In the preface, the author reports that during his lifetime he could not openly express his thoughts on how to control people and their religions, since this would be fraught with very dangerous and unfortunate consequences. The purpose of this work is to expose those ridiculous errors, among which everyone had the misfortune to be born and live - the author himself had to support them. This unpleasant duty did not give him any pleasure - as his friends could notice, he performed it with great disgust and rather casually.

From a young age, the author saw misconceptions and abuses from which all evil in the world comes, and over the years he became even more convinced of the blindness and anger of people, the senselessness of their superstitions, and the injustice of their way of governing. Having penetrated the secrets of the cunning policy of ambitious people seeking power and honor, the author easily unraveled the source and origin of superstition and bad governance - in addition, he realized why people who are considered intelligent and educated do not mind such an outrageous order of things. The source of all evils and all deceptions lies in the subtle politics of those who seek to rule over their neighbors or who wish to acquire the vain glory of holiness. These people not only skillfully use violence, but also resort to all sorts of tricks to stupefy the people. Abusing the weakness and gullibility of the dark and helpless masses of people, they easily make it believe that it is beneficial for themselves, and then reverently adopt tyrannical laws. Although at first glance religion and politics are opposite and contradictory in their principles, they get along well with each other as soon as they conclude an alliance and friendship: they can be compared with two stealing pickpockets. Religion supports even the most evil government, and the government, in turn, supports even the most stupid religion.

Any cult and worship of the gods is error, abuse, illusion, deception and quackery. All decrees and decrees issued by the name and authority of a god or gods are human inventions, just like magnificent festivities, sacrifices, and other religious acts performed in honor of idols or gods. All this was invented by cunning and subtle politicians, used and multiplied by false prophets and charlatans, blindly taken for granted by fools and ignoramuses, enshrined in the laws of sovereigns and powers that be. The truth of the foregoing will be proved with the help of clear and intelligible arguments based on eight proofs of the futility and falsity of all religions.

The first proof is based on the fact that all religions are human fabrication. It is impossible to admit their divine origin, for they all contradict one another and themselves condemn each other. Consequently, these various religions cannot be true and stem from the supposedly divine principle of truth. That is why the Roman Catholic followers of Christ are convinced that there is only one true religion - their own. They consider the following to be the main point of their teaching and their faith: there is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one church, namely the apostolic Roman Catholic Church, outside of which, they claim, there is no salvation. From this, we can clearly conclude that all other religions were created by man. They say that the first invented these imaginary gods was Nin, the son of the first king of the Assyrians, and this happened around the time of the birth of Isaac or, according to the Jews, in 2001 from the creation of the world. It is said that after the death of his father, Nin gave him an idol (who received the name of Jupiter shortly after), and demanded that everyone worship this idol, as God - in this way all kinds of idolatry occurred, which later spread on the earth.

The second proof proceeds from the fact that blind faith is the basis of all religions - a source of error, illusion and deception. None of the worshipers of Christ can prove, with the help of clear, reliable, and convincing arguments, that his religion is truly an established religion by God. That is why they have been arguing among themselves for many centuries on this issue and even pursue each other with fire and sword, protecting each of their beliefs. Exposing a false Christian religion will be both a sentence and all other absurd religions. True Christians believe that faith is the beginning and foundation of salvation. However, this crazy faith is always blind and is a disastrous source of unrest and eternal schism among people. Each stands for his religion and its sacred secrets, not for reasons of reason, but out of perseverance - there is no such atrocity that people would not have resorted to under the beautiful and specious pretext of protecting the imaginary truth of their religion. But one cannot believe that the omnipotent, all-good and wise god, whom the Christ worshipers themselves call the god of love, peace, mercy, comfort, etc., wished to establish a religion on such a fateful and destructive source of unrest and eternal strife - blind faith is a thousand and a thousand times more pernicious, than the golden apple thrown by the goddess of discord at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, which then became the cause of the death of the city and kingdom of Troy.

The third proof is derived from the falsity of visions and divine revelations. If in modern times a man decided to boast of something like that, he would be considered a crazy freak. Where is the appearance of a deity in these clumsy dreams and empty imaginations? Imagine this example: several foreigners, such as Germans or Swiss, will come to France and, having seen the most beautiful provinces of the kingdom, will announce that God appeared to them in their country, ordered them to go to France and promised to give them and their descendants all the beautiful lands and patrimony from the Rhone and the Rhine to the ocean, promised them to make an eternal alliance with them and their descendants, bless all the peoples of the earth in them, and as a sign of their union with them, ordered them to circumcise themselves and all male babies born to them and their offspring . Will there be a person who does not laugh at this nonsense and does not consider these foreigners crazy? But the tales of the supposedly holy patriarchs of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob deserve no more serious treatment than these aforementioned nonsense. And if three venerable patriarchs had told about their visions today, they would have turned into a universal laughing stock. However, these imaginary revelations expose themselves, for they are given only in favor of individuals and one people. It cannot be believed that God, who is supposed to be infinitely good, perfect, and just, would commit such an outrageous injustice towards other people and nations. False covenants expose themselves in three other respects: 1) the vulgar, shameful and ridiculous sign of the imaginary union of God with people; 2) the cruel custom of the bloody slaughter of innocent animals and the barbaric command of God to Abraham to sacrifice his own son to him; 3) the apparent failure to fulfill the beautiful and generous promises that God, according to Moses, made to the three named patriarchs. For the Jewish people were never numerous - on the contrary, they were noticeably inferior in numbers to other peoples. And the remnants of this miserable nation are now considered the most insignificant and despicable people in the world, having nowhere their territory and their own state. Jews do not even own that country, which, they claim, is promised and given to them by God for eternal times. All this clearly proves that the so-called holy books were not inspired by God.

The fourth proof follows from the falsity of imaginary promise and prophecy. Christ worshipers argue that only God can confidently foresee and predict the future long before its onset. They also assure that the future was announced by the prophets. What were these God's people, who supposedly spoke on the inspiration of the holy spirit? They were either hallucinatory fanatics or deceivers who pretended to be prophets to make it easier to drive dark and ordinary people by the nose. There is a genuine sign to recognize false prophets: every prophet whose predictions do not come true, but, on the contrary, turn out to be false, is not a true prophet. For example, the famous Moses promised and prophesied to his people on behalf of God that he would be especially chosen from God, that God would sanctify and bless him above all the peoples of the earth and give him the land of Canaan and neighboring regions - all these beautiful and alluring promises turned out to be false. The same can be said about the great prophecies of King David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Amos, Zechariah and all others. Fifth proof: a religion that admits, approves, and even permits error in its teaching and morality cannot be a divine institution. The Christian religion, and especially its Roman sect, admits, approves and resolves five misconceptions: 1) it teaches that there is only one god, and at the same time obliges to believe that there are three divine persons, of which each is a true god, and this threefold and a single god has neither a body, nor a form, nor any image; 2) she ascribes divinity to Jesus Christ, a mortal man who, even in the image of the evangelists and disciples, was just a miserable fanatic, a possessed seducer and an unfortunate hangman; 3) she orders to read miniature idols from the dough, which are baked between two iron sheets, sanctified and tasted daily as god and savior; 4) she proclaims that God created Adam and Eve in a state of bodily and spiritual perfection, but then expelled both from paradise and doomed all life's adversities, as well as an eternal curse with all their offspring; 5) finally, under pain of eternal damnation, she obliges to believe that God took pity on people and sent them a savior who voluntarily accepted the shameful death on the cross, in order to atone for their sins and to shed his blood to give satisfaction to the justice of the god-father, who was deeply offended by the disobedience of the first person .

The sixth proof: a religion that tolerates and approves abuses contrary to justice and good governance, encouraging even the tyranny of the powers that be to the detriment of the people, cannot be true and truly God-established, for divine laws and regulations must be fair and impartial. The Christian religion tolerates and encourages at least five or six such abuses: 1) it sanctifies the enormous inequality between different conditions and the situation of people, when some are born only to dominate and enjoy all the pleasures of life forever, while others are doomed to be poor, unhappy and despicable slaves; 2) it allows the existence of entire categories of people who do not bring real benefits to the world and serve only as a burden to the people - this countless army of bishops, abbots, chaplains and monks earns tremendous wealth, tearing from their hands honest workers hard earned by their sweat; 3) it is reconciled with the unjust appropriation of the wealth and wealth of the land into private ownership, which all people should have owned together and used in the same position; 4) it justifies unfounded, outrageous and insulting differences between families - as a result, people with a higher position want to use this advantage and imagine that they have a higher price than everyone else; 5) she establishes the indissolubility of the marriage until the death of one of the spouses, which results in an infinite number of unsuccessful marriages in which husbands feel like unhappy martyrs with evil wives or wives feel like unhappy martyrs with evil husbands; 6) finally, the Christian religion sanctifies and supports the most terrible error, which makes most people completely unhappy for life - we are talking about the almost universal tyranny of the greats of this world. The sovereigns and their first ministers set the main rule for themselves to bring the peoples to exhaustion, to make them poor and miserable, in order to lead to greater humility and to deprive them of any opportunity to do anything against the government. The people of France are in a particularly difficult situation, for the last of its kings went further than all the others in asserting their absolute power and brought their subjects to the very extreme poverty. No one shed so much blood, was not responsible for the killing of so many people, did not force widows and orphans to shed so many tears, did not ruin and devastated as many cities and provinces as the late King Louis XIV, nicknamed the Great by no means for any laudable or glorious deeds, which he never committed, and for the great injustices, seizures, theft, devastation, ruin and beating of people that occurred through his fault everywhere - both on land and at sea.

The seventh proof proceeds from the falsity of the very idea of ​​people about the imaginary existence of God. From the provisions of modern metaphysics, physics and morality, it is completely obvious that there is no supreme being, therefore, people completely and incorrectly use the name and authority of God to establish and protect the errors of their religion, as well as to maintain the tyrannical domination of their kings. It is perfectly clear where the original faith in the gods comes from. The story of the imaginary creation of the world definitely indicates that the God of Jews and Christians talked, reasoned, walked and walked through the garden neither to give nor take as an ordinary person - it also says that God created Adam in his own image. Therefore, it is very likely that the imaginary god was a sly man who wanted to laugh at the innocence and uncouthness of his comrade - Adam, apparently, was a rare traitor and a fool, so he easily succumbed to the persuasion of his wife and the crafty deceit of the serpent. Unlike the imaginary god, matter undoubtedly exists, for it is found everywhere, is in everything, everyone can see and feel it. What then is the incomprehensible mystery of creation? The more you think about the various properties that a supposed higher being has to endow, the more you get entangled in a maze of obvious contradictions. The situation is completely different with the system of the natural formation of things from matter itself, so it is much easier to recognize it as the very root cause of everything that exists. There is no force that would create something out of nothing - this means that time, place, space, extension and even matter itself could not be created by an imaginary god.

The proof of the eighth follows from the falsity of ideas about the immortality of the soul. If the soul, as Christ worshipers say, were purely spiritual, it would have no body, no parts, no shape, no shape, no extension - therefore, it would not be anything real, nothing substantial. However, the soul, animating the body, gives it strength and movement, so it must have a body and extension, because the essence of being is this.If you ask what becomes of this mobile and subtle matter at the time of death, you can say without hesitation that it instantly dissipates and dissolves in the air, like light vapor and easy exhalation - much like the flame of a candle fades away by itself after depletion combustible material that it feeds on. There is another very tangible proof of the materiality and mortality of the human soul: it grows stronger and weaker as it strengthens and weakens the human body - if it were an immortal substance, its strength and power would not depend on the structure and condition of the body.

The author considers the ninth and final proof of the consistency of the eight previous ones: according to him, not a single argument or argument is destroying or refuting each other - on the contrary, they support and confirm each other. This is a sure sign that they all rely on the firm and solid foundation of the truth itself, since an error in such a question could not find confirmation in the full agreement of such strong and irresistible arguments.

Addressing in conclusion to all the peoples of the earth, the author urges people to forget the feuds, unite and rebel against common enemies - tyranny and superstition. Even one of the supposedly holy books says that God will overthrow the proud princes from the throne and put the humble in their place. If the arrogant parasites are deprived of plentiful nutritious juice, delivered by the efforts and efforts of the people, they will dry out like herbs and plants, whose roots are deprived of the opportunity to absorb the juices of the earth, dry up. Likewise, one must get rid of the empty rites of false religions. There is only one true religion - this is the religion of wisdom and purity of morals, honesty and decency, heartfelt sincerity and nobility of the soul, determination to completely destroy the tyranny and superstitious cult of the gods, the desire to maintain justice everywhere and protect people's freedom, conscientious work and well-being life of all together , mutual love for each other and indestructible peace. People will find happiness by following the rules, foundations, and commandments of this religion. They will remain miserable and unhappy slaves as long as they tolerate the domination of tyrants and abuse of delusions.