Back in the 16th and 17th centuries you couldn't do that either...
Really?
Which of the following criticized the Bible, and how many of those were executed or assassinated for their criticism?
Thomas Abbt (1738–1766) German. would later be called Nationalism in Vom Tode für's Vaterland (On dying for one's nation).
Jean le Rond d'Alembert (1717–1783) French. Mathematician and physicist, one of the editors of Encyclopédie.
Balthasar Bekker (1634–1698) Dutch, a key figure in the Early Enlightenment. In his book De Philosophia
Cartesiana (1668) Bekker argued that theology and philosophy each had their separate terrain and that Nature can no more be explained from Scripture than can theological truth be deduced from Nature.
Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) French. Literary critic known for Nouvelles de la république des lettres and Dictionnaire historique et critique, and one of the earliest influences on the Enlightenment thinkers to advocate tolerance between the difference religious beliefs.
Justus Henning Boehmer (1674–1749), German ecclesiastical jurist, one of the first reformer of the church law and the civil law which was basis for further reforms and maintained until the 20th century.
James Boswell (1740–1795) Scottish. Biographer of Samuel Johnson, helped established the norms for writing Biography in general.
G.L. Buffon (1707–1788) French. Author of L'Histoire Naturelle who considered Natural Selection and the similarities between humans and apes.
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Irish. Parliamentarian and political philosopher, best known for pragmatism, considered important to both liberal and conservative thinking.
James Burnett Lord Monboddo (1714–1799) Scottish. Philosopher, jurist, pre-evolutionary thinker and contributor to linguistic evolution. See Scottish Enlightenment
Dimitrie Cantemir (1673-1723) Romanian. Philosopher, historian, composer, musicologist, linguist, ethnographer, and geographer. He was a member of the Royal Academy of Berlin.
Marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794) French. Philosopher, mathematician, and early political scientist who devised the concept of a Condorcet method.
José Celestino Mutis (1755–1808), Spanish botanist and mathematician, lead the first botanic expeditions to South America, and built a major collection of plants.
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French. Founder of the Encyclopédie, speculated on free will and attachment to material objects, contributed to the theory of literature.
Joseph-Alexandre-Victor Hupay de Fuveau,(1746–1818), writer and philosopher who had used for the first time in 1785 the word "communism" in a doctrinal sense.
Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English. Historian best known for his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) English philosopher, who wrote Leviathan, a key text in political philosophy.
Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) French. Author, encyclopaedist and Europe's first outspoken atheist.
Robert Hooke (1635–1703) English, probably the leading experimenter of his age, Curator of Experiments for the Royal Society.
David Hume (1711–1776) Scottish. Historian, philosopher and economist. Best known for his empiricism and scientific scepticism, advanced doctrines of naturalism and material causes. Influenced Kant and Adam Smith.
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (1744–1811), Main figure of the Spanish Enlightenment. Preeminent statesman.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German. Philosopher and physicist. Established critical philosophy on a systematic basis, proposed a material theory for the origin of the solar system, wrote on ethics and morals. Prescribed a politics of Enlightenment in What is Enlightenment? (1784).
Hugo Kołłątaj (1750–1812) Polish. He was active in the Commission for National Education and the Society for Elementary Textbooks, and reformed the Kraków Academy, of which he was rector in 1783–86.
Ignacy Krasicki (1735–1801): Polish. Leading poet of the Polish Enlightenment, hailed by contemporaries as "the Prince of Poets."
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) German. Dramatist, critic, political philosopher.
Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of Binomial nomenclature.
John Locke (1632–1704) English Philosopher.
Sebastião de Melo, Marquis of Pombal (1699–1782) Portuguese statesman notable for his swift and competent leadership in the aftermath of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake.
Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro (1676–1764) Spanish, was the most prominent promoter of the critical empiricist attitude at the dawn of the Spanish Enlightenment. See also the Portuguese Martín Sarmiento.
Montesquieu (1689–1755) French political thinker. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, taken for granted in modern discussions of government and implemented in many constitutions all over the world.
Leandro Fernández de Moratín (1760–1828) Spanish. Dramatist and translator, support of republicanism and free thinking. Transitional figure to Romanticism.
Nikolay Novikov (1744–1818) Russian. Philanthropist and journalist who sought to raise the culture of Russian readers and publicly argued with the Empress.
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English/American. Pamphleteer, Deist, and polemicist, most famous for Common Sense attacking England's domination of the colonies in America.
Francois Quesney (1694–1774) French economist of the Physiocratic school. He also practiced surgery.
Thomas Reid (1710–1796) Scottish. Presbyterian minister and Philosopher. Contributed greatly to the idea of Common-Sense philosophy and was Hume's most famous contemporary critic.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Swiss political philosopher. Argued that the basis of morality was conscience, rather than reason, as most other philosophers argued.
Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish economist and philosopher.
Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch, philosopher who is considered to have laid the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment.
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) Natural philosopher and theologian whose search for the operation of the soul in the body led him to construct a detailed metaphysical model for spiritual-natural causation.
François-Marie Arouet (pen name Voltaire) (1694–1778) French Enlightenment writer, essayist, deist and philosopher. He wrote several books, the most famous of which is Dictionnaire Philosophique, in which he argued that organized religion is pernicious. He was the Enlightenment's most vigorous antireligious polemicist, as well as being a highly well known advocate of intellectual freedom.
Adam Weishaupt (1748–1830) German who founded the Order of the Illuminati.
John Wilkes
Christian Wolff (1679–1754) "German"
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) British writer, philosopher, and feminist.
