Discussion Group Report

"...when opinions are free, either in matters of government or religion, truth will finally and powerfully prevail," declared Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason. "Every part of science, whether connected with the geometry of the universe, with the systems of animal and vegetable life, or with the properties of inanimate matter, is a text as well for devotion as for philosophy--for gratitude as for human improvement. It will perhaps be said, that if such a revolution in the system of religion takes place, every preacher ought to be a philosopher. Most certainly; and every house of devotion a school of science."

Here he shows the optimism for the human race which was characteristic of the Enlightenment, if people would base their search for truth on the use of reason. He strongly emphasized science as the trustworthiest source for knowledge and understanding. As a deist, he argued that the true Bible was the Creation itself, not the Old and New Testaments. He believed in a Creator but denied the interference of the Creator with the laws of the Universe. Perhaps, if he had lived after Darwin's theory of evolution was published, he would have been an unbeliever. He certainly was humanistic in that his ideas centered on human interests and values and stressed an individual's dignity and worth and capacity for self-realization through reason.

The Age of Reason was a brilliant expose of the absurdities, the contradictions, the glorification of tyranny and violence, and the frauds of the Old and New Testaments.

"The disordered state of the history in those four books [The Gospels]," he said, "the silence of one book on matters related in the other, and the disagreement that is to be found among them implies that they are the production of some unconnected individuals, many years after the things they pretend to relate, each of whom made his own legend; and not the writings of men living intimately together, as the men called the apostles are supposed to have done--in fine, that they have been manufactured, as the books in the Old Testament have been, by other persons than those whose names they bear..."

"The story [the fable of Jesus Christ], taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene.

"It gives an account of a young woman engaged to be married, and while under this engagement she is, to speak plain language debauched by a ghost, under the impious pretense that 'the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.' Notwithstanding which, Joseph afterward marries her, cohabits with her as his wife, and in his turn rivals the ghost. This is putting the story into intelligible language, and when told in this manner, there is not a priest but must be ashamed to own it.

"Obscenity in matters of faith, however wrapped up, is always a token of fable and imposture; for it is necessary to our serious belief of God that we do not connect it with stories that run, as this does, into ludicrous interpretations. This story is upon the face of it, the same kind of story as that of Jupiter and Leda, or Jupiter and Europa, or any of the amorous adventures of Jupiter; and shows...that the Christian faith is built upon the heathen mythology..."

"Were any girl that is now with child to say, and even to swear it, that she was gotten with child by a ghost, and that an angel told her so, would she be believed? Of course not. Why then are we to believe the same thing of another girl, whom we never saw, told by nobody knows who, nor when, nor where. How strange and inconsistent it is, that the same circumstance that would weaken the belief even of a probable story should be given as a motive for believing this one, that has upon the face of it every token of absolute impossibility and imposture!"

One of the Founding Fathers of our nation, Paine wrote the marvelous pamphlets that played so important a role in stirring up the people to rebel against the British in the American Revolution, and then he went to France to support their Revolution. He was imprisoned under horrible conditions and almost lost his life when he took a humanitarian stance against executing the aristocracy. After returning to America, he was reviled and persecuted for his views about religion and ignored by such luminaries as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Yet his influence in behalf of liberty, democracy, and science, as well as against the tyranny that comes from a lack of separation of church and state, has been significant.