Fanaticism Disallows Decency

This quotation from John Morley's Voltaire describes Voltaire's hatred of the Catholic Church of his time and his mission to undermine its power and influence. Of course, today's Catholic Church cannot be painted with this brush, no matter how much the modern crop of "secular moralists" would like to persuade us otherwise!

It is universal wisdom, as applicable to Islam today as Voltaire believed it to be applicable to the Church in his day.

"Voltaire no doubt deliberately set himself to overthrow the Catholic theology, as well as the ecclesiastical system which was bound up with it, and he did so for the very sufficient reason that it has always been impossible for men to become indulgent in act, while they remained fanatical in belief. They will not cease to be persecutors, he said, until they have ceased to be absurd.

The object was to secure tolerance, and tolerance could only be expected as the product of indifference, and indifference could be spread most surely by throwing the fullest light of reason and common sense on the mystical foundations of revealed religion. To stop short at the inculcation of charity and indulgence was to surrender the cause; for how should the mere homilies of a secular moralist soften those whom the direct injunctions of a deity and his inspired apostles, their own acknowledged masters, failed to make charitable?

It was essential that the superstitions in which intolerance had its root should be proved detestable and ridiculous. When men had learned to laugh at superstition, then they would perceive how abominable is the oppressive fanaticism which is its champion."

The Gunslinger