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People have suffered and become insane for centuries by the thought of eternal punishment after death. Wouldn’t it be better to depend on blind matter… than a god who puts out traps for people, invites them to sin, and allows them to sin and commit crimes he could prevent.

Baron d'Holbach

Can theology give to the mind the ineffable boon of conceiving that which no man is in a capacity to comprehend? Can it procure to its agents the marvellous faculty of having precise ideas of a god composed of so many contradictory qualities?
BARON D'HOLBACH

Giving Ideas Men
All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance and ferocity.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Atheism Atheist Ignorance
The source of man’s unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Animal Ignorance Nature
If we go back to the beginnings of things, we shall always find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that imagination, rapture and deception embellished them; that weakness worships them; that custom spares them; and that tyranny favors them in order to profit from the blindness of men.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Atheist Ignorance Men
Nature, you say, is totally inexplicable without a God. That is to say, to explain what you understand very little, you have need of a cause which you understand not at all.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Atheism Atheist Religion
All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Atheist Children Ideas
It is very strange that men should deny a Creator and yet attribute to themselves the power of creating eels.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Creating Eels Men
Savage and furious nations, perpetually at war, adore, under diverse names, some God, conformable to their ideas, that is to say, cruel, carnivorous, selfish, blood-thirsty.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Blood Selfish War
Tolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes to religious fanaticism.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Atheism Religious Tolerance
The universe, that vast assemblage of every thing that exists, presents only matter and motion: the whole offers to our contemplation, nothing but an immense, an uninterrupted succession of causes and effects.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Causes Matter Science
The Jupiter of the Pagans is a lascivious monster. The Moloch of the Phoenicians is a cannibal. The pure mind of the Christians resolved, in order to appease his fury, to crucify his own son.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Christian Crucufy Jupiter Monster Phonecian Resolve
Only to finally get the barbarian pleasure to punish them in an excessive way, of no use for himself, without them changing their ways and without their example preventing others from committing crimes.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Examination Example Excessive Prevent Religious
The inward persuasion that we are free to do, or not to do a thing, is but a mere illusion. If we trace the true principle of our actions, we shall find, that they are always necessary consequences of our volitions and desires, which are never in our power.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Desire Independent Thinking
How could the human mind progress, while tormented with frightful phantoms, and guided by men, interested in perpetuating its ignorance and fears?
BARON D'HOLBACH

Ignorance Men Thinking
It is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Men Superstitions Vanity
Don’t say anything about this to anybody. Any one would say that I am trying to play the good-natured philosopher. I am neither benefactor nor philosopher, but just a human being, and my charities are the pleasantest expense I have on these journeys.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Anything Journey Play Say

People have suffered and become insane for centuries by the thought of eternal punishment after death. Wouldn’t it be better to depend on blind matter… than a god who puts out traps for people, invites them to sin, and allows them to sin and commit crimes he could prevent.

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People have suffered and become insane for centuries by the thought of eternal punishment after death. Wouldn’t it be better to depend on blind matter… than a god who puts out traps for people, invites them to sin, and allows them to sin and commit crimes he could prevent.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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