Anti-Christian Sentiment Quotes
In this document written in his later years, he virulently attacks the Jews in vicious and crude language. This is a very different Martin Luther than his earlier years. See {617772}
This particular quotation was very damaging to Christians of the era. Voltaire was almost universally regarded as the greatest mind of Europe at the time. He was consulted by powerful monarchs and others throughout Europe. He influenced major figures of the day like Catherine the Great. Voltaire did believe in God. See {621200}.
At the time, there were many people who were outraged and offended by the Evolutionary concept that man descended from “brute” animals. Cummings was one of the people who went public against those conservative elements of society who had so much difficulty with the Theory of Evolution.
Carlile was one of the heroes of freedom of the press. He was jailed frequently for publishing anti government or anti Church of England criticisms, as were his wife and sister. The government grew so desperate trying to censor his publications that they placed a high minimum price on the sale of all newspapers assuring that the average citizen could not afford to buy the “seditious and blasphemous material.” In addition to press freedom he was an early reformer for birth control, religious freedom, women's suffrage and rights (which he called for in the 1820s), and against child labor.
He was particularly distressed that Jefferson did not believe in the Biblical narrative of Noah and the Flood. Actually, this was the only Presidential race in American History where BOTH candidates, Adams and Jefferson, were not orthodox Christians and BOTH rejected literal interpretation of the Bible and even questioned the Trinity. Adams religious views were not as public as Jefferson’s and so many who voted against Jefferson because he was not a literal follower of the Bible, did not realize that Adams also was not and like Jefferson regarded the Trinity and the deification of Jesus as naive belief of unthinking people.