Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Kirk Watson
Read between
April 22 - April 22, 2021
Knutzen became the first atheist known by name: i.e., the first person in modern times to write or proclaim themselves, publicly and without a pseudonym[4], an atheist. And
For Knutzen, atheism is simply a given, an axiom. God’s existence is denied explicitly, simply, and without arguments.
This same conscience is born with us, and it perishes with us at death. Those are our innate principles: whoever rejects them, rejects himself.
LET THE CHRISTIANS BELIEVE IT, THESE ANOINTED MEN AND WOMEN, not me.
What does the prayer do? I find that the food and drink still tastes great without the prayer.
G. Might you be an atheist and not a Christian? I. That is true; I believe in no God, nor do I accept your Bible, except to refute you: I also say that all priests and authority must be driven from the world, since people can live well without these things.
This conscience, he says, among other explanations, was implanted in our flesh by our good mother, which, in our one life, is our Bible:
TO LIVE HONORABLY; HARM NONE; and TO GIVE TO EACH THEIR OWN.
People lie so much from one house to the next, so how much more will people lie when the thing is far from us, and happened 1673 years ago.
A city is taken only by many at once, and not by single soldiers.
As for Aristotle, we Conscientarians consider him a man of great understanding, but still only a man, who cannot know all things. Aristotle knew nothing about the new world and new islands: but these were no less real in nature.
This is what these people unanimously wrote: that he was of small build, very thin, and had wretched black-brown hair; a very clever fellow, but of a frivolous and impious disposition, and spent his time with Papists in Königsberg.
I now pass to a declared Atheist; and to one of the most impudent of all atheists who ever lived. This is a man named Matthias Knutzen, a native of Oldenswort, in the Duchy of Schleswig.
I’ve read the German dialogues of this ungodly man: they are full of blasphemies and absurdities, and aren’t worth sharing here.
It’s impossible to know, reading this wretched letter, what is more amazing: the stupidity or the impiety of its author.
the extremity of genius, like that of madness, makes everything into a subject of some unusual thought, some insights worth following. They are able to take from the soundest opinions, even from the most bizarre concepts or general truths, things that are new and useful, or new proofs and applications of many truths that are already known.
for, everyone knows that in the quarrels of theologians, as in those of rulers, The argument of the stronger party is always the best one.
This conjecture will seem more likely if we reflect that theologians are very much in the habit of passing silently over the objections they cannot answer, or only mentioning them with disdain, to give the illusion to their readers, most of whom are lazy and more inclined to adopt, without analysis, the opinion that confirms the prejudices they’ve sucked in with their mother’s milk, than the one that destroys them.
they have only fought against his most pressing arguments with the sort of clichés and banal proofs that are found in any course of theology, and which only work in these books, where the task is teaching the art of speaking without saying anything rather than analyzing ideas in an orderly and strict manner, of slicing, as Rabelais puts it, one thread into twelve, but above all of not remaining quiet, and of giving a response to everything well or badly, taliter, qualiter.
The questions on which all these disputes turn are so idle; they have, in our time, been converted into an absurdity so apt to bring them into contempt, that anyone with an ounce of acuteness in their brain, is no longer allowed to busy themselves with any subject relating to theology: sed enim stultas opiniones admodum servari stultum fortasse est.
by showing the reader this long string of more or less bizarre errors, I have neglected nothing that might help him take away only useful impressions from these things, and which might give him a strong sense of the necessity of perfecting his taste, of enlightening his reason to make himself better, and consequently happier: for, this cannot be said too often: there is no rest, no security, no liberty, no happiness without virtue: virtus ad explendam beatam vitam, sola satis efficax.
But when the letters of Knutzen have been read, in which he boldly presents the grounds of his incredulity, it becomes clear that he didn’t think these matters thoroughly enough to inspire the reader with much confidence in his arguments.
Knutzen’s teaching, however, is not much more than an oddity[45] (Einfall), meaningful in opposition against the rigid orthodoxy of the 17th century, but insufficient to serve as the starting-point of a vital reform.
During the era there was never an entire lack of thinkers who, in such a bold undertaking, braved condemnation and sought, on the soil of his own doctrine, to build his own system in his own mind.
The spirit in which the pamphlets are written, is — apart from a few original, moral expressions — the spirit of destruction and of anarchism.
But with Knutzen’s views there is no need for any sort of search for historical connections, since these are such that they can be made everywhere and at all times[49]
Besides, the composer of both dialogues and the letter was, without doubt in practice an atheist, but it is harder to count him among the atheorum speculative talium, since on the question on God’s existence he expresses himself clownishly and clumsily, like a fool.
Knutzen was probably a restless fellow, and his treatment of the sexual question may lead us to conclude that he was excessively sensual. But if we hold this paradoxa on marriage alongside the other political and theological impudence of the man, we have to do him justice, that his overthrowing views were all of a piece.
People like Knutzen come to the denial of God not through any deep searching into nature or philosophy, but only because they are infected by one of those flying spores. Our sources naturally tell us only about those atheists who left any documents behind; it need not be said that their fellows in opinion who left no writings behind, were very numerous.
