Superstition And Religion In Voltaire's 'Candide'

“Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.” Voltaire, a prominent philosopher and a critic of the Catholic Church during the Enlightenment, wrote the novel Candide. Candide is an adventure story of Candide, who is at limited to the teachings of his optimistic mentor Pangloss. Pangloss states, “‘It is clear that things cannot be otherwise than they are, for since everything is made to serve an end, everything necessarily serves the best end . . . Consequently, those who say everything is well are uttering mere stupidities; they should say everything is for the best’”. His philosophy of “the best of all possible worlds” means that all events
He becomes an eyewitness of the dreadful executions instructed by the Catholic Church and the states upholding Christianity. Catholic powers savagely execute and limit people to their own ideas, and priests who were supposed to be celibates seek for sexual bribery form females. Prostitutes are also seen to be serving the clergy and the friars of the Catholic Church. Paquette, a prostitute reveals that she had been serving the friars and the authorities due to their will. "Ah! sir," answered Paquette, "this is one of the miseries of the trade. Yesterday I was robbed and beaten by an officer; yet to-day I must put on good humor to please a friar." Influenced by the ideas of the Reformation and as an attacker of the Catholic Church, Voltaire does not believe in the existence of God and mocks the worldly idea that the world has to be absolutely good. He satires the corrupt world through the sinful actions of the church
After being expelled from the castle in Westphalia, Candide meets the Bulgars and he is inhumanely punished with no apparent reason; “He had gone through two floggings, and the regiment being composed of 2,000 men, that made for him exactly 4,000 strokes, which lay bare all his muscles and nerves form the nap of his neck to his rump”. If this was happening for the best of the world, what was the good reason for it? Not only does Candide experience numerous struggles himself, but he struggles to see his mentor being tortured, and hears that Cunegonde was killed. He also encounters a shipwreck and two great earthquakes that take away the life of innocent people. “They felt the earth tremble under their feet, and the sea, swelling and foaming in the harbour … The houses tottered, and were tumbled, even to their foundations, which were themselves destroyed; and thirty thousand inhabitants of both sexes, young and old, were buried beneath the ruins”. Voltaire criticizes the idea that everything happens for the best, because these terrible incidents took the lives of many people and made them go suffer. Voltaire gradually challenges Candide’s optimistic view of the world just like the Enlightenment thinkers during Voltaire’s age. He depicts the indifferentness and the cruelty of the world through the immoral and violent