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.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the concept of eternal punishment by questioning its morality and the nature of a punishing deity.
Baron D'Holbach's quote argues against the traditional view of a God who offers eternal punishment, suggesting that the moral implications are troubling. He believes that it is more rational to rely on the physical world rather than a divine being who sets traps for humanity while allowing sin and crime, only to punish individuals without any constructive outcome. This perspective challenges the idea of a just God and encourages a reevaluation of beliefs surrounding morality and punishment.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about religious beliefs and morality.
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.
Tolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes to religious fanaticism.
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.
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.
...In another time, What cannot be seen will define us, and we shall be prompted To say that language is error, and all things are wronged By representation. The self, we shall say, can never be Seen with a disguise, and never be seen without one.
Of all the classes of men, I dislike the most those who make their livings by talking - actors, clergymen, politicians, pedagogues, and so on. .... It is almost impossible to imagine a talker who sticks to the facts. Carried away by the sound of his own voice and the applause from the groundlings, he makes inevitably the jump from logic to mere rhetoric.
The essential thing is to etch movements in the sky, movements so still they leave no trace. The essential thing is simplicity. / That is why the long path to perfection is horizontal.
When I began my work on how morality varies across the political spectrum, there was a partisan, manipulative element to it. I wanted to help the Democrats win.
Which is it? Is man only a blunder of God? Or is God only a blunder of man?
The best pleasures of this world are not quite true.
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