“The Age of Reason” Tom Paine’s SMACKDOWN on Organized Religion [View All]

[McCamy Taylor]

Right now, two oppressed groups are under attack by organized religion. At first glance, they appear to have little in common. Gays in California recently lost their right to marry the partners they love, thanks to the meddling of a lot of non-gays who objected on religious grounds. Never mind that it was none of the non-gays’ business. They claimed that their “faith” made it their business. And Palestinians living in Gaza have lost their right to live, because Israelis believe that they have a divine mandate to occupy the entire Holy Land —and they can direct you to the appropriate passages of the Torah to prove their point. The worst part about the whole inhumane tragedy is that those people who would normally stand up for the rights of the oppressed if we were talking about Latino immigrants or Tibetan monks are keeping mum---or even censoring the free speech of those who dare to speak out in sympathy ---because they are scared of being labeled “intolerant of religion.”

Hasn’t it occurred to the members of the spineless left why you guys are so scared to say a halfway critical word about Christianity or Judaism or Islam? You are worried that the religious mafia will sic its enforcers on you.

Maybe when organized religion gets some tolerance, the rest of us can be tolerant back.

Quoting William Burroughs “But a wise old Black faggot told me years ago ‘Some people are shits, darling.’”

Two hundred years ago, it was much harder to criticize organized religion than it is now, but Founding Father Thomas Paine dared to do it in The Age of Reason . Back then, progressives had spines.

Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.
Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.
Tom Paine The Age of Reason
http://www.ushistory.org/PAINE/reason/reason1.htm

Note that Paine writes about “national religion”. In his earlier writing, he praised the private practice of religion which he believed could assist in moral living. In The Age of Reason he says the ideal spiritual life

consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God, manifested in the creation toward all his creatures. That seeing, as we daily do, the goodness of God to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practise the same toward each other; and, consequently, that everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty. Tom Paine

The Bible, on the other hand, Paine believed to be a pack of lies.

There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice as anything done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as history itself shows, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women, and children; that they left not a soul to breathe — expressions that are repeated over and over again in those books, and that, too, with exulting ferocity — are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned these things to be done? and are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority?
Snip
To charge the commission of acts upon the Almighty, which, in their own nature, and by every rule of moral justice, are crimes, as all assassination is, and more especially the assassination of infants, is matter of serious concern. The Bible tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express command of God. To believe, therefore, the Bible to be true, we must unbelieve all our belief in the moral justice of God; for wherein could crying or smiling infants offend? Tom Paine

Paine analyzes the Old Testament and the New in great detail and concludes that both texts are inconsistent. He declares it impossible that the benevolent deity could ever decree or smile upon the acts of violence described within the Old Testament. This, he asserts, means that the laws and other writings contained within the document are false. As for the New Testament and Christianity:

Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by the sword; but of what period of time do they speak? It was impossible that twelve men could begin with the sword; they had not the power; but no sooner were the professors of Christianity sufficiently powerful to employ the sword, than they did so, and the stake and fagot, too; and Mahomet could not do it sooner. By the same spirit that Peter cut off the ear of the high priest's servant (if the story be true), he would have cut off his head, and the head of his master, had he been able. Besides this, Christianity grounds itself originally upon the Bible, and the Bible was established altogether by the sword, and that in the worst use of it — not to terrify, but to extirpate. The Jews made no converts; they butchered all. The Bible is the sire of the Testament, and both are called the word of God. The Christians read both books; the ministers preach from both books; and this thing called Christianity is made up of both. It is then false to say that Christianity was not established by the sword.

It is no accident that the dominant religion of a country founded upon the slaughter of an indigenous people is based upon a holy text which glorifies the slaughter of...indigenous peoples and the theft of their property and land. What "God's chosen" did in Canaan, the newly arrived Europeans did in the Americas, to the Cherokees on the Trail of Tears, when they decided to liberate gold from Cherokee land in north Georgia. Later, they aped "God's chosen" during the Massacre at Sand Creek, when Union Forces had a "great victory" against a bunch of women, children and old Cheyenne who had gathered to negotiate a peace treaty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_Creek_Massacre

My, isn't Christianity efficient when it comes to getting rid of heathens! It is no wonder that America is sympathetic to Israel's plight. We know all about how hard it can be to clear the land of pesky indigenous people that stand in the way of progress. That must be why Congress voted to support Israel in its efforts in Gaza.

The imposition of religion onto the workings of government can cause everything from ritual killing (the death penalty) to the outlawing of proven medical remedies like marijuana to social polices that doom our girls to underage pregnancy to wealth disparity. It can be used to justify policies that discriminate on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and (of course) religion.

And religion always claims that it is above all laws, including the laws of common human decency and morality. Because God works in mysterious ways. And people get seized by religious fervor. And no one wants to be accused of being unChristian, even if the Christian thing to do in the circumstances is to slap the guy calling himself a Christian in the face and tell him Hell, no!

Tom Paine was right. You have to watch out for religion. Some of the worst con jobs of all will come disguised as the Will of God---and no one will dare to say a damn thing about it.

Religion has its place, but its place is never at the head of an army or in the legislature or making public policy. Spirituality comes from the hearts and minds of the individual people who make up a society. When an organized group decides to launch a scheme and they claim "We have God's blessing so don't bother your head about the details", that is when you need to do some especially hard thinking.