Chapter Three - Voltaire - The Firebreather

CHAPTER THREE

Voltaire - The Firebreather

VOLTAIRE MADE A career out of asking questions people weren’t supposed to ask.
He challenged monarchs, criticized the Church, defended the wrongly accused, and spent most of his life writing in exile or under threat.

Born François-Marie Arouet in 1694, he became one of the most influential voices of the Enlightenment. His work shaped the foundations of civil liberty, religious tolerance, and secular thought across Europe. And like others in this book, he eventually turned his attention to the Bible.

Voltaire wasn’t subtle about it.

He believed that scripture reflected the beliefs and prejudices of the people who wrote it, not the commands of a divine being. He was deeply skeptical of miracles, prophecy, and the supernatural claims of holy texts. And he was especially critical of how religion had been used to justify violence, censorship, and persecution.

He described the Old Testament as inconsistent and brutal, pointing to stories of conquest and divine punishment. He questioned how a perfect and all-knowing God could act with so much cruelty or contradiction.

But it wasn’t just the content that concerned him. It was the authority it carried.

Voltaire believed that blind reverence for scripture had allowed political and religious institutions to avoid scrutiny. That by placing the Bible beyond question, people had also placed those in power beyond accountability.

In many of his writings, he expressed frustration that ordinary people were discouraged from reading the Bible closely, or from thinking critically about what they found. He thought literacy and free inquiry were essential tools for protecting society from religious abuse.

He was particularly vocal during the case of Jean Calas, a Protestant man wrongly accused and executed for allegedly murdering his son to prevent a Catholic conversion. Voltaire investigated, exposed the injustice, and used the case as a public example of how religious intolerance could lead to deadly consequences.

His motto, repeated often, was Écrasez l’infâme: “Crush the infamous thing.”
He never defined it precisely. But most understood what he meant: superstition, dogma, and the misuse of religious power.

He didn’t call for the Bible to be banned.
He called for it to be read like any other book. Not with fear, but with reason.

When he died in 1778, some tried to claim he had repented and embraced the Church.
There’s no real evidence of that. What we do know is that religious authorities were reluctant to bury him in consecrated ground. His reputation as a critic of the Bible remained intact.

Voltaire didn’t write theology.
He wrote questions.

And he left behind a simple idea:
That no book, no matter how old or sacred, should be protected from critical thought.