The Logical Atheist

Reason, which every kind of supernatural theology abhors; reason, which is the glory of our nature, is destined eventually, in the progress of future ages, to overturn the empire of superstition, and erect upon its ruins a fabric, against which the storms of despotism may beat in vain, against which superstition may reek her vengeance without effect, from which she will be obliged to retire in agonizing tortures.  --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species

The tenacity of prejudice and irritability of temper, are not difficult to be accounted for. Every fanatic sect of religion speaks in the name of heaven. It has enlisted Jehovah on its side, it keeps up a familiar intercourse with celestial powers, and discerns, in all the operations of those powers, the most decided partiality in favour of the particular doctrines which its members have embraced. With weak and fanatic minds, the confidence is prodigious which results from a supposed alliance with heaven. A being armed in the name of a ferocious God, slaughters with relentless cruelty every other being who does not pay homage to the barbarous divinity, which his own heated imagination has depicted. No prejudices are so deep rooted, none so violent, as those of a religious nature, and their pernicious effects are generally in proportion to the ignorance of the human mind, and the barbarous condition of society. It is the light of science alone that can destroy such causes of human wretc...

If it were possible to conceive of a mind whose strength and energy had elevated it above all the impressions of associated life, and the deductions drawn from early combinations, and the primary influence of scientific pursuits, we should then behold the intellect of man exhibited in that point of view, which would promise a fair discussion of all the diversified relations of existence, by which we are enabled to deduce all those fundamental laws contained in the physical, mental, and moral world. But in those cases where the human mind attempts the discussion of any philosophic subject, under the impression of a previous bias, every part and view of the subject is subjected to the influence of associated habits, and the unreasonable attachment of an unrestrained imagination, or a cruel and atrocious fanaticism. This is remarkably verified by the conduct of every religious sectary in the world, whose opinions, however variant from the standard of truth, are ever considered by the indi...

If the disclosure of my thoughts and reflections resulting from a constant habit of contemplating Nature in her diversified relations and real modes of existence, can throw a single ray of light into the darkened intellect of man, it will increase my hopes of future progression, and essentially tranquillize the sensations of my heart. It ought to be perceived by every enlightened mind, that long- established prejudices are not to be suddenly eradicated; but by protruding the activity of intellect into the field of actual existence, some diminution of human misery may be reasonably expected. Man sees not with clearness, that his sufferings are frequently the consequences of his blind attachment to error and superstition; he seeks for their origin in the distant heavens, or the anger or resentment of supposed supernatural agents, while the truth often is, that his own prepossessions are the causes of his calamity.  --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development o...

There is no system either of education, politics, or religion, which ought to be excepted from the severest scrutiny of the human mind, or the closest examination which the human faculties can bestow upon it; yet habit and custom of long duration have so strongly attached man to his errors, that he reluctantly relinquishes those tenets which serve only to disturb his peace, and destroy his happiness; while the privileged impostors of the world, or those who feast upon the continuation or error and prejudice, unite their strongest exertions to persuade man that his most important interests in time and eternity depend upon the preservation of ancient and unnatural establishments; which, in fact, are as destructive to human felicity, as they are derogatory to the divine purity of supreme intelligence. The influence of authority, the fear of incurring clerical displeasure, and the dread of eternal torments, have partially annihilated the energy of intellectual powers, and taught man tremb...

The faculties of man ought to be circumscribed only by that extensive circle which embraces the full extent of their native and accumulated activity. When religious prejudices are permitted to mingle their gloomy effects with the exalted conceptions of enlightened reason, the important cause of truth and the dearest interests of humanity become perceptibly retrograde, and darkness instead of light pervades the moral world.  --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species

How is it possible that man should have any clear conceptions of natural truth, when his understanding is constantly insulted with a thousand incongruous and non-existent relations, such as ghosts, witches, and devils, which perpetually disturb the imagination, and draw the rational faculties into the vortex of fancy and fanaticism? and this will ever be the case so long as superstition, or, which is the same thing, a religion claiming a supernatural birth, shall spread its bloody and baneful influence among intelligent beings.  --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species

Religious enthusiasm, bigotry, and superstition, conjoined with the strong arm of political despotism, have rendered man in the past ages of the world the degraded instrument of their own pernicious and destructive purposes; it is here we must seek for the source of any human misfortunes, and the perpetuation of those prejudices by which the body and mind are both enslaved; --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species

If an atonement was necessary, it ought to have been as extensive and complete in its nature as the offences intended to be destroyed by its influence. But instead of this, every thing is reversed. According to believers themselves, this atonement has not reached the condition of more than one-tenth part of the human race. The efforts of Trinitarian wisdom have all failed, and notwithstanding the pretended good news of the Gospel, every living creature is destined to never-ending torment. The elect themselves are incapable of escaping eternal damnation, for without an atonement they cannot be saved, and the atonement that has been made is not equal to the crime committed. If, therefore, our hopes of salvation are to rest on this vicarious suffering, we shall be essentially disappointed, and endless misery must be the lot of man. Priests and fanatics of the world! is this your scheme of infinite benevolence? This your theme of divine eloquence? Is this the only way in which you can exhi...

To punish the temporary and finite crimes of a finite life with eternal fire, would be to relinquish every principle of distributive justice, and to act like an arbitrary and malevolent tyrant. All the sins that ever have been committed do not deserve this unlimited severity of punishment; and to attribute to one solitary infraction of a moral law these terrible consequences, is to lose sight of infinite benevolence and eternal justice. It is to represent the God of Nature as cruel and vindictive, and even less merciful than the majority of his creatures; it destroys all degrees in moral turpitude, and inflicts on a petty offender a punishment not merited by the greatest criminal. It is therefore evident that this original sin has not produced, and that it could not produce, any of the consequences which have been attributed to it, for death is one of the physical properties of our nature. Vice is the result of individual and personal infractions of moral law, and an eternal Hell is a ...

God was much on the scene during Wednesday's inaugural ceremonies. We had the usual opening and closing prayers and the swearing-in on a Bible. Prompted by Chief Justice John Roberts, Joe Biden continued the tradition, said to have begun with George Washington , of adding "so help me God" to the end of the oath. Those words are not in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. The oath there is only: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."  Maybe this tampered-with oath is a violation of the Constitution and therefore shouldn't count. The religious stuff continued with Garth Brooks singing of "Amazing Grace": Amazing grace, how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me Wretch? Really?  It should not go without mention that Capitol rioters on Jan. 6 paused to pray --"in Christ...

If the disclosure of my thoughts and reflections resulting from a constant habit of contemplating Nature in her diversified relations and real modes of existence, can throw a single ray of light into the darkened intellect of man, it will increase my hopes of future progression, and essentially tranquillize the sensations of my heart. It ought to be perceived by every enlightened mind, that long-established prejudices are not to be suddenly eradicated; but by protruding the activity of intellect into the field of actual existence, some diminution of human misery may be reasonably expected. Man sees not with clearness, that his sufferings are frequently the consequences of his blind attachment to error and superstition; he seeks for their origin in the distant heavens, or the anger or resentment of supposed supernatural agents, while the truth often is, that his own prepossessions are the causes of his calamity. --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the ...

There is no system either of education, politics, or religion, which ought to be excepted from the severest scrutiny of the human mind, or the closest examination which the human faculties can bestow upon it; yet habit and custom of long duration have so strongly attached man to his errors, that he reluctantly relinquishes those tenets which serve only to disturb his peace, and destroy his happiness; while the privileged impostors of the world, or those who feast upon the continuation or error and prejudice, unite their strongest exertions to persuade man that his most important interests in time and eternity depend upon the preservation of ancient and unnatural establishments; which, in fact, are as destructive to human felicity, as they are derogatory to the divine purity of supreme intelligence. The influence of authority, the fear of incurring clerical displeasure, and the dread of eternal torments, have partially annihilated the energy of intellectual powers, and taught man trembl...

The faculties of man ought to be circumscribed only by that extensive circle which embraces the full extent of their native and accumulated activity. When religious prejudices are permitted to mingle their gloomy effects with the exalted conceptions of enlightened reason, the important cause of truth and the dearest interests of humanity become perceptibly retrograde, and darkness instead of light pervades the moral world. When Moses, by authority pretendedly divine, diffused light over the world previous to the creation of the sun, Superstition greedily swallowed the holy absurdity; but when Galileo asserted the sphericity of the earth, they cried heresy, and armed against science and philosophy, and yet the latter was an important truth in the system of nature; the former, a stupid blunder of ignorance and fanaticism. Such, O Superstition! are thy pious efforts to blind the human mind, the better to subjugate its powers, and rob man of the fruits of his industry. --Elihu Palmer (176...

How is it possible that man should have any clear conceptions of natural truth, when his understanding is constantly insulted with a thousand incongruous and non-existent relations, such as ghosts, witches, and devils, which perpetually disturb the imagination, and draw the rational faculties into the vortex of fancy and fanaticism? and this will ever be the case so long as superstition, or, which is the same thing, a religion claiming a supernatural birth, shall spread its bloody and baneful influence among intelligent beings. --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species   

Religious enthusiasm, bigotry, and superstition, conjoined with the strong arm of political despotism, have rendered man in the past ages of the world the degraded instrument of their own pernicious and destructive purposes; it is here we must seek for the source of any human misfortunes, and the perpetuation of those prejudices by which the body and mind are both enslaved; it is true that the natural imbecility and imperfection of our faculties, and the extensive nature and variety of those moral and physical combinations, from which science is to be deduced, evince the strong probability that man may frequently be erroneous in the conclusions which he draws from certain premises, because the force of his faculties is not adequate to a full and complete investigation of the compounded and diversified relations of existence; but these natural obstacles to the clear deductions of science, are neither of a discouraging or an insurmountable nature. --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806),  Princip...

Look through the whole order of nature, and this solemn truth is clearly perceived, that every being possessed of feeling must eternally be exposed to a vast variety of complicated evils, painful sensation, and diversified misfortune, resulting from the constitution of the universe, and the laws by which it is governed. The same reasoning will apply to all the higher operations of nature, and those astonishing phenomena that surprise and terrify the mind of man! Earthquakes, volcanoes, lightning, inundations, are all the result of the operation of physical laws, and it is impossible to prevent the misery which they occasion, without a suspension or violation of the laws by which they were produced.... It is here that superstition has raised a rampart impregnable to the attacks of reason. The pride, the fanaticism, and the intemperate zeal of man will never cease to mislead his judgment; cause the energies of intellect to diverge from the line of truth, and to subject him to the baneful...

The sensation, the intellect, the capacities of man, taught him that he was subject to a variety of evils; but instead of searching for the cause of these evils, where only they were to be found, he suffered the operations of intellect to be subjugated by the pride and arrogance of superstition, and he no longer discerned the true connection between the miseries which he felt, and the active and natural causes which produced them; he no longer beheld his true condition in nature, but weakly imagined that he had become the object of malevolent intention in some superior being, who took delight in his torture, and wilfully subjected him to the diversified misfortunes with which he was assailed. --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), Principles of Nature; or, A Development of  the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery Among the Human Species

Man has lost himself in the wanderings of a fantastic imagination, in the fleeting dreams of fanaticism, and the malignant fury of a blind superstition; he has sought for truth where it is not to be found, his mind has diverged from the line of reality, and he has become the victim of innumerable prejudices. The most common phenomena have been ascribed to causes which had no existence, and effects have been attributed to those chimerical combinations which were to be found only in the distorted brain of an enthusiastic religious zealot. The simplicity, the uniformity, the grandeur of the physical universe, have been abandoned, while the fictions and non-entities of delirious mortals have been substituted as the ground of evidence, and the principle of correct conclusion. It was not in the organization of the material world, that man sought for truth, but in the deceptive schemes of religion, which interested zeal imposed upon him. --Elihu Palmer (1764-1806),  Principles of Nature; ...

The facts in the physical world are, many of them, difficult of solution; those of the moral world have perplexed still more the operations of the human understanding. The subtilty, the abstruseness, the incognizable character of moral existence, place it beyond the power of clear intellectual perception, and the mind loses itself in those metaphysical combinations, whose successive variations are incalculable. But the difficulties which nature has thrown in the way of this inquiry are much less numerous than those presented by superstition. A design has been formed, and carried into effect, whose object it was to cover the moral world with a mantle of mystery, and exclude it wholly from the view of vulgar eyes, and common comprehension. It is only necessary to conceal the real nature and character of a thing, and then deformities and distortions may be made to pass for positive properties, or essential qualities inherent in any specific mode of existence. If the subtilty of thought, a...