of
public opinion of the time of Spinoza. "He was the arch-atheist, the
materialist, the subverter of all that was held most dear by the
reigning powers. It was only after the French Revolution that he came
into his own when certain Germans, captivated by Neo-Platonism,
emphasized the pantheistic element in him. But by then Christianity had
ceased to be a dominant intellectual force and had become what it is
today, a folk belief." In the "Tractus Theologico-Politicus," Spinoza
states: "When people declare, as all are ready to do, that the Bible is
the Word of God teaching men true blessedness and the way of salvation,
they evidently do not mean what they say, for the masses take no pains
at all to live according to Scripture, and we see most people
endeavoring to hawk about their own commentaries as the word of God, and
giving their best efforts, under the guise of religion, to compelling
others to think as they do. We generally see, I say, theologians
anxious to learn how to wring their inventions and sayings out of the
sacred text, and to fortify them with divine authority."

In France, Pierre Bayle cleverly satirized the absurdity of dogma, and
La Mettrie, an army physician, was exiled for the publication of his
"Man a Machine." He insisted that if atheism were generally accepted
society would be happier. His views were taken up and expanded by such
atheists as Helvetius, d'Holbach, d'Alembert, and Diderot, who taught
that morality should be founded on sociology and not on theology. The
publication of their Encyclopaedia incurred the fierce opposition of the
Church. Of Voltaire's anti-clericism little need be said, except to
recall our debt to his victory over ecclesiasticism and superstition.
His assertion that "a fanaticism composed of superstition and ignorance
has been the sickness of all the centuries," still holds too great an
extent of truth. His denial of miracles, the supernatural efficacy of
prayer, and the immortality of the soul earned for him the undying
enmity of the clergy. Condorcet, another deist, was the successor of
Voltaire in the Encyclopaedic warfare.

The "Critique of Pure Reason" of Kant demolished the ontological and the
cosmological arguments for the existence of God and showed the weakness
in the teleological argument. He demonstrated that all the current
arguments for God and immortality; the entire basis of rational proof of
religious beliefs; were invalid. The theists protested vehemen