The Insufficiency of Religion

Many authors included in this collection have negative opinions of Christianity and particularly the Catholic Church. These opinions range from completely hostile in the case of Voltaire to sympathetic but agnostic in the case of de Balzac. In "Micromegas," Voltaire satirizes religion by creating a universe filled with sentient creatures that are much larger and more intelligent than people on Earth. Yet the Catholic priest, even when confronted with a giant thousands of times larger than he is, claims, on the authority of his religion, that everything is made for man's sake. The wise giants laugh at the immense pride of such a claim. A similar kind of hostility is briefly displayed in "The Rope," one of the stories contained in Baudelaire's "The Spleen of Paris." In it, he likens Christian fascination with the Cross—the implement of Christ's execution—with the morbid...