Religion In Voltaire's Religions

The key religious sentiment within the Lettres, particularly the primary seven which revolve around religion, is religious tolerance from which emerges freedom, the embodiment of Voltaire’s presentation of the British way of life. However, it is clear that his ideas regarding religion are not firmly established and often appear to be contradictory actually founding one of his unequivocal attacks against the established church; that doubt breeds tolerance, and certainty breeds bigotry. This leaves plenty of scope for an ambiguous dissection of the plurality of the English religions.

For Voltaire, religion appears to be the basis of morality and morality the foundation of social stability. One of his compliments of the Quaker religion is that

Stating that ‘le bien commun de tous les hommes demande qu’on croie l’âme immortelle’ climaxes Voltaire’s notion that life on earth

Voltaire portrays the quintessence of religion as the ignorance of it – for example, his favourable presentation of the Stock Exchange emphasises the fact that the businessmen are indifferent to one another’s creed. He portrays it in such a way that religion is no longer simply irrelevant, but unimportant and trivial, apart from the overlooking of it being a common factor which can encourage social tolerance. The irony of Voltaire’s argument emerges in this instance, however; he desires to make anti-religious remarks, but to be left in peace while he does so, contradicting his own notion of religious tolerance. It is also contradictory in the sense that if religion has no influence on behaviour and should thus be ignored, it is unclear on what morality is founded upon. This gives way to Voltaire’s external exhibition of religion, as it appears that he associates rituals and rubrics with religion as opposed to the notion of faith and doctrine, which ironically, is what was widely perceived as the actual route to heaven. As demonstrated in his letter to Mr Locke, he believes religion to be diametrically separate from philosophy and therefore intellectuality as a whole, suggesting that he views religion more so as a way of keeping social order rather than an internal belief by which one can achieve