"Most Enlightenment Thinkers Were Christians"

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Quoted from an Andrew also nicknamed "Big Papa Fascist" ...

Some of the major figures of the Enlightenment included Cesare Beccaria, Denis Diderot, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Hugo Grotius, and Voltaire.

Let's take the list.

Cesare Beccaria,

believed in preferring long and drawn out humiliation over death penalty in peace time, and death penalty for potential figureheads of counter-revolutions in the case of being in a revolutionary situation—both of which principles were applied in the same order when Robespierre failed in abolishing death penalty and succeeded in getting King Lewis XVI and the Queen Marie Antoinette to the Guillotine. But what about his beliefs?

In his mid-twenties, Beccaria became close friends with Pietro and Alessandro Verri, two brothers who with a number of other young men from the Milan aristocracy, formed a literary society named "L'Accademia dei pugni" (the Academy of Fists), a playful name which made fun of the stuffy academies that proliferated in Italy and also hinted that relaxed conversations which took place in there sometimes ended in affrays. Much of its discussion focused on reforming the criminal justice system. Through this group Beccaria became acquainted with French and British political philosophers, such as Diderot, Helvétius, Montesquieu, and Hume. He was particularly influenced by Helvétius.

1/9 Non-Christian.

Denis Diderot,

was a notorious Atheist and materialist, like Helvétius. In ethics, he was promoting the attack on chastity.

2/9 Non-Christians.

David Hume,

claimed that miracles could never be verified, since any non-miraculous explanation would be more likely (any—no matter how unlikely, let that sink in).

3/9 Non-Christians.

Immanuel Kant,

apart from being influenced by Hume, claimed that the numinous was never incarnated in the phenomenal. A pretty direct rejection of the incarnation, and obviously of miracles. He contributed very much to the kind of not very Christian Protestantism which was the major religious support of Hitler, even before the NS religion itself.

4/9 Non-Christians.

Montesquieu,

was a Catholic living in a mixed marriage, and was buried in St. Sulpice. But his ideas on society sound more deterministics than actually Christian (he had Huguenot ancestry).

Another example of Montesquieu's anthropological thinking, outlined in The Spirit of Law and hinted at in Persian Letters, is his meteorological climate theory, which holds that climate may substantially influence the nature of man and his society, a theory also promoted by the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. By placing an emphasis on environmental influences as a material condition of life, Montesquieu prefigured modern anthropology's concern with the impact of material conditions, such as available energy sources, organized production systems, and technologies, on the growth of complex socio-cultural systems.

He goes so far as to assert that certain climates are more favorable than others, the temperate climate of France being ideal. His view is that people living in very warm countries are "too hot-tempered", while those in northern countries are "icy" or "stiff". The climate of middle Europe is therefore optimal. On this point, Montesquieu may well have been influenced by a similar pronouncement in The Histories of Herodotus, where he makes a distinction between the "ideal" temperate climate of Greece as opposed to the overly cold climate of Scythia and the overly warm climate of Egypt. This was a common belief at the time, and can also be found within the medical writings of Herodotus' times, including the "On Airs, Waters, Places" of the Hippocratic corpus. One can find a similar statement in Germania by Tacitus, one of Montesquieu's favorite authors.

It is however not a specifically Christian belief, Herodotus and Hippocrates not being Christians, nor was Tacitus.

1/9 Christian.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau,

was a man who went back and forth between Catholicism and Protestantism. But yes, he was a Christian. Even if he was personally more interested in his love life.

2/9 Christians.

Adam Smith,

According to wiki, this is very debatable and indeed unknown.

1/9 ???

Hugo Grotius,

Definitely a Christian, but chronologically before the other "Enlightenment Thinkers" ... I would tend to place Grotius, Pascal, Décartes in the category of "Pre-Enlightenment" as much as I place Rousseau in the category of "Pre-Romanticism" ... but yes, if you include the Pre-Enlightenment, which apart from Grotius was not done on the list, then suddenly a majority are Christians.

3/9 Christians.

and Voltaire

Deist, anti-Catholic, anti-Christian.

5/9 Non-Christians.

As said, I make a difference between Enlightenment and Pre-Enlightenment. I would put the limit in Isaac Newton. Funny enough, for wikipedians who seem to make the same distinction, they included Hugo Grotius into Enlightenment rather than Pre-Enlightenment.

The Age of Enlightenment was preceded by and closely associated with the Scientific Revolution.[16] Earlier philosophers whose work influenced the Enlightenment included Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, Pierre Bayle, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.[17][18] Some of the major figures of the Enlightenment included Cesare Beccaria, Denis Diderot, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Hugo Grotius, and Voltaire.[19]

Age of Enlightenment
a linea Important intellectuals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment#Important_intellectuals

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Dedication of St. Peter's
18.XI.2023