Baron d'Holbach Quotes on God
Baron d'Holbach was among the most uncompromising atheist voices of the Enlightenment, and the quotes gathered here present his thoroughgoing case against religion. For d'Holbach belief in God has a natural, psychological origin rather than a divine one: ignorance and fear created the gods, and theology amounts to the ignorance of natural causes reduced to a system. He argued that human beings fashion deities in their own image, so that violent nations worship cruel and bloodthirsty gods, and he held that the idea of God is no part of human nature, since all children are born without it. Drawn from The System of Nature and Good Sense, both published anonymously, these passages set out the materialist conviction that human beings belong wholly to nature and that religion is a product of fear and ignorance; the most condensed formulations are marked as attributed.
Quotes
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Attributed to Baron d'Holbach:
“Theology is but the ignorance of natural causes reduced to a system.”
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Attributed to Baron d'Holbach:
“If we go back to the beginning, we shall always find that ignorance and fear created the gods.”
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Attributed to Baron d'Holbach:
“All errors are religious errors; all crimes are crimes of religion or against it.”
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“Good Sense without God, or, Freethoughts Opposed to Supernatural Ideas (London: W. Stewart & Co., ca. 1900) ( Project Gutenberg e-text ), preface”
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. -
“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.”
ibid. , preface -
“Pascal proves nothing in favour of Religion, unless that a man of genius may be foolish on some subjects, and is but a child, when he is weak enough to listen to his prejudices.”
ibid. , chap. 167 -
“the apostles, and especially their successors in the sacred ministry have, in preaching their gospel, brought on the world troubles and divisions unknown in all other preceding religions.”
Ecce Homo -
“All children are born Atheists; they have no idea of God.”
ibid. , chap. 30