The Original Atheists: First Thoughts on Nonbelief
Language: English
Pages: 282
ISBN: 1616148411
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This is the first anthology ever published to feature the writings of leading eighteenth-century thinkers on the subjects of atheism, religion, freethought, and secularism.
Editor S. T. Joshi has compiled notable essays by writers from Germany, France, England, and early America. The contributors include Denis Diderot (a principal author of the multivolume French Encyclopédie), Baron d'Holbach (System of Nature, 1770), Voltaire (Philosophical Dictionary), David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Ethan Allen, Thomas Paine, and other lesser-known thinkers.
With a comprehensive introduction providing the intellectual and cultural context of the essays, this outstanding compilation will be of interest to students of philosophy, religious studies, and eighteenth-century intellectual history.
“teachers of the Christian religion” by the imposition of a small tax on all citizens of the state. In response, Madison, in 1784–85, wrote A Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, which argued that such a tax would be the harbinger of tyranny and intolerance. The entire text of the Memorial is presented below.] TO THE HONORABLE THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF VIRGINIA: We, the subscribers, citizens of the said Commonwealth, having taken into serious consideration a bill
rises from a swamp at night, probably caused by rotting organic matter; more generally, the phrase (more often in the singular, ignis fatuus) means “a delusion.” 9. Conversations on Chemistry (1806), initially published anonymously but thought to be the work of either Margaret Bryan or Jane Haldimand Marcet. Ethan Allen 1. The Shakers (a slang term for a group that calls itself the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing) are a religious sect based around the teachings of Ann
being; but, on the other hand, I cannot make a commencement from this beginning. If I must contemplate something as existing necessarily as the basis of existing things, and yet am not permitted to contemplate any individual thing as in itself necessary, the inevitable inference is that necessity and contingency are not properties of things themselves—otherwise an internal contradiction would result; that consequently neither of these principles are objective, but merely subjective principles of
reasonableness and utility of this procedure, but have rather to commend and encourage it, we cannot approve of the claims this argument advances to demonstrative certainty and to a reception upon its own merits, apart from favor or support by other arguments. Nor can it injure the cause of morality to try to lower the tone of the arrogant sophist and to teach him that modesty and moderation which are the properties of a belief that brings calm and content into the mind without prescribing to it
enjoined it by a positive command to Abraham to have killed his son; a murder of all others the most unnatural and cruel and attended with the most aggravating circumstances, not merely from a prescribed breach of the ties of parental affection, but from the consideration that the child was to be (if we may credit, the command) offered to God as a religious sacrifice. What could have been a more complicated wickedness than the obedience of this command would have been? and what can be more absurd