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Handout #207 |
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A society of atheists can be perfectly moral |
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Pierre Bayle (1647-1706 A.D.), born a
Calvinist, became a Catholic for a few years and then returned to being a
Calvinist. He taught philosophy and history at Sedan and then at Rotterdam.
Bayle was critical of all religious confessions, including Calvinism,
preaching tolerance all his life.
A society of atheists would practice civil and moral actions just as well as other societies, provided that it saw that crimes were severely punished and that it attached honor and infamy to certain things. As ignorance of the first Creator Being and Conserver of the world would not prevent the members of this society from being sensitive to glory and scorn, to recompense and punishment, and to all the passions we can see in other men, and would not quench all the light of reason, one would see among them people who kept good faith in trading, who helped the poor, who were opposed to injustice, who were loyal to their friends ... Anyone who wants to be fully convinced that a people lacking in the knowledge of God would make itself rules of honor and be very careful to observe them has only to see that among Christians there is a certain worldly honor which is directly contrary to the spirit of the gospel ...Compare the manners of some nations who profess Christianity; compare them, I say, one with another, and you will see that what goes for dishonesty in one country is not so deemed in another. Therefore it must be that the ideas of honesty which prevail among Christians do not come from the religion which they profess. Pierre Bayle, Thoughts on the Comet, 1982. |
