If we go back to the beginnings of things, we shall always find that ignorance and fear created the gods; that imagination, rapture and deception embellished them; that weakness worships them; that custom spares them; and that tyranny favors them in order to profit from the blindness of men.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that human emotions and weaknesses have historically led to the creation and worship of deities.
Baron D'Holbach's quote reflects on the origins of religious beliefs, arguing that they stem from fundamental human emotions such as ignorance and fear. He posits that these emotions give birth to gods, while imagination and deception enhance their appeal, with societal customs and tyrannical powers maintaining their existence for personal gain, thus exploiting the blind faith of the masses.
In practice
In a discussion about the psychological origins of religion, one might use this quote to emphasize how fear influences belief.
Suns are extinguished or become corrupted, planets perish and scatter across the wastes of the sky; other suns are kindled, new planets formed to make their revolutions or describe new orbits, and man, an infinitely minute part of a globe which itself is only an imperceptible point in the immense whole, believes that the universe is made for himself.
People have suffered and become insane for centuries by the thought of eternal punishment after death. Wouldn't it be better to depend on blind matter... than a god who puts out traps for people, invites them to sin, and allows them to sin and commit crimes he could prevent. Only to finally get the barbarian pleasure to punish them in an excessive way, of no use for himself, without them changing their ways and without their example preventing others from committing crimes.
Tolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes to religious fanaticism.
To discover the true principles of Morality, men have no need of theology, of revelation, or of gods: They have need only of common sense.
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.
Equal protection under the law - for race, religion, gender or sexual orientation - should not be subject to the most popular sentiments of the day.
A Country is not a mere territory; the particular territory is only its foundation. The Country is the idea which rises upon that foundation; it is the sentiment of love, the sense of fellowship which binds together all the sons of that territory.
To protest in the name of morality against 'excesses' or 'abuses' is an error which hints on active complicity. There are no 'abuses' or 'excesses' here, simpily an all-pervasive system.
You're fighting a losing battle if you expect the people who own the studios to make moral choices.
We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark.
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