In the early 1500s, people began to question every belief they held and pursued the right to equality within society. The ideals regarding most of these issues would soon trigger an extraordinary transition. Throughout much of the eighteenth century many new concepts began to develop in the Americas. The forerunners, the French and British thinkers of the 17th century, who questioned, challenged, and disseminated justifications for different aspects of political and social existence, drastically influenced American thinkers. This perspective, the Enlightenment, consisted of the application of scientific rationality through investigations and experiments to social and political points of view. The Enlightenment's presence expanded to the American colonies through trade along the Atlantic. Violent religious wars throughout Europe were a major motivation behind the American Enlightenment. The central focus of this movement in America was centered on the implementation of reason to guide religion, authority, institutions, politics and conventions for the sole purpose of preventing events such as what occurred in European countries. Multiple postulations were popularized or shared by many different people throughout this movement, but the main aspects included religion versus science and the push for liberalism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original Essay Throughout this century, religion played a crucial role in how Americans lived within their societies, but another important perspective began to disperse across the Americas, science. Religion is mainly based on faith and a higher being while science is based on logic and logic. As this new perspective emerged, many American thinkers challenged and rebelled against the Church for using science in questioning the universe. Previous events mainly pushed and influenced this new change in America. Enlightenment thinkers around 1600 in Europe such as John Locke and Isaac Newton expressed their advocacy of religious tolerance and the employment of inquiry into different religious and worldly beliefs. John Locke believed that the basis of religious beliefs was explained by scientific evidence. Much analysis can be drawn from his treatise The Reasonableness of Christianity, but it may be noted that Locke thought “that it was faith itself that was imputed as righteousness, that justifying faith included works, that the new covenant was conditional, and that grace was primarily assistance, Locke had departed radically from Reformation Protestantism. The "works" are the laws of God. The other, Isaac Newton, discovered and revealed the law of gravitation, which keeps objects stationary in the universe. These influential ideals helped Americans, on the other side of the world, move toward different religious viewpoints: Arminianism and Deism. Arminianism is the belief that reason alone can form the basis of all significant aspects of religion. Identically, deism is the belief that scientific laws are the reasoning behind the world capable of functioning effectively on its own after God created it for the sole purpose of its absence. Deists believed that fundamental forces such as gravity, motion, matter, and light were evidence of the presence and product of God. They also deduced that instead of worshiping in a church for salvation, observe and focus on nature and about the spirits that work behind the phenomena of the natural world is.