Jean Meslier
We may be asked if atheism can suit the multitude? I reply, that every system which demands discussion is not for the multitude.
Jean Meslier
Whoever has formed true ideas of the ignorance, credulity, negligence, and sottishness of common people, will always regard their religious opinions with the greater suspicion for their being generally established.
Voltaire by Houdon
We know of no religion without prayers; even the Jews have them – even though they had no published formulas back in the days when they chanted their canticles in their synagogues, those arrived much later.
Jean Meslier
Did not a famous theologian recognize the absurdity of admitting the existence of a God and arresting His course? “To us,” he said, “who believe through faith in a true God, an individual substance, there ought to be no trouble in believing everything else.
Jean Meslier
“Never,” says Pascal, “do we do evil so thoroughly and so willingly as when we do it through a false principle of conscience.”
Jean Meslier
When we complain about the violence and evils which generally religion causes upon earth, we are answered at once, that these excesses are not due to religion, but that they are the sad effect of men’s passions. I would ask, however, what unchained these passions? It is evidently religion; it is a zeal which renders inhuman, and which serves to cover the greatest infamy.
Jean Meslier
By metaphysics, God is made a pure spirit, but has modern theology advanced one step further than the theology of the barbarians?
REFUTATION OF PASCAL’S MANNER OF REASONING AS TO HOW WE SHOULD JUDGE MIRACLES.
Jean Meslier
What should we say of religions that based their Divinity upon miracles which they themselves cause to appear suspicious?