It is pretended, that in forming the universe, God had no object but to render
Jean Meslier
man happy. But, in a world created expressly for him and governed by an all-mighty God, is man after all very happy? Are his enjoyments durable? Are not his pleasures mingled with sufferings?
Are there many people who are contented with their fate? Is not mankind the continual victim of physical and moral evils? This human machine, which is shown to us as the masterpiece of the Creator’s industry, has it not a thousand ways of deranging itself? Would we admire the skill of a mechanic, who should show us a complicated machine, liable to be out of order at any moment, and which would after a while destroy itself?
God sure must have liked black holes – he appears to have arranged for quite a lot of them. What work of man is as awesome as Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole of which our galaxy is merely the accretion disk?
Meslier would have no doubt filled volumes of pithyness once he learned what the Hubble Space Telescope has taught us.
It’s funny how christians worship their all-powerful caterer god.
Not seeing the pithiness. Some strawmanning, maybe. I don’t think it was an atheist who wrote
What’s pretended in religion is that there’s something afterwards.
Maybe he wanted us to build gravitational wave detectors. I really don’t get this approach. Is it supposed to be an argument against god’s existence? Something like “there are tapeworms, so there can’t be a benevolent god”?
Rob Grigjanis@#1:
Is it supposed to be an argument against god’s existence? Something like “there are tapeworms, so there can’t be a benevolent god”?
It’s not an argument against god’s existence, it’s an argument against the idea that (assuming god) god made the universe for man. One of the tenets of christianity appears to be that humans are special and are beloved of god; if it actually turned out that humans weren’t so special, that’s not a refutation of christianity as a whole.
Meslier engages in a certain amount of “proof by vigorous assertion” it’s true.
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/370826-for-the-world-is-hell-and-men-are-on-the
Meslier & Schopenhauer seem like kindred spirits judging by this
polishsalami@#3:
They do both seem to be a bit gloomy and misanthropic.
Or, as we gloomy and misanthropic types put it: “realistic”