Freethought Almanac

Lighting a candle in toxic air.

November 23: Blaise Pascal's Conversion (1654)

It was on this date, November 23, 1654, that French mathematician and religious philosopher Blaise Pascal had his famous religious conversion. The story goes that on the proverbial dark and stormy night, while Pascal was riding in a carriage across the Neuilly bridge in the Paris suburb, a sudden fright caused the horses to bolt, sending them over the edge. Somehow, the carriage, bearing Pascal, was miraculously spared. If this was indeed the hand of God in Pascal’s life, it must be admitted that it was a little hard on the horses! And it is probably only coincidence that 109 years before Pascal’s traumatic event, and again 53 years before it, the painters Michelangelo (1545) and Caravaggio (1600) painted scenes using the medieval convention of representing pride as a falling horseman – in their respective paintings of the conversion of Saul to Saint Paul.

To read more, go to THIS LINK.

Originally published October 2003 by Ronald Bruce Meyer.

Ronald Bruce Meyer

Our Fearless Leader.


Daily Almanac

February 28: Michel de Montaigne

Montaigne was a Deist, but refrained from candor about his beliefs due to the mutual slaughter between Catholics and French Huguenots of the time. "It is setting a high value upon our opinions," he wrote, "to roast men and women alive on account of them."



Daily Almanac

Coming soon!

Follow me on twitter

@ 2020 Free Thought Almanac