Letters To Eugenia; Or, A Preservative Against Religious Prejudices

by baron d' Paul Henri Thiry Holbach

You have seen, Madam, in my preceding letter, the incompatible and contradictory ideas which this religion gives us of the Deity. You will have seen that the revelation which is announced to us, instead of being the offspring of his goodness and tenderness for the human race, is really only a proof of injustice and partiality, of which a God who is equally just and good would be entirely incapable. Let us now examine whether the ideas suggested to us by these books, containing the divine oracles, are more rational, more consistent, or more conformable to the divine perfections. Let us see whether the statements related in the Bible, whether the commands prescribed to us in the name of God himself, are really worthy of God, and display to us the characters of infinite wisdom, goodness, power, and justice.

These inspired books go back to the origin of the world. Moses, the confidant, the interpreter, the historian of the Deity, makes us (if we may use such an expression) witnesses of the formation of the universe. He tells us that the Eternal, tired of his inaction, one fine day took it into his head to create a world that was necessary to his glory. To effect this, he forms matter out of nothing; a pure spirit produces a substance which has no affinity to himself; although this God fills all space with his immensity, yet still he found room enough in it to admit the universe, as well as all the material bodies contained therein.

These, at least, are the ideas which divines wish us to form respecting the creation, if such a thing were possible as that of possessing a clear idea of a pure spirit producing matter. But this discussion is throwing us into metaphysical researches, which I wish to avoid. It will be sufficient to you that you may console yourself for not being able to comprehend it, seeing that the most profound thinkers, who talk about the creation or the eduction of the world from nothing, have no ideas on the subject more precise than those which you form to yourself. As soon, Madam, as you take the trouble to reflect thereon, you will find that divines, instead of explaining things, have done nothing but invent words, in order to render them dubious, and to confound all our natural conceptions.

I will not, however, tire you by a fastidious display of the blunders which fill the narrative of Moses, which they announce to us as being dictated by the Deity. If we read it with a little attention, we shall perceive in every page philosophical and astronomical errors, unpardonable in an inspired author, and such as we should consider ridiculous in any man, who, in the most superficial manner, should have studied and contemplated nature.

You will find, for example, light created before the sun, although this star is visibly the source of light which communicates itself to our globe. You will find the evening and the morning established before the formation of this same sun, whose presence alone produces day, whose absence produces night, and whose different aspects constitute morning and evening. You will there find that the moon is spoken of as a body possessing its own light, in a similar manner as the sun possesses it, although this planet is a dark body, and receives its light from the sun. These ignorant blunders are sufficient to show you that the Deity who revealed himself to Moses was quite unacquainted with the nature of those substances which he had created out of nothing, and that you at present possess more information respecting them than was once possessed by the Creator of the world.

I am not ignorant that our divines have an answer always ready to those difficulties which would attack their divine science, and place their knowledge far below that of Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and even below that of young people who have scarcely studied the first elements of natural philosophy. They will tell us that God, in order to render himself intelligible to the savage and ignorant Jews, spoke in conformity to their imperfect notions, in the false and incorrect language of the vulgar. We must not be imposed upon by this solution, which our doctors regard as triumphant, and which they so frequently employ when it becomes necessary to justify the Bible against the ignorance and vulgarities contained therein. We answer them, that a God who knows every thing, and can perform every thing, might by a single word have rectified the false notions of the people he wished to enlighten, and enabled them to know the nature of bodies more perfectly than the most able men who have since appeared. If it be replied that revelation is not intended to render men learned, but to make them pious, I answer that revelation was not sent to establish false notions; that it would be unworthy of God to borrow the language of falsehood and ignorance; that the knowledge of nature, so far from being an injury to piety, is, by the avowal of divines, the most proper study to display the greatness of God. They tell us that religion would be unmovable, were it conformable to true knowledge; that we should have no objections to make to the recital of Moses, nor to the philosophy of the Holy Scriptures, if we found nothing but what was continually confirmed by experience, astronomy, and the demonstrations of geometry.

To maintain a contrary opinion, and to say that God is pleased in confounding the knowledge of men and in rendering it useless, is to pretend that he is pleased with making us ignorant and changeable, and that he condemns the progress of the human mind, although we ought to suppose him the author of it. To pretend that God was obliged in the Scriptures to conform himself to the language of men, is to pretend that he withdrew his assistance from those he wished to enlighten, and that he was unable of rendering them susceptible of comprehending the language of truth. This is an observation not to be lost sight of in the examination of revelation, where we find in each page that God expresses himself in a manner quite unworthy of the Deity. Could not an omnipotent God, instead of degrading himself, instead of condescending to speak the language of ignorance, so far enlighten them as to make them understand a language more true, more noble, and more conformable to the ideas which are given us of the Deity? An experienced master by degrees enables his scholars to understand what he wishes to teach them, and a God ought to be able to communicate to them immediately all the knowledge he intended to give them.

However, according to Genesis, God, after creating the world, produced man from the dust of the earth. In the mean while we are assured that he created him in his own image; but what was the image of God? How could man, who is at least partly material, represent a pure spirit, which excludes all matter?

How could his imperfect mind be formed on the model of a mind possessing all perfection, like that which we suppose in the Creator of the universe? What resemblance, what proportion, what affinity could there be between a finite mind united to a body, and the infinite spirit of the Creator? These, doubtless, are great difficulties; hitherto it has been thought impossible to decide them; and they will probably for a long time employ the minds of those who strive to understand the incomprehensible meaning of a book which God provided for our instruction.

But why did God create man? Because he wished to people the universe with intelligent beings, who would render him homage, who should witness his wonders, who should glorify him, who should meditate and contemplate his works, and merit his favors by their submission to his laws.