CLIV.—CHARLATANRY OF THE PRIESTS.
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.