What would we say of a crowd of quacks, who every day would exhibit in a
public place, selling their remedies and recommending them as
infallible, while we should find them afflicted with the same
infirmities which they pretend to cure? Would we have much confidence in
the recipes of these charlatans, who would bawl out: "Take our remedies,
their effects are infallible--they cure everybody except us?" What would
we think to see these same charlatans pass their lives in complaining
that their remedies never produce any effect upon the patients who take
them? Finally, what idea would we form of the foolishness of the common
man who, in spite of this confession, would continue to pay very high
for remedies which will not be beneficial to him? The priests resemble
alchemists, who boldly assert that they have the secret of making gold,
while they scarcely have clothing enough to cover their nudity.
The ministers of religion incessantly declaim against the corruption of
the age, and complain loudly of the little success of their teachings,
at the same time they assure us that religion is the universal remedy,
the true panacea for all human evils. These priests are sick themselves;
however, men continue to frequent their stands and to have faith in
their Divine antidotes, which, according to their own confession, cure
nobody!
CLV.--COUNTLESS CALAMITIES ARE PRODUCED BY RELIGION, WHICH HAS TAINTED
MORALITY AND DISTURBED ALL JUST IDEAS AND ALL SOUND DOCTRINES.
Religion, especially among modern people, in taking possession of
morality, totally obscured its principles; it has rendered men unsocial
from a sense of duty; it has forced them to be inhuman toward all those
who did not think as they did. Theological disputes, equally
unintelligible for the parties already irritated against each other,
have unsettled empires, caused revolutions, ruined sovereigns,
devastated the whole of Europe; these despicable quarrels could not be
extinguished even in rivers of blood. After the extinction of Paganism
the people established a religious principle of going into a frenzy,
every time that an opinion was brought forth which their priests
considered contrary to the holy doctrine. The votaries of a religion
which preaches externally but charity, harmony, and peace, have shown
themselves more ferocious than cannibals or savages every time that
their instructors have excited them to the destruction of their
brethren. There is no crime which men have not committed in the idea of
pleasing the Deity or of appeasing His wrath. The idea of a terrible God
who was represented as a despot, must necessarily have rendered His
subjects wicked. Fear makes but slaves, and slaves are cowardly, low,
cruel, and think they have a right to do anything when it is the
question of gaining the good-will or of escaping the punishments of the
master whom they fear. Liberty of thought can alone give to men humanity
and grandeur of soul. The notion of a tyrant God can create but abject,
angry, quarrelsome, intolerant slaves. Every religion which supposes a
God easily irritated, jealous, vindictive, punctilious about His rights
or His title, a God small enough to be offended at opinions which we
have of Him, a God unjust enough to exact uniform ideas in regard to
Him, such a religion becomes necessarily turbulent, unsocial,
sanguinary; the worshipers of such a God never believe they can, without
crime, dispense with hating and even destroying all those whom they
designate as adversaries of this God; they would believe themselves
traitors to the cause of their celestial Monarch, if they should live on
good terms with rebellious fellow-citizens. To love what God hates,
would it not be exposing one's self to His implacable hatred? Infamous
persecutors, and you, religious cannibals! will you never feel the folly
and injustice of your intolerant disposition? Do you not see that man is
no more the master of his religious opinions, of his credulity or
incredulity, than of the language which he learns in childhood, and
which he can not change? To tell men to think as you do, is it not
asking a foreigner to express his thoughts in your language? To punish a
man for his erroneous opinions, is it not punishing him for having been
educated differently from yourself? If I am incredulous, is it possible
for me to banish from my mind the reasons which have unsettled my faith?
If God allows men the freedom to damn themselves, is it your business?
Are you wiser and more prudent than this God whose rights you wish to
avenge?
CLVI.--EVERY RELIGION IS INTOLERANT, AND CONSEQUENTLY DESTRUCTIVE OF
BENEFICENCE.
There is no religious person who, according to his temperament, does not
hate, despise, or pity the adherents of a sect different from his own.
The dominant religion (which is never but that of the sovereign and the
armies) always makes its superiority felt in a very cruel and injurious
manner toward the weaker sects. There does not exist yet upon earth a
true tolerance; everywhere a jealous God is worshiped, and each nation
believes itself His friend to the exclusion of all others.
Every nation boasts itself of worshiping the true God, the universal
God, the Sovereign of Nature; but when we come to examine this Monarch
of the world, we perceive that each organization, each sect, each
religious party, makes of this powerful God but an inferior sovereign,
whose cares and kindness extend themselves but over a small number of
His subjects who pretend to have the exclusive advantage of His favors,
and that He does not trouble Himself about the others.
The founders of religions, and the priests who maintain them, have
intended to separate the nations which they indoctrinated, from other
nations; they desired to separate their own flock by distinctive
features; they gave to their votaries Gods inimical to other Gods as
well as the forms of worship, dogmas, ceremonies, separately; they
persuaded them especially that the religions of others were ungodly and
abominable. By this infamous contrivance, these ambitious impostors took
exclusive possession of the minds of their votaries, rendered them
unsocial, and made them consider as outcasts all those who had not the
same ideas and form of worship as their own. This is the way religion
succeeded in closing the heart, and in banishing from it that affection
which man ought to have for his fellow-being. Sociability, tolerance,
humanity, these first virtues of all morality are totally in compatible
with religious prejudices.