In his day Voltaire was probably the most famous man in Europe,
as admired by multitudes as he was despised by the Catholic church
for his questioning of supposedly settled ecclesiastical doctrine.
He was the personification of reason in the age of that name, but
since
”
heresy
”
was illegal, his religious skepticism got him imprisoned
regularly.
In his day Voltaire was probably the most famous man in Europe, as admired by multitudes as he was despised by the Catholic church for his questioning of supposedly settled ecclesiastical doctrine. He was the personification of reason in the age of that name, but since “heresy” was illegal, his religious skepticism got him imprisoned regularly.
Today he remains a favorite target of modern evangelicals. The other day I chanced upon a Christian radio broadcast on which a preacher related a popular story about Voltaire’s last days, which he attempted to use as a cautionary tale.
Fearful of death, the preacher said, Voltaire offered his doctor half of all he owned in exchange for six more months of life. When the doctor could not comply, Voltaire cried in anguish: “Then I shall go to hell, and you will go with me!”
“He died as he had lived,” the preacher said. “Hard.” Let that be a lesson to you skeptics.
Only one problem: It never happened, at least not according to the physician, Dr. Burard, who attended Voltaire.
This preacher was repeating a debunked story about a man who famously refused to denounce the devil on his deathbed, saying it was “no time to be making enemies.”
The radio preacher’s manipulation of history got me thinking about how often “facts” are re-engineered in the service of doctrine – sometimes religious, other times political. In the Bush age, the two are often indistinguishable. Faith’s reliance on truths revealed by scripture, instead of facts such as a newspaper might gather, make it a tempting but dangerous foundation on which to build official policy.
Certainty based on faith – and discredited evidence – led George Bush to commit us to a disastrous war. But as Iraq has devolved into ever greater chaos, people have demanded truth of the fact-based, not gospel, variety. In response the president has launched a PR blitz to convince Americans – and Iraqis – that he has a plan for “victory,” whatever that now is. But Bush is struggling to find his footing in a more skeptical landscape, and it has caused a subtle shift in tone.
Gone are his references to his “gut” feelings. The “instincts” he once used to justify the invasion of Iraq to Sen. Joe Biden are no longer enough. For a man who once said that he prays “to be as good a messenger of [God’s] will as possible,” he is now sounding decidedly secular.
Maybe it was a fluke, or more likely it’s a Rovian calculation, but the word faith did not come up once during Bush’s hour-long press conference Tuesday.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Bush and the Republicans have suffered at the polls since the scales fell from the public’s eyes. As his poll numbers have dropped, I suspect the number of Americans who believe Bush to be an instrument of God has dropped correspondingly. It should come as no surprise that the most focus-group tested White House in history would mute its faith-based message in the hope of boosting Bush’s poll numbers.
Religious fervor not only has not diminished since Voltaire’s time, it has gotten out of control, and Americans may be beginning to see the danger. It is no small irony, for example, that the Muslim authorities of our ally, Afghanistan, have attempted recently to convict and execute a man, Abdul Rahman, for the “crime” of converting to Christianity.
Commentators on the Rahman case are asking: Is Islam compatible with Democracy? But in light of our own recent history, the better question might be: Is religious fundamentalism of any kind compatible?
For over five years this president, on the basis of faith, has abused Democracy, selling the public on absurdities such WMDs, American troops being greeted as liberators and “Mission Accomplished” while pursuing secret policies on torture, illegal domestic wiretapping, and “extraordinary rendition,” where suspects are rounded up and “disappeared” into an invisible gulag. But it’s an election year, and now Americans are judging Bush as much for his lack of questions as for his questionable answers.
And that, to come full circle, is why we need less Bible thumping and more Voltaire, who two-plus centuries later sounds like a Bush critic:
“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
“Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
