Tolerance and freedom of thought are the veritable antidotes to religious fanaticism.
Interpretation
Tolerance and open-mindedness are essential to countering extreme religious beliefs.
In this quote, Baron D'Holbach emphasizes the importance of accepting diverse viewpoints and practicing freedom of thought as critical tools in combating the dangers of religious fanaticism. By fostering an environment where different ideas can coexist, society can mitigate the harmful effects that arise from rigid and intolerant belief systems.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about promoting interfaith dialogue.
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.
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.
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.
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.
"Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things which are God's." One would like to add: Give unto man things which are man's; give man his freedom and personality, his rights and religion.
We should daily feel a deeper union with Life, a greater sense of that Indwelling God - the God of the seen and of the unseen - within us.
Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined; Till at his second bidding darkness fled, Light shone, and order from disorder sprung.
Language is the biggest barrier to human progress because language is an encyclopedia of ignorance. Old perceptions are frozen into language and force us to look at the world in an old fashioned way.
For mine own part, it was Greek to me.
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