 As with many philosophers of the modern period, Kant’s religious views are deeply influenced by the scientific picture of nature that took root in the wake of Copernicus. Most significant during the pre-Critical period are the ideas that the universe is a centerless, ceaselessly expanding, totality of things, which evolves towards ever greater perfection according to physical (Newtonian) and spiritual laws. Kant draws support for this view as well as inspiration for interpreting its religious significance from the writings of, among others, Alexander Pope (1688–1744), Thomas Wright (1711–1786), Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698–1759), Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) (see Kant’s important note on Newton and Rousseau justifying God and so proving Pope’s “theorem” that “Whatever is, is right” AK 20:58–59). Consequently, much of Kant’s thinking about God during this period is focused on framing a conception of God and of this being’s relation to nature that adequately takes into account this revised picture of the universe.