Faith vs. Reason

The earthquake became a turning point in European thought. For centuries, disasters were explained as God's punishment. But Lisbon was one of Europe's most devout cities, destroyed during Mass on a holy day. How could that be justice?

Voltaire wrote his Poem on the Lisbon Disaster, attacking the idea that all suffering serves a higher good; Rousseau wrote back to defend it. The debate spread across Enlightenment salons and planted the seed of secular disaster science — the view that natural events deserve natural explanations rather than divine ones.