Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him in ignorance of his real duties and true interests. It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of Religion that we shall discover Truth, Reason, and Morality.
Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach[1]
In 1764, Hume went to the hottest party in Paris. It was one of a series of exclusive dinners for eighteen of Europe’s smartest celebrities. The host -- Paul-Henry Thiry, a rich aristocrat with the title of Baron d’Holbach -- liked to toss around radical ideas with guests such as superstar actor David Garrick, scientist Joseph Priestly (who discovered oxygen) and diplomat Benjamin Franklin. When the talk turned to atheists, Hume -- possibly playing it cautious about revealing his own views -- said, “I do not believe in their existence. I never met with any.”
“You are now at [a] table with seventeen,” d’Holbach answered.[2]
In fact, France in the 1700s was the raw edge of unbelief.
• D’Holbach’s friend, the intellectual Denis Diderot, went to prison for writing against religion.
• Atheist writer Julien Offray de La Mettrie created anti-church books so scandalous that theists publicly burned them, and he was pressured to leave France. He landed in Holland but eventually had to get out of that country, too.
• Donatien Alphonse François de Sade -- better known as the Marquis de Sade -- liked to beat women and girls with whips and drug them with poisons. He rationalized his abuses under the excuse that since there was no god to restrain him, he had the right to do anything he could get away with. (Some theists think that all atheists subscribe to that attitude.)
But the most radical, at least in his opinions, may have been d’Holbach himself. Here’s d’Holbach on where religion came from: “It was man’s imagination, guided by his ignorance, under the influence of fear, that gave birth to his gods.”[3]
D’Holbach on idiots:
“The more men are deficient in knowledge and reason, the more zealous they are in religion.”[4]
D’Holbach on beliefs:
“Religious opinions are ancient monuments of ignorance, credulity, cowardice, and barbarism of their ancestors. . . . Modern religions are only ancient follies revived, or presented under some new form.”[5]
Even though he had money and a high position in society, d’Holbach didn’t feel secure enough to let the world outside of his dinner parties know that these were his opinions, so he published them under other names. He was pretty smart to work that way, considering what had happened to Diderot and La Mettrie, and what would happen to an English-born American named Thomas Paine.
[1] Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach, Le Bon Sens, ou Idées naturelles opposées aux idées surnaturelles (Good Sense, or Natural Ideas Opposed to Supernatural Ideas), section 206 (1772), http://www.reasoned.org/dir/lit/goodsens.pdf or http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7319/7319-h/7319-h.htm#2H_4_0034
[2] Samuel Romilly, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, quoted in The Oracle of Reason: Or, Philosophy Vindicated, uncredited (1843), http://books.google.com
[3] Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach, Système de la Nature (The System of Nature), Part II, Chapter VII, 1770, translated by Samuel Wilkinson (1820), http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8910/pg8910.txt
[4] d’Holbach, Le Bon Sens, ou Idées naturelles opposées aux idées surnaturelles (Good Sense, or Natural Ideas Opposed to Supernatural Ideas), section 138 (1772), http://www.ftarchives.net/holbach/good/gs2.htm#138
