Okay, since I'm sitting here waiting for a fax to go through before I can leave, and since I'll be writing nothing of much substance today, I urge you all to go immediately to Positive Liberty and read this post about the reformation, the enlightenment and the fusing of tolerance with Christianity. Though it was prompted by a slightly misstated question I had asked in a previous post, I agree with it entirely, and I'll probably have more to add to the subject myself when I get the chance.
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I find the entire discussion fascinating. Back in my undergrad days, I took a class in Christian history. scroll down to 320 that was taught by an atheist that really opened my eyes on the struggle for freedom in Europe that led to the enlightenment.
The thing that really fascinates me is that just about all the great minds of the enlightenment would now be classified as fundamentalists. This isn't a knock on Newton et all, but it's a tribute to how far we've come.
I'm not sure I agree with you, Envoy.
Locke, Hume, Jefferson, Voltaire, Rousseau and Bayle would all be considered highly eccentric nonfundamentalists today, as would the atheist branch of the French Enlightenment, the people like La Mettrie and d'Holbach. Even Newton had some very unorthodox views, devout as he was.
A few of these people (Locke, Newton, and Bayle) were still creationists in one sense or another, but no workable alternative existed at the time, so I forgive them.