The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 2Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Religion
The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 2
Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'
Materialism; Philosophy and religion; Psychology
Still more, as we have already observed, those persons have frequently
been accused of atheism, who have taken the greatest pains to establish
the existence of the gods, but who have not produced satisfactory
proofs: when their enemies wished to take advantage of them, it was easy
to make them pass for atheists, who had wickedly betrayed their cause,
by defending it too feebly. The theologians have frequently been very
highly incensed against those who believed they had discovered the most
forcible proof of the existence of their gods, because they were obliged
to discover that their adversaries could make very contrary inductions
from their propositions; they did not perceive that it was next to
impossible not to lay themselves open to attack, in establishing
principles visibly founded upon that which each man sees variously.
Thus Paschal says, "I have examined if this God, of whom all the world
speaks, might not have left some marks of himself. I look every where,
and every where I see nothing but obscurity. Nature offers one nothing,
that may not be a matter of doubt and inquietude. If I saw nothing in
nature which indicated a Divinity, I should determine with myself, to
believe nothing about it. If every where I saw the sign of a creator, I
should repose myself in peace, in the belief of one. But seeing too
much to deny, and too little to assure me of his existence, I am in a
situation that I lament, and in which I have an hundred times wished,
that if a God doth sustain nature, he would give unequivocal marks of
it, and that if the signs which he hath given be deceitful, that he
would suppress them entirely; that he said all or nothing, to the end
that I might see which side I ought to follow."
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