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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

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

Atheism Religious Tolerance
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
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
If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Atheist Ignorance Knowledge
Men always fool themselves when they give up experience for systems born of the imagination.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Giving Nature Science Up
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

Atheist Common Men Sense
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Atheist Children Ideas
If the ministers of the Church have often permitted nations to revolt for Heaven’s cause, they never allowed them to revolt against real evils or known violencess. It is from Heaven that the chains have come to fetter the minds of mortals.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Evil Heaven Real
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
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
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
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
The unhappiness of people is due to their ignorance of nature.
BARON D'HOLBACH

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

Men Superstitions Vanity
The savage god of the Mexicans cannot be satisfied without thousands of mortals which are immolated to his sanguinary appetite.
BARON D'HOLBACH

Appetite God Immortaed Sanguinary Savage Thousand

The atheist . . . destroys the chimeras which afflict the human race, and so leads men back to nature, to experience and to reason.

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The atheist . . . destroys the chimeras which afflict the human race, and so leads men back to nature, to experience and to reason.

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