Translation:Treaty of the Three Fraudsters/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
Sensible & obvious truths.
§. 1.
Moses, Jesus and Mohammed are what we have just depicted. Obviously, it is not in their writings where we ought to look for a veritable idea of divinity. The appearances and conferences of Moses and Mohammed, as well as the divine birth of Jesus, are the grandest fraudsters that could have been enlightened and that you must avoid if you love the truth.
§. 2.
As we have seen, God, if you wish, being only nature, the assemblage of all beings, all properties and all energies, is necessarily the immanent and not distinct cause of his effects. He cannot be called good, nor bad, nor just, nor merciful, nor jealous, which are qualities that only fit humans. Therefore, God cannot punish or reward. This idea of punishments and rewards can only seduce ignorants, who only conceive being simple, which is called God, under images that do not at all fit him. Those who use their judgment, without confusing its mechanism with those of imagination, and who have the strength to get rid of the prejudices of childhood, are the only ones who have a clear and distinct idea of them. They envisage it as the source of all beings, which produces them without distinction.
§. 3.
We must therefore not believe that the universal Being, commonly called God, values a human more than an ant, a lion more than a stone. There is nothing about him that is beautiful or ugly, good or bad, perfect or imperfect. He does not mind being prayed for, sought after, caressed. He is not moved by what humans do or say, he is susceptible neither to love nor to hatred. In a word, he is no more concerned with man than with the rest of creatures, of whatever nature they may be. All these distinctions are only inventions of a narrow mind; ignorance imagined them and interest fomented them.
§. 4.
Hence, any sane human cannot believe in God, nor Hell, nor Spirit, nor Devils, in the way that they are commonly spoken of. All these big words were forged only to fool or intimidate the vulgar. Therefore, let those who want to be even more convinced of this truth pay serious attention to what follows and get used to making judgments only after ripe reflection.
§. 5.
We admit the infinity of stars that we see above as solid corpora on move, among which there is one destined for the Extraterrestrial Law, where God stands in the middle of galaxies. This place is the abode of the Blessed, where it is assumed that good souls will go when leaving the body. Without stopping at such a frivolous opinion and which nobody of common sense can admit, it is certain that what we call Heaven is nothing other than the continuation of the air which surrounds us, fluid in which the Planets move, without being supported by any solid mass, just like the earth we inhabit.
§. 6.
We imagined a Heaven that we made the abode of the God and the blessed, or, according to the Pagans, of Gods and Goddesses. We have since imagined a Hell, or underground place, where we ensure that the souls of the villains descend to be tormented. Natheless, this word Hell, in its natural sense, expresses nothing other than a low and hollow place. Poets invented Hell to contrast with the residence of the celestial inhabitants, which they supposed to be high and elevated. This is exactly what the words infernus or inferni in Latin, and Aδης (Hades) in Greek mean: a place that is obscure and formidable. Everything that is said about it is merely imagination of Poets and the deceitfulness of Priests. All the speeches of the former are figurative and calculated to make an impression on weak, timid and melancholic souls. They were changed into an article of faith by those who have the grandest interest in maintaining this opinion.