Thoughts on Paine's "Age of Reason"?

[grumpy old fart]

It seems a pretty thorough treatment of the internal inconsistencies in the old and new testaments. Is there a fundie book with specific refutation of his many points.

[Tux]

1. No

Paine's book is OK but it is too negative. He trashes Christianity and other reveled religions yet barely talks about Deism. The Jefferson Bible is a great Deist book. We need more Deist literature.

[grumpy old fart]

3. What is there to talk about in Deism?

As Paine says, he is a deist in that there "must" be an initial prime mover or creator. But beyond that admission, or recognition, there is no use for God in the everyday world. He is uninvolved. What else is there to discuss, as far as "religion" goes?

[Tux]

4. Advanced Deism

He could have covered morality as determined by a Deist. He also should have covered his views on Deity. And Paine could have related how the 3 revealed religions may have started out as a form of Deism.

[grumpy old fart]

5. I hear you, but to what ends, really?

It would just be putting dressing on what is already complete.

Reminds me of these Creationist, or Intelligent Design folks to whom I always retort: Ok, we accept your theory, now what? It (Creationism, et al) leads nowhere and gives no basis for further scientific inquiry.

[Tux]

6. Yeah but

Why not expand on it? Deists are doing that now as to move from the more basic Deism of the 18th century and make Deism a more complete religion rather than a simple philosophy of religion.

[grumpy old fart]

7. When you move beyond 18th century Deism, you then start down the path.....

of creating the dogma and doctrine that the deists deplored. The is one God, one prime mover. Period. He has no involvement in the world beyond that. If one moves beyond that, one is just setting up human constructs and attempting to impose orthodoxy...

[NAO]

8. The abolishing of detrimental superstition is real point of Age of Reason

The significance of Paine's The Age of Reason was in Paine's statement of what he did NOT believe, and WHY he did not believe it.

from The Age of Reason:

But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit...

Further, The Age of Reason demolishes ALL systems of "Revealed Religion", not just The Bible/Christianity. By pointing out that a book received from a person is NOT a revelation from God, but is HERE-SAY, second-hand, Paine dynamites the foundations of ALL revealed religions.

from The Age of Reason:

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 shows 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 accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word 'revelation.' Revelation when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged to believe it.

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.

When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hand of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so, the commandments carrying no internal evidence of divinity with them. They contain some good moral precepts such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention.

When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven, and brought to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes to near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second hand authority as the former. I did not see the angel myself, and therefore I have a right not to believe it.

When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not even this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves. It is only reported by others that they said so. It is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such evidence...

It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian Church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which was about twenty or thirty thousand. The statue of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes changed into the canonization of saints. The Mythologists had gods for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything. The church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and Rome was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.

Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason - Online
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/age_of_reason/index.shtml

***

Other Freethought Resources

Complete Works of Robert Ingersoll - Online
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/index.shtml

The Freethought Zone
Science and Reason Over Religion and Superstition
http://freethought.freeservers.com /

Freedom from Religion Foundation
http://www.ffrf.org /

Secular Humanism
http://www.secularhumanism.org /

Secular Web
http://www.infidels.org/index.shtml

[orestes]

2. If you like Age of Reason

or any other of Thomas Paine's works (I think Rights of Man is excellent), you should read Voltaire. Specifically, his Philosophical Dictionary and an essay titled The Questions of Zappata. His short stories, such as Candide and Zadig, are also quite good.