Questions sur les Miracles

Questions sur les Miracles, also known as Lettres sur les Miracles (Questions/Letters on miracles), is a series of pamphlets published by the French philosopher and author Voltaire. In these pamphlets Voltaire expresses many themes, including primarily his arguments against other recent pamphlets that had discussed religious miracles. Voltaire, in his responses found it ridiculous that God would occasionally violate natural laws for a particular reason. Voltaire's first pamphlet was published in July 1765, and during the course of that year, he published nineteen more. The pamphlets were published anonymously, and signed pseudonymously. Questions sur les Miracles starts with theological questions, but moves on to repeat some of the defences of democracy and free expression that Voltaire had proposed in his earlier Idées républicaines: "Let us uphold the liberty of the press, it is the basis of all other liberties; through it we enlighten each other." A number of the letters satirically express Voltaire's criticisms of the English biologist John Needham who had promoted the idea of spontaneous generation, of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and of the authorities at Geneva who had resisted greater democracy. Voltaire uses irony and sarcasm to convey his sceptical opinion on miracles; one letter poses that miracles are authentic and, with exaggerated optimism, hopes that priests will manifest them. "We even hope that not only will these learned men work miracles, but that they will hang all those who do not believe in them. Amen!" Voltaire thought that the miracles of Jesus should be seen as moral lessons rather than real events. Needham was in Geneva in 1765 when he ran across Voltaire's anonymously written pamphlets, which Voltaire began as responses to Protestant pastor David Claparède's 1765 pamphlet Considérations sur les miracles. Claparède's publication was a reply to Rousseau's 1764 pamphlet Lettres écrites de la Montagne. All these publications considered religious miracles—if they were possible and what they meant.