Socrates And Voltaire: Relationship Between Reasoning And Religion

Socrates and Voltaire seem to both share the idea that there could be a supreme being in the universe, but they differed on opinion for the relationship between reasoning and religion. Socrates, though not outright denying the existence of the gods, believed that a concept cannot be true if it cannot have definite proof. His belief– infamously known as the Socratic method–was that man’s interpretation of religion could be dangerous to follow blindly due to the numerous contradictions attached. He revealed such contradictions through a cross examination after somebody explained their stance on the argument, but religion was a debate that Socrates could never find an absolute answer for. For instance, when having a discussion with Euthyphro about the meaning of piety, Socrates seems to indirectly mock the absurdity of Euthyphro's blind faith; since he could not give a straightforward answer: “If you had not certainly known the nature of piety and impiety, I am confident that you would never, on behalf of a serf, have charged your aged father with murder.
Socrates believes that–unlike the word of the Law of Athens–the word of the gods are not coherent due to the fact that every god has a different mindset: “They have differences of opinion, as you say, about good and evil, just and unjust, honourable and dishonourable: there would have been no quarrels among them, if there had been no such differences—would there now?” (Euthyphro 8). The unusual aspect of Socrates’ viewpoint was that he never attempted to actually come up with an answer for explaining religion, rather he analyzed the beliefs of others and expected them to come up with the solution on their own