In order to avoid all embarrassment, they tell us that it is not
necessary to know what God is; that we must adore without knowing; that
it is not permitted us to turn an eye of temerity upon His attributes.
But if we must adore a God without knowing Him, should we not be assured
that He exists? Moreover, how be assured that He exists without having
examined whether it is possible that the diverse qualities claimed for
Him, meet in Him? In truth, to adore God is to adore nothing but
fictions of one's own brain, or rather, it is to adore nothing.
XXIX.--THE INFINITY OF GOD AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF KNOWING THE DIVINE
ESSENCE, OCCASIONS AND JUSTIFIES ATHEISM.
Without doubt the more to perplex matters, theologians have chosen to
say nothing about what their God is; they tell us what He is not. By
negations and abstractions they imagine themselves composing a real and
perfect being, while there can result from it but a being of human
reason. A spirit has no body; an infinite being is a being which is not
finite; a perfect being is a being which is not imperfect. Can any one
form any real notions of such a multitude of deficiencies or absence of
ideas? That which excludes all idea, can it be anything but nothingness?
To pretend that the divine attributes are beyond the understanding of
the human mind is to render God unfit for men. If we are assured that
God is infinite, we admit that there can be nothing in common between
Him and His creatures. To say that God is infinite, is to destroy Him
for men, or at least render Him useless to them.
God, we are told, created men intelligent, but He did not create them
omniscient: that is to say, capable of knowing all things. We conclude
that He was not able to endow him with intelligence sufficient to
understand the divine essence. In this case it is demonstrated that God
has neither the power nor the wish to be known by men. By what right
could this God become angry with beings whose own essence makes it
impossible to have any idea of the divine essence? God would evidently
be the most unjust and the most unaccountable of tyrants if He should
punish an atheist for not knowing that which his nature made it
impossible for him to know.
XXX.--IT IS NEITHER LESS NOR MORE CRIMINAL TO BELIEVE IN GOD THAN NOT TO
BELIEVE IN HIM.
For the generality of men nothing renders an argument more convincing
than fear. In consequence of this fact, theologians tell us that the
safest side must be taken; that nothing is more criminal than
incredulity; that God will punish without mercy all those who have the
temerity to doubt His existence; that His severity is just; since it is
only madness or perversity which questions the existence of an angry
monarch who revenges himself cruelly upon atheists. If we examine these
menaces calmly, we shall find that they assume always the thing in
question. They must commence by proving to our satisfaction the
existence of a God, before telling us that it is safer to believe, and
that it is horrible to doubt or to deny it. Then they must prove that it
is possible for a just God to punish men cruelly for having been in a
state of madness, which prevented them from believing in the existence
of a being whom their enlightened reason could not comprehend. In a
word, they must prove that a God that is said to be full of equity,
could punish beyond measure the invincible and necessary ignorance of
man, caused by his relation to the divine essence. Is not the
theologians' manner of reasoning very singular? They create phantoms,
they fill them with contradictions, and finally assure us that the
safest way is not to doubt the existence of those phantoms, which they
have themselves invented. By following out this method, there is no
absurdity which it would not be safer to believe than not to believe.
All children are atheists--they have no idea of God; are they, then,
criminal on account of this ignorance? At what age do they begin to be
obliged to believe in God? It is, you say, at the age of reason. At what
time does this age begin? Besides, if the most profound theologians lose
themselves in the divine essence, which they boast of not comprehending,
what ideas can common people have?--women, mechanics, and, in short,
those who compose the mass of the human race?
XXXI.--THE BELIEF IN GOD IS NOTHING BUT A MECHANICAL HABITUDE OF
CHILDHOOD.
Men believe in God only upon the word of those who have no more idea of
Him than they themselves. Our nurses are our first theologians; they
talk to children of God as they talk to them of were-wolfs; they teach
them from the most tender age to join the hands mechanically. Have the
nurses clearer notions of God than the children, whom they compel to
pray to Him?