Lehigh Valley Conservative

If you want to argue timing and who was saying what first we could go to Jesus Christ 1st. century but I won’t. 
Let’s just start with guys like Jon Hus (1374-1415) He was burned at the stake for defending man’s rights as they came from God.  He taught that rights came from God and His Bible and not from the Pope or having rights come from the church.  
Or John Wyclif (1329-84) Who translate the Bible into English and believed all men should be free to read the Bible, his “Lollards” (burnt at the stake) were linked to political unrest.
Then we have Martin Luther (1483-1546) the great German reformer and his “95 theses”.
Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560), Huldreich Zwingli (1438-1531), John Calvin (1509-1564)  Calvin’s writing (The Institutes of the Christian Religion Circa 1534 )are said to have done more for man’s rights and freedoms then any of the man and their writings that came out of that period (1500’s).  And I have not mentioned any of the great Puritan writers of that early time period.  (Lex, Rex The Law and the Prince–Rutherford) or (Treatise of Conscience—Perkins)  

Out of this Reformation movement came all the doctrinal positioning the enlighten thinkers pick-up on and did two things, they replaced God with natural law and then put man and his reasoning in front of nature.  You saw that big time in France with Rousseau (1796+/-). 

Let me just cut to the quick of the discussion, if you don’t believe there is a God or a need for Jesus Christ as your savior, of course you will replace God and Christ with Man and Reason along with enlightenment thinking, it is that simple and just tell me that is what you have done and I’ll understand.  But don’t tell me it is who is first in putting forth the correct belief system as effecting man, for what you said is just not true.  The enlightenment thinking was not original thinking but a re-framing of thought without God and placing man in the forefront before God.  If you replace man’s rights as coming from God you must have them come from man as himself and I can assure you, there will be men that think they have the right to believe those rights are theirs and dictate rules as they see them.  I think they had called that the Divine Rights of Kings and you will have come full circle.  King Obama sounds scary, doesn’t it?  Pray God doesn’t let that happen.

We Shall See and shortly if we need God and his Christ first or Man and his Reasoning first.