"If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him"

Denis Diderot's challenge encapsulates Enlightenment skepticism and a demand for empirical evidence over faith or tradition. He articulates a deep-seated need for direct, tangible experience as the criterion for belief. Rather than accepting religious doctrines or abstract theological assertions, he insists on personal, undeniable proof. This reflects a shift from age-old reliance on authority, in the form of scripture, clergy, or inherited dogma, toward a worldview rooted in observation and material reality.

Diderot’s words evoke the sense that faith alone, no matter how earnest or culturally ingrained, cannot suffice for rational conviction. The appeal is not merely to see, but to touch, underscoring a desire for physical, sensory verification that transcends the limitations of imagination or metaphor. Implicit within this demand is suspicion toward miracle stories or testimonies reported by others; it is a call for firsthand encounter rather than secondhand reports.

This perspective places belief within the same standards as scientific inquiry, where understanding is built on experimental confirmation and repeatable evidence. Diderot’s requirement for tangible contact with the divine positions religious claims alongside all other claims about the world: subject to skepticism, questioning, and provisional acceptance pending actual experience. Further, these words show a confrontation with the limitations of reason itself, expressing perhaps a frustration with the intangibility of spiritual reality, yet also a desire for clarity and certainty.

The phrase embodies the broader intellectual transformation of Diderot’s era, which sought to liberate thought from the confines of religious orthodoxy and deference to invisible forces. It is not a mere rejection of God, but rather a demand for the same rigor in matters of faith as in all other forms of knowledge. Diderot’s stance thus highlights the enduring tension between faith and reason, experience and belief, and the human longing for certainty in an uncertain world.