because it blocked human reason. Philosophes could displace God with Reason. Reason needs no faith. There are no mysteries, simply laws not yet discovered For the Philosophes, traditional religion was an obstacle to their agenda. They opposed priests or any traditional religious authorities and religious dogmas which people were asked to take on faith. For them, religion should be based on rationally accepted teachings on moral behavior. They drained mystery and the supernatural from Christianity. Their rational religion is called Deism, the idea that God created the universe like a master engineer and then left it to run on its own. Philosophes centered mainly in Paris, including Montesquieu, Voltaire and Rousseau. Locke argued in detail, mainly in writings associated with the Revolution of 1688 that certain rights self-evidently pertain to individuals as human beings, because they existed in the state of nature' before humankind entered civil society; that chief among them are the rights to life, liberty, freedom from arbitrary rule, and property; that, upon entering civil society human kind surrendered to the state only the rights to enforce these natural rights, not the rights themselves; and that the state's failure to secure these reserved natural rights. The state itself being under contract to safeguard the interests of its members gives rise to responsible, popular revolution (Columbia). .
The Philosophes, building on Locke and others and embracing many and varied currents of thought with a common supreme faith in reason, vigorously attacked religious and scientific dogmatism, intolerance, censorship, and social-economic restrains. They sought to discover, and act upon universally valid principles harmoniously governing nature, humanity, and society, including the theory of the inalienable Rights of Man' that became their fundamental ethical and social gospel (Columbia).
