#jean meslier

[amateursatanologist]

"if God Himself was not able to render human nature sinless, what right had He to punish men for not being sinless?" – Jean Meslier

[redshift-13]

Jean Meslier

(1664-1729)

"was a French Catholic priest (abbé) who was discovered, upon his death, to have written a book-length philosophical essay promoting atheism and materialism. Described by the author as his "testament" to his parishioners, the text criticizes and denounces all religions." -wikipedia

How astonishing that the prevailing historiography finds no place for an atheist priest in the reign of Louis XIV. More than that, he was a revolutionary communist and internationalist, an avowed materialist, a convinced hedonist, an authentically passionate and vindictively, anti-Christian prophet, but also, and above all, a philosopher in every sense of the word, a philosopher proposing a vision of the world that is coherent, articulated, and defended step by step before the tribunal of the world, without any obligation to conventional Western reasoning.       Jean Meslier under his cassock contained all the dynamite at the core of the 18th century. This priest with no reputation and without any memorial furnishes an ideological arsenal of the thought of the Enlightenment's radical faction, that of the ultras, all of whom, drinking from his fountain, innocently pretend to be ignorant of his very name. A number of his theses earn for his borrowers a reputation only won by usurping his work. Suppressed references prevent the reverence due to him.       His work? Just a single book, but what a book! A monster of more than a thousand manuscript pages, written with a goose quill pen under the glimmer of the fireplace and candles in an Ardennes vicarage between the so-called Great Century and the one following, called the Enlightenment, which he endorsed, by frequent use of the word, the sealed fate of the 18th century. A handwritten book, never published during the lifetime of its author, probably read by no one other than by its conceiver. A book put out of shape, pillaged, travestied, mutilated after his death. A doomed book of a doomed author; a brilliant book by a brilliant thinker….

-Michel Onfray, "Jean Meslier and "The Gentle Inclination of Nature"", newpol.org/issue_post/jean-meslier-and-gentle-inclination-nature/

("Unite yourselves, therefore, O peoples! Completely shake off the yoke of those who oppress you!

Matter cannot have been created. It possesses its being and its movement inherently.")

Meslier's philosophy was that of an atheist.[11] He also denied the existence of the soul and dismissed the notion of free will. In Chapter V, the priest writes, "If God is incomprehensible to man, it would seem rational never to think of Him at all". Meslier later describes God as "a chimera" and argues that the supposition of God is not prerequisite to morality. In fact, he concludes that "Whether there exists a God or not … men's moral duties will always be the same so long as they possess their own nature". In chapters XXXIII and XXXIV, Meslier challenged Jesus' mental health by implying that Jesus "was really a madman, a fanatic" (étoit véritablement un fou, un insensé, un fanatique). Meslier wrote that kings and religion were the root cause of the suffering of the common people.[5] In his most famous quote, Meslier refers to a man who "wished that all the great men in the world and all the nobility could be hanged, and strangled with the guts of the priests."[14] Meslier admits that the statement may seem crude and shocking, but comments that this is what the priests and nobility deserve, not for reasons of revenge or hatred, but for love of justice and truth.[15] Equally well-known is the version by Diderot: "And [with] the guts of the last priest let's strangle the neck of the last king."[16] During the political unrest of May 1968, the radical students of the Sorbonne Occupation Committee paraphrased Meslier's epigram, stating that "humanity won’t be happy till the last capitalist is hung with the guts of the last bureaucrat." Meslier also vehemently attacked social injustice and sketched out a kind of rural proto-communism.[11] All the people in a region would belong to a commune in which wealth would be held in common, and everybody would work. Founded on love and brotherhood, the communes would ally to help each other and preserve peace.[18] An opponent of cruelty to animals, Meslier wrote that "it is an act of cruelty, of barbarism, to kill, to strike unconscious, and to cut the throat of animals, who do no harm to anyone, the way we do." He considered the lack of compassion and concern by Christians for animal suffering at the hands of man to be, according to Matthieu Ricard, further proof of "the nonexistence, or the malice, of their God." -wikipedia

[bocadosdefilosofia]

«¡Cómo, señores cartesianos, porque los animales no podrían hablar en latín o en francés como vosotros, y porque no podrían expresarse en vuestro lenguaje para deciros sus pensamientos y para explicaros sus deseos, sus dolores y sus males al igual que sus placeres y sus alegrías, los miráis como puras máquinas privadas de conocimiento y de sentimientos! ¡Con esta condición, también os haríais creer fácilmente que unos iraquíes y unos japoneses, e incluso que unos españoles y unos alemanes, sólo serían puras máquinas inanimadas, privadas de conocimiento y sentimiento, en la medida que no entendiéramos nada de sus lenguajes y hablaran como nosotros! ¿En qué pensáis, señores cartesianos? ¿No veis bastante claramente que los animales de una misma especie se entienden unos con otros, unos a otros? ¿No veis bastante manifiestamente que se asocian entre ellos, que se conocen y se hablan unos con otros, que se aman, que se acarician unos a otros, que juegan y se divierten bastante a menudo juntos, y que algunas veces se odian, se pelean y no se soportarían unos a otros al igual que unos hombres que se odian y no se soportarían unos a otros?»

Jean Meslier: Crítica de la religión y del Estado. Ediciones Península, pág. 201. Barcelona, 1978

TGO

@bocadosdefilosofia

@dias-de-la-ira-1

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

[cure-your-delusions]

[in-the-uncertain-hour]

A volte si chiudono gli occhi e capita di vedere colori tenui, inondano il campo visivo e concludono il mondo come le pareti di una cella dipinta per tenere calmi i matti. Quando ho preso i miei primi psichedelici vedevo quei curiosi pattern geometrici, e così magari aveva ragione Pitagora, sul fondo di tutto ci sono numeri, frattali, geometrie. Sono rimasto deluso. In fondo c’è un solo sentimento che definisce tutta la vita, e il mio è la delusione. Jean Meslier, vi ricordate, ha fatto il prete per quarant’anni in un paesino francese, poi aprono il suo testamento e trovano 600 e rotte pagine in cui nega l’esistenza di Dio, dell’anima, dei miracoli. Un monumento alla delusione. Che poi immaginate, per quarant’anni fare il prete ogni giorno e accumulare delusione, tenersela dentro e apparire normale, dare l’ostia, confessare, benedire i malati. Poi scrivere che è tutto sbagliato. Scrivere, dice Simenon, è una vocazione di infelicità. Poi Meslier scrive che i poveri dovrebbero ribellarsi contro gli oppressori, impiccare l’ultimo re con le budella dell’ultimo prete, dice. Ovviamente, la delusione come un cane dell’inferno lo insegue oltre la morte: si sono ribellati i poveri, ed è andata peggio di prima. Hanno scritto il suo nome fuori dal Cremlino, fra quelli dei grandi socialisti. La beffa finale. La faccenda qui è che tutto delude, il mondo, gli uomini, le idee, i sentimenti. L’universo è questa macchina del caffè scassata. 

[rd-frost]

[sensiblephilosophy]

Think hard about the reasons for believing and not believing, what your religion teaches you and demands so inexorably that you believe. I am convinced that if you follow closely the natural light of your spirit, you will see ... that all the religions in the world are only human inventions and that everything your religion teaches you and forces you to believe as supernatural and divine is at heart only error, lie, illusion and trickery.

Jean Meslier, French Catholic priest who lived between 1664–1729