1. The Age of reason s

2. Essential Questions Why do we study historical documents?
What is self-evaluation and when is it helpful?
What constitutes an effective speech?
How has the revolutionary period and its literature shaped our nation?

3. The Age of Reason: Tinkerers and Experimenters
By the end of the 17th Century, new ideas began to emerge and the unshakable faith of the Puritans began to be challenged and questioned.
The Age of Reason, or the Enlightenment, began in Europe with the philosophers and scientists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that called themselves “rationalists.”

4. Rationalism
The belief that human beings can arrive at truth by using reason, rather than by relying on the authority of the past, on religious faith, or on intuition.
The rationalists saw God differently than the Puritans. They believed that God’s special gift to humanity was reason – the ability to think in an ordered and logical manner.
This gift of reason allowed people to discover both scientific and spiritual truth.

5. Rationalism and God
Like the Puritans, the rationalists discovered God through the natural world, but did so in a different way.
Rather than believing that God chose certain individuals to reveal himself to, rationalists believed that God made it possible for all people to discover natural laws through reason.

6. Deism: Are People Basically Good?
Deists avoided supporting specific religious groups.
Deists believed that the universe was orderly and good.
Stressed humanity’s goodness and the possibility of perfection through the use of reason.
God’s vision included the happiness of all individuals; therefore, doing good for others was considered religious work.

7. Self-Made Americans
The masterpiece of the Revolutionary era is Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography. Franklin took the Puritan impulse toward self-examination and molded it into the classic American rags-to-riches story – the triumph of the self-made person.
This story became the example many other Americans chose to follow.

8. The Rationalistic Worldview
People arrive at truth by using reason rather than by relying on the authority of the past, on religion, or on non-rational mental processes like intuition.
God created the universe but does not interfere in its workings.
The world operates according to God’s rules, and through the use of reason we can discover those rules.
People are basically good and perfectible.
Since God wants people to be happy, they worship God best by helping other people.
Human history is marked by progress toward a more perfect existence.

9. Works Cited
Arpin, Gary Q. “Beginnings.” Elements of Literature: Fifth Course. Eds. Kathleen Daniel, Richard Sime, Thomas F. Hirsch, and Patricia Cambridge. Austin: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, Print.