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.
The accretion of dangerous power does not come in a day. It does come, however slowly, from the generative force of unchecked disregard of the restrictions that fence in even the most disinterested assertion of authority.
If facts, logic, and scientific procedures are all just arbitrarily "socially constructed" notions, then all that is left is consensus--more specifically peer consensus, the kind of consensus that matters to adolescents or to many among the intelligentsia.
That is the nature of endings, it seems. They never end. When all the missing pieces of your life are found, put together with glue of memory and reason, there are more pieces to be found.
In time you shall see Fate approach you In the shape of your own image in the mirror.
In the dime stores and bus stations, people talk of situations, read books, repeat quotations, draw conclusions on the wall.
Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist, I think you'll understand. Sometimes when I'm driving on the road at night I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The flames rising out of the flowing gasoline.
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