  Holbach was notorious in the 18th century for his atheism and for his criticisms of Christianity. Indeed today these topics most frequently engage philosophers and historians who study Holbach (see Kors 2005 and Fonnesu 2006, for example), and Holbach continues to be a hero of defenders of atheism, including the popular philosopher Michel Onfrey. There is no doubt that a great deal of what Holbach wrote was inflammatory and intended to be so. However, the fact that at least some of his polemics, furious though they may have been, arose in the context of developing an account of virtue should mitigate the impression of Holbach as a purely destructive thinker or (merely) a lover of scandal. His criticism of religion, and of Catholicism in particular, is founded at least in part in the conviction that religion is the source of vice and unhappiness and that virtue can only be fostered in people who seek to preserve themselves in the world of their immediate acquaintance: