What is God--Adoration
Hanover Historical Texts Project
Baron D'Holbach,
Good Sense: or, Natural Ideas Opposed to Supernatural; being a Translation from a Work Called "Le Bon Sens"
corrected and carefully revised by H. D. Robinson
(Boston: J. P. Mendum, 1856) Pages 15-16
Scanned by Aaron Gulyas, February, 1998.
To shake the existence of God, we need only to ask
a theologian to speak of him. As soon as he has said
a word upon the subject, the least reflection will convince us, that his observations are totally incompatible with the essence he ascribes to his God. What then is God? It is an abstract word, denoting the hidden
power of nature; or it is a mathematical point, that
has neither length, breadth, nor thickness. A philosopher, speaking of theologians, has ingeniously observed, that they have discoverd the solution of the famous problem of Archimedes-a point in the heavens, whence they move the world.* [* David Hume]
Religion prostrates men before a being, who without
extension, is infinite, and fills all with his immensity;
a being, all-powerful, who never executes his will; a
being, sovereignly good, who creates only disquietudes; a being, the friend of order, and in government all is in confusion and disorder. What
then, can we imagine, can be the God of theology?
To avoid all embarrassment, we are told, "that it
is not necessary to know what God is; that we must adore without knowing him that we are not permitted to extend our rash views to his attributes." But, before we know that we must adore a God, must we not know certainly, that he exists? But, how can we assure ourselves, that lie exists, if we never examine whether the various qualities, attributed to him, do really exist and agree in him? Indeed, to adore God, is to adore only the fictions of one's own imagination, or rather, it is to adore nothing.
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