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These principles, universally recognized, are at fault when the question of the existence of God is considered; what has been said of Him is either unintelligible or perfectly contradictory; and for this reason must appear impossible to every man.

Baron d'Holbach

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
You think yourself free, because you do what you will; but are you free to will, or not to will; to desire, or not to desire? Are not your volitions and desires necessarily excited by objects or qualities totally independent of you?
BARON D'HOLBACH

Desire Free Think Volition
Tolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes to religious fanaticism.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Atheism Religious Tolerance
Men always fool themselves when they give up experience for systems born of the imagination.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Giving Nature Science Up
All religious notions are uniformly founded on authority; all the religions of the world forbid examination, and are not disposed that men should reason upon them.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Men Religious World
In Nature nothing; is mean or contemptible, and it is only pride, originating in a false idea of our superiority, which causes our contempt for some of her productions. In the eyes of Nature, however, the oyster that vegetates at the bottom of the sea is as dear and perfect as the proud biped who devours it.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Eye Mean Pride
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
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 only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of religion that we shall discover truth, reason and morality.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Atheist Inspirational Life
The atheist . . . destroys the chimeras which afflict the human race, and so leads men back to nature, to experience and to reason.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Atheist Men Race
The unhappiness of people is due to their ignorance of nature.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Ignorance Nature People
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

Death People Punishment
The source of man’s unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature.
BARON D'HOLBACH

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

Men Superstitions Vanity
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
When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon, than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths, or to reject absurdities, and palpable contradictions.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Common Sense Men Opinion

These principles, universally recognized, are at fault when the question of the existence of God is considered; what has been said of Him is either unintelligible or perfectly contradictory; and for this reason must appear impossible to every man.

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These principles, universally recognized, are at fault when the question of the existence of God is considered; what has been said of Him is either unintelligible or perfectly contradictory; and for this reason must appear impossible to every man.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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