Synthesis Essay: The Role Of The Enlightenment In America

I’m not sure how Shawna can really say “the Enlightenment is a vastly overrated historical development” when the foundations of modern liberalism, representative government, and protection of civil liberties, were brought to light in the Enlightenment, through men like Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Beccaria. It had a huge impact on the whole world! The Enlightenment was a movement centered on the realization that the world “makes sense”; that science and rationalism can give us the truth, and the resources to create better lives. The point was to deal with the world’s hard realities, without sugar-coating things. It also opposed things like superstition, torture and unearned privilege. Although The American Revolution was a result of the Enlightenment, the Declaration of Independence was also born. Those ideas, as well as reason and science, have totally transformed our world, and made it what …show more content…
It is true that religious beliefs have been a source of conflict and caused a lot of people to lose their lives, and some religious prejudices still exist in our world today. But, it also seems that most nations have finally outgrown this, such as America. While many Americans take their religion pretty seriously, I don’t think people today would contemplate the idea of killing people with different religious beliefs than themselves. Obviously there are people that have extreme ideas like that, but I think it’s less common in our world today. If the idea of peace and respect has not yet been achieved by all, but we can hope that those stragglers will catch up, and grow up. It’s called being mature people! It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight, it will take work. I believe we have come a long way, and more positive ideas are spreading and being promoted, I believe that humanity is on the right path. We’ve made great strides and I feel we’ve greatly improved as a