Voltaire's Fear of Fossil Record

Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers,....For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished...
2 Peter 3:3,5,6

"Following news of the discovery of fossilized fish in the Alps, such as pikefish and turbot, and other fossilized creatures in the Middle East, Voltaire went to great lengths to deny that they were real fossils or that they were attributable to the Flood or a receding ocean. Instead, he asserted that

“… it is much more natural to suppose, that these fish had been brought thither by some traveller, who, finding them spoiled, threw them away, and, in process of time, they became petrified … .”

Voltaire seemed to reject the evidence that tongue stones Glossoptera were the teeth of ancient sharks (fish-dogs), or that ammonites were in some way similar to the nautilus. He wrote that it was a mystery that philosophers did not accept that ammonites were produced naturally in the earth, or that they were remains of coiled eels or snakes. And he rejected Réaumur’s studies of the shell-rich layers of Tours, arguing that the fossils could almost be seen to ‘vegetate’ if watched for long enough.

Buffon mocked these assertions, ironically in a manner typical of Voltaire, suggesting that he should have added that travelling monkeys might have dropped sea shells on European mountains.

“… why has he not added that it was monkies who transported the shells to the tops of these mountains, which were never inhabited by men? This would not have spoiled but rendered his explanation still more probable.”

Andrew Dixon White commented that Voltaire used “wisdom and wit” to support his deistic faith and this drove him to oppose the geological investigations of his time.

“Voltaire’s system was opposed to that of the sacred books of the Hebrews; and, fearing that … new discoveries [of marine fossils found at elevation in Europe might be used to support the Mosaic accounts of the Deluge, all his wisdom and wit were compacted into arguments to prove that the fossil fishes were remains of fishes intended for food, but spoiled and thrown away by travellers; that the fossil shells were accidentally dropped by crusaders and pilgrims returning from the Holy Land; and that the fossil bones found between Paris and Étampes were parts of a skeleton belonging to the cabinet of some ancient philosopher.” CMI