Hmm …

… 'Nature's God' explores 'heretical origins' of religion in U.S. — Los Angeles Times.

… the more circumspect John Locke (careful to mask his iconoclasm with boilerplate declarations of conventional piety) ended up praised by historians as "the single greatest intellectual influence on America's revolutionaries."

But consider this, from Edward Feser's recent review of Anthony Pagden's The Enlightenment: And Why It Still Matters:

John Locke, critic of Scholasticism and hero of the Enlightenment, gave his doctrine of rights an explicitly theological basis. For Locke, human beings have a right not to be killed or enslaved only because they are God’s “workmanship,” and thus his “property” and his “servants… sent into the world by his order, and about his business.” It is, strictly speaking, God’s rights as our maker and owner that are violated when we harm each other. Say what you will about such a view, it is hardly an advance for the kind of multicultural, secular political morality Pagden celebrates.

But back to the article at hand:

As Copernicus and Galileo learned, discovering natural laws that contradicted Catholic dogma was a risky business …

This would be news to Copernicus, who published his book at the insistence of his religious superior.



The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making any law establishing religion — because several states at the time had established churches. This is a pretty ignorant review.