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.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that human emotions and weaknesses have historically led to the creation and worship of deities.
Baron D'Holbach's quote reflects on the origins of religious beliefs, arguing that they stem from fundamental human emotions such as ignorance and fear. He posits that these emotions give birth to gods, while imagination and deception enhance their appeal, with societal customs and tyrannical powers maintaining their existence for personal gain, thus exploiting the blind faith of the masses.
In practice
In a discussion about the psychological origins of religion, one might use this quote to emphasize how fear influences belief.
Suns are extinguished or become corrupted, planets perish and scatter across the wastes of the sky; other suns are kindled, new planets formed to make their revolutions or describe new orbits, and man, an infinitely minute part of a globe which itself is only an imperceptible point in the immense whole, believes that the universe is made for himself.
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. 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.
Tolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes to religious fanaticism.
To discover the true principles of Morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods: They have need only of common sense.
We should realize in a vivid and revolutionary sense that we are not in our bodies but our bodies are in us.
Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.
What agent is there other than the Creator of the heavens and earth who can know whatever occurs in our heart, down to its most subtle and secret thoughts, and illuminate the future for us by establishing the Hereafter, saving us from the countless suffocating waves of the world?
I believe that very much of current Arminianism is simply ignorance of gospel doctrine; and if people began to study their Bibles, and to take the Word of God as they find it, they must inevitably, if believers, rise up to rejoice in the doctrines of grace.
When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?
Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.
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