right well here's what i've done just now changed section heading modern philosophy to philosophical topics to move the article more in line with lac's proposal the text there still reads in a historical sort of way but that shouldn't distract the presentation of the broader themes and ideas presented a single paragraph in the philosophical topics section was transferred a section up into the historical section under the subheading modern western philosophy a bit of text in the rationalism empiricism subsection misleadingly implied that locke was a naturalist and hume the first empiricist this is obviously wrong so i changed it something problematic the sentence during this era religious philosophy did not play a large role in the struggles that occupied secular philosophy is either misleading assuming secular philosophy to mean not on the face of it pertaining to issues of god etc or trivially true assuming the same to mean completely non religious philosophy assuming the former and assuming we take this era to mean the modern era it counts as a counter example that descartes was completely religious that god was his one of his clear and distinct solutions to the dilemmas in the meditations locke's generally secular outlook on politics had great stake in religion the man thought atheists were not to be trusted and was at pains to advocate religious toleration on grounds that did not have to admit the fallibility of religion the more stark example of berkeley already mentioned in the text is an understatement it is not just his disputes with newton but rather absolutely anything that berkeley said which could not be divorced from his religious views including his theory of vision malebranche is another example it's my impression that there wasn't a genuine cooling off from appeals to religion until the late modern period so i recommend the sentence be scrapped