The Wisdom Of Voltaire's "Crush the infamous thing" and our age of tragic regression
Nov 7, 2025
Explore Voltaire's fight against dogma and superstition, highlighting his call to 'Crush the Infamous Thing.' Delve into the Church's historical power and its impact on free thought and morality. Discuss how modern authoritarianism, science denial, and conspiracy theories echo past abuses. Discover Voltaire's emphasis on empirical reason and how he might view today's conspiratorial trends. Finally, hear a passionate call to defend reason, truth, and democracy in our contemporary world.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Voltaire's Target: Superstition and Clerical Power
- Voltaire's slogan "crush the infamous thing" targeted dogma, clerical power, and superstition as drivers of persecution and injustice.
- He argued superstition replaces reason with fear and enables atrocities by corrupting morality.
Superstition As Control; Philosophy As Remedy
- Voltaire saw superstition as a form of social control that manipulates people via threats like hellfire.
- He promoted reason and philosophy as remedies, saying "Superstition sets the whole world aflame, but philosophy extinguishes it."
Deism, Not Atheism: Reason Over Dogma
- Voltaire was a deist who opposed clerical tyranny, not faith itself, separating belief from authoritarian religion.
- He admired Galileo and Newton for using empirical reason to free minds from superstition.