Peter Adamson
speaker
1,322 appearances
7 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard yesterday
Peter Adamson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.
Appearances
And elsewhere in On the Comet, he seems to accept the possibility of genuine altruism on the part of unbelievers.
It is just as easy for an atheist to deprive himself of pleasure in order to help another person as it is for an idolator to utter a false oath.
A somewhat different impression is given by the first clarification in the dictionary, which takes up precisely this question of whether atheists can be good.
Here, Bale retrenches to a position more like that of La Roche Foucault, saying that ancient pagans and atheists who acted well did not have true virtue, but only performed good actions out of self love.
He piously assures us that in his view, there is no true virtue at all outside this religion.
But as the clarification goes on, Bale nonchalantly remarks that in the dictionary, he has been at pains to mention bad behavior by atheists whenever possible, but there's little historical evidence of such behavior.
Admittedly, this is mostly for lack of atheists to discuss, but he provocatively adds that criminals put to death for heinous crimes do somehow always seem to be believers in God.
And we know from Bale's other writings that for him, moral conscience is due to reason and not faith.
The principles of good conduct are universal and need not be grounded in a grasp of God.
Just as atheists can do mathematical proofs with no impediment, so they can do the right thing.
It makes no difference whether, upon metaphysical reflection, we think that mathematical and moral truths are somehow grounded in the divine essence.
According to Bale then, atheists can behave just as well as Christians.
But it would perhaps be more accurate to say that they'd behave no worse than Christians, which would not be saying much.
Like Meslier, Belle was outraged by the violence between Christians.
But rather than taking it to invalidate the religion directly, he argued passionately for the value of religious tolerance.
Here, another work of Baal's must take central stage, his philosophical commentary on a line in the Bible, in which Jesus says that people should be compelled to enter through a door before they are locked out.
Augustine and others had interpreted this to mean that the church may use coercion to force people to join and participate in the true religion.
Against this, Bale, again like Messlier, points to the multiplicity of religions.
Since all believers take their own religion to be the true one, they could all equally see themselves as justified in forcing their faith upon others.
This is a recipe for disaster, indeed, precisely the sort of disaster befalling Europe at the time.
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