Men are naturally disposed to listen to, and believe those who make them hope for an end to their miseries. Misfortunes render them timorous and cred… - Baron d'Holbach

It is thus superstition infatuates man from his infancy, fills him with vanity, and enslaves him with fanaticism.

To wonder at the order of nature, is to wonder that any thing can exist; it is to be surprised at one's own existence.

Jesus caused a fig-tree to die in twenty-four hours to punish it for not producing figs at a season when it was physically impossible for it to bear any; that is about the month of March. As all the actions of the messiah, even when they appear foolish to ordinary men, have an important signification in the eyes of devotees illuminated by faith, we ought to perceive in the miracle of this fig-tree one of the fundamental dogmas of the Christian religion symbolically represented. The fig-tree cursed is the mass of mankind, whom, according to our theologists, the God of mercy curses, and condemns to eternal flames, for having neither faith nor grace, which they could not possibly acquire of themselves, and which God does not seem to have been willing to give them. Thus we find that the ridiculous passage of the fig-tree in the gospel, is intended to typify one of the most profound dogmas of the Christian religion.