Discussion of Thomas Paine's Age of Reason

[AlexBP]

This thread is the book discussion first proposed here. Anybody may join in, provided that they've read the book. The full text of the book can be found here.

I found the book unconvincing but nonetheless well worth reading. The author deserves praise for his writings in support of independence for the colonies. Likewise several of the founding fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, expressed similar ideas during their lifetimes. One can admire their political contributions while still pointing out the failures of their religious views.

Paine believed in one God. He did not believe in Jesus Christ as God nor in any other religion, but instead preached what we'd call deism. He asserted that the true God was known through the majesty of nature alone and not through any separate revelation of communication to humanity. He says:

It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they may be. It is an ever-existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.

Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed! Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, but the Scripture called the Creation.
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Such thinking hasn't exactly taken the world by storm. Atheists and agnostics today rail against this type of stuff, calling it creationism and intelligent design and dismissing it. Even among the religious there are few who'd hold to the ideas Paine put forward. It called to my mind the words of Chesterton:

That rather pleasant and even exciting cry that has been occasionally raised in recent years has been raised once again, the announcement of the New Religion. My criticism of that otherwise admirable diversion has always been, roughly speaking, a complaint that the New Religion was announced as appearing and never appeared.
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Paine predicted in the first section that once the beneficiaries of the various revolutions were free to practice the religion of their choice, they'd reject Christianity and switch to his type of deism. The reverse happened, at least in the America. A generation after his time, de Tocqueville noted that the American people were far more dedicated to Christianity than Europeans. (In the French Revolution things went a bit differently.)

Of course Paine never does stay focused on his new religion for very long, but instead keeps wandering back to the topic of all the things that are wrong with Christianity. In outline Paine's beliefs regarding the life of Jesus would be this: that Jesus "Jesus Christ founded no new [religious] system. He called men to the practice of moral virtues and the belief of one God. The great trait in his character is philanthropy." In Paine's view, then, all that the gospels record Jesus saying about religion and all stories involving miracles were added later and are not genuine. In sections 2 and 3, Paine claims that parts of the gospel were copied from Pagan mythology. Today, no scholar of the Bible or early Christian history believes that Paine's record of gospel origins is correct, regardless of religious outlook.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Atheists and agnostics today rail against this type of stuff

Oh, I wouldn't say that. Sure, I see no need for an invisible and impotent clockmaker, and I would quibble with his admiration of the abundance in a world that is also full of want. But I think his admiration and awe at the universe, and his correct statement that it is there for everyone to read, if only you learn the language with which it speaks, are quite stirring.

The kind of creationism we rail at is the same thing Paine would argue against: "Search not the book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, but the Scripture called the Creation."

Creationists start in Scripture, and having put on their Scripture-colored glasses -- so intensely colored that it often becomes a blindfold -- they can barely see that world which cannot be "forged... counterfeited... lost... altered... [or] suppressed."

I read Age of Reason a year and a half ago, and I don't have the heart to read it all over again for this, but here are the reflections I wrote down at the time:

(Paine's) talent for invective no doubt lifted the spirits of the Americans when it was directed against the King and monarchy. When he turned it on revealed religion, the priesthood, and the Bible in The Age of Reason, it didn't go down so well. It's kind of curious that at the time of publication, Paine was in jail in anticlerical revolutionary France, and narrowly escaped the guillotine, all for the crime of being too moderate for the taste of the Jacobins.

Part I is a fairly clear and compelling presentation of Paine's deism. Revelation is direct communication from God to some person. If that person writes it down, those writings are not revelation.
The only writing of certain Divine authorship is the universe itself, the book of nature. It has been revealed to everyone. God benevolently provided us with life and a bountiful earth.
"And the practice of moral truth, or, in other words, a practical imitation of the moral goodness of God, is no other than our acting toward each other as he acts benignly toward all. We cannot serve God in the manner we serve those who cannot do without such service; and, therefore, the only idea we can have of serving God, is that of contributing to the happiness of the living creation that God has made."
Or more succinctly: "I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow-creatures happy."
Yes, there's some Bible bashing, but it doesn't hold a candle to

Part II, in which Paine puts on his cranky breeches. Perhaps his time in a French jail had altered his mood for the worse, but in Part II he sets about to dismantle the Bible bit by bit, and spares not the rudeness. Speaking of the gospel's treatment of Mary Magdalene's (and an indeterminate number of other women's and/or angels') discovery of the empty tomb: "They all, however, appear to have known most about Mary Magdalene ; she was a woman of a large acquaintance, and it was not an ill conjecture that she might be upon the stroll." Meow!
Or when speaking of the Holy Ghost descending as a dove: "It might as well have said a goose; the creatures are equally harmless, and the one is as much a nonsensical lie as the other."
By no means is it all poop-flinging. He does a lot of rather careful textual criticism as well. But he did keep the poo-bag near the writing desk at all times.

On the more positive side, he again reserves his religious admiration for the book of creation, and the pursuit of science. "The Bible of the creation is inexhaustible in texts. 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."

Vilified as an atheist, Paine was sincerely promoting what he considered true religion.