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Au XVIe siècle le rationalisme religieux a jeté les bases de l'athéisme moderne. On peut observer, par exemple, des correspondances entre la Disputatio de incertitudine religionis Christianae (écrite vers 1589) du socinien Christian Francken et certains sujets du texte anonyme De tribus impostoribus, imprimé à Vienne en 1753. Les deux ont des sources communes (Sextus Empiricus et Pomponazzi), affirment que les religions sont des inventions humaines, et montrent la faiblesse de leurs fondements., In the sixteenth century, religious rationalism laid the foundations of modern atheism. For example, a correspondence can be seen between Disputatio de incertitudine religionis Christianae (written around 1589) by the Socinian Christian Francken and certain themes in the anonymous work De tribus impostoribus, printed in Vienna in 1753. Both share common sources (Sextus Empiricus and Pomponazzi), affirm that religions are human inventions, and demonstrate the weakness of their foundations.

Christian Francken criticized the argument ʻConsensus gentiumʼ for the first time in Breve Colloquium Iesuiticum (1579), claiming that the similarity between the Christian rituals and Eastern ones was due to the human origin of both. The need for an unquestionable criterion of truth drove him later to discover the ancient skepticism, and in Disputatio […] de incertitudine religionis Christianae (1593) Francken denied that ʻConsensus gentiumʼ could be an evidence for the existence of God. François de La Mothe Le Vayer in the Dialogues faits à l’imitation des anciens (1630-33) dealt with similar topics. He showed the inadequacy of dogmatism and the necessity of skepticism, faced with the endless variety of customs and religions in the world. This is only one example of ideas spreading from the theological debates of the Radical Reformation to the thought of Libertines, until the Enlightenment., Philosophica