Atheism, we are told, breaks all social ties. Without belief in God, what becomes of the sacredness of the oath?
Jean Meslier
Monday Meslier: 193 – It Is Not True That Atheism Sunders All The Ties of Society
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Atheism, we are told, breaks all social ties. Without belief in God, what becomes of the sacredness of the oath?
Jean Meslier
Negligent, ambitious, and perverse princes are the real causes of public adversities, of useless and unjust wars continually
Jean Meslier
depopulating the earth, of greedy and despotic governments, destroying the benefactions of nature for men. The rapacity of the courts discourages agriculture, blots out industry, causes famine, contagion, misery; Heaven is neither cruel nor favorable to the wishes of the people; it is their haughty chiefs, who always have a heart of brass.
Jean Meslier
From the most remote period theology alone regulated the march of philosophy. What aid has it lent it?
… IT FORMS BUT LICENTIOUS AND PERVERSE DESPOTS, AS WELL AS ABJECT AND UNHAPPY SUBJECTS.
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You tell us, O theologians! that “what is folly in the eyes of men, is wisdom before God, who is pleased to
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confound the wisdom of the wise.” But do you not pretend that human wisdom is a gift from Heaven?
It is pretended, that in forming the universe, God had no object but to render
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man happy. But, in a world created expressly for him and governed by an all-mighty God, is man after all very happy? Are his enjoyments durable? Are not his pleasures mingled with sufferings?
Every man who has the boldness to announce truths to the world, is sure to receive the hatred of the priests; the latter loudly call upon the powers that be, for assistance; they need the assistance of kings to sustain their arguments and their Gods. These clamors show the weakness of their cause.
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The sovereigns of this world in associating the Deity in the government of their realms, in pretending to be His
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lieutenants and His representatives upon earth, in admitting that they hold their power from Him, must necessarily accept His ministers as rivals or as masters.
Many people make a subtle distinction between true religion and superstition; they tell us that the latter is but a cowardly and inordinate fear of Divinity, that the truly religious man has confidence in his God,
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and loves Him sincerely; while the superstitious man sees in Him but an enemy, has no confidence in Him, and represents Him as a suspicious and cruel tyrant, avaricious of His benefactions and prodigal of His chastisements. But does not all religion in reality give us these same ideas of God? While we are told that God is infinitely good, is it not constantly repeated to us that He is very easily offended, that He bestows His favors but upon a few, that He chastises with fury those to whom He has not been pleased to grant them?
At a short distance from Bagdad a dervish, celebrated for his holiness, passed his days tranquilly in agreeable solitude. The surrounding inhabitants, in order to have an interest
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in his prayers, eagerly brought to him every day provisions and
presents. The holy man thanked God incessantly for the blessings Providence heaped upon him. “O Allah,” said he, “how ineffable is Thy tenderness toward Thy servants.