Thomas Paines Age of Reason
by John Edwards and Al Seckel

Most Americans are at least partly aware of Thomas Paines importance as one of the leading Founding Fathers and of his tremendous contributions to American Independence. Most people, however, are unaware of his long struggles against organized religion and his fight to ensure a proper separation between Church and State in America.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) authored several great classics in the history of independent thought. His Common Sense, published in 1776, contained the first reasoned argument for the American Revolution. Almost overnight this work convinced the Colonists that only revolution would assure their rights and freedoms.

In 1794 Paine wrote a revolutionary book of a different kind, one destined to become a classic of freethought -- The Age or Reason. An expose of the Bible, it points out the numerous contradictions, errors of fact, absurdities, and atrocities that are contained in both the Old and New Testaments.

In modern times when Bible thumping "moral majoritarians" are calling for a return to their version of the philosophies of our Founding Fathers, it is time that we reexamine the uncommon sense of one of the most prominent of them. All quotations are from Thomas Paines Age of Reason.

The Bible

It has often been said, that anything may be proved from the Bible, but before anything can be admitted as proved by the Bible, the Bible itself must be proved to be true; for if the Bible be not true, or the truth of it be doubtful, it ceases to have authority, and cannot be admitted as proof of anything. [p. 103]

It is not the antiquity of a tale that is any evidence of its truth; on the contrary, it is a symptom of its being fabulous; for the more ancient any history pretends to be the more it has the resemblance of a fable. The origin of every nation is buried in fabulous tradition, and that of the Jews is to be suspected as any other.
[p. 104]

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half of the Bible if filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel. [p. 60]

As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly scattered in these books, they make no part of this pretended thing, revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience, and the bonds by which society is held together, and without which it cannot exist, and are nearly the same in all religions and in all societies. [p. 183]

It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bible, and of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on the world as a mass of truth and as the Word of God; they have disputed and wrangled, and anathematized each other about the supposable meaning of particular parts and passages therein; one has said and insisted that such a passage meant such a thing; another that it meant directly the contrary, and a third that it meant neither one nor the other, but something different from both; and this they have called understanding the Bible. [p. 103]

Revelation

Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God...Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all. [p. 51]

But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person,... When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third,...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. [p. 52]

Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon earth, of which man himself is the actor of the witness; and consequently all the historical and anecdotal parts of the Bible, which is almost the whole of it, it [sic] not within the meaning and compass of the word revelation and therefore, is not the Word of God.
[p. 59]

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. [p. 182]

Jesus

The book of Matthew gives a genealogy by name from David up through Joseph, the husband of Mary, to Christ; and makes there to be twenty-eight generations. The book of Luke gives also a genealogy by name from Christ through Joseph, the husband of Mary , down to David, and makes there to be forty-three generations; besides which, there are only the two names of David and Joseph that are alike in the two lists...If his natural genealogy be manufactured, which it certainly is, why are we not to suppose that his celestial genealogy is manufactured also, and that the whole is fabulous? [p. 158]

Had it been the object or the intention of Jesus Christ to establish a new religion, he would undoubtedly have written the system himself, or procured it to be written in his life-time. But there is no publication extant authenticated with his name. All the books called the New Testament were written after his death.
[p. 63]

Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in heaven, in which none of the combatants could be either killed or wounded--put Satan into the pit--let him out again--gave him a triumph over the whole of creation--damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, these Christian Mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together. They represent this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at once both God and Man, and also the Son of God, celestially begotten, on purpose to be sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her longing had eaten an apple. [p. 56]

Had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is, had they represented the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit himself on a cross, in the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his new transgression, the story would have been less absurd--less contradictory. But instead of this, they make the transgressor triumph, and the Almighty fall. [p. 57]

Are we to suppose that every world in the boundless creation had an Eve, an apple, a serpent and a redeemer? In this case, the person who is irreverently called the Son of God, and sometimes God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of deaths, with scarcely a momentary interval of life. [p. 90]

After the sermon [redemption by the death of the Son of God]...I revolted at the recollection of what I had heard, and thought to myself that it was making God Almighty act like a passionate man who killed His son when He could not revenge Himself in any other way, and as I was sure a man would be hanged who did such a thing, I could not see for what purpose they preached such sermons...I moreover believe that any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system. [p.83]

Churches

All National institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish [Islamic], appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. [p.50]

Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies are in general the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches. [p. 184]

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. ...As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.
[p. 186]

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 mind is my own church. [p. 50]

References
1. Foner, Philip S., The Life and Major Writings of Thomas Paine, New Jersey,
Citadel Press, 1974.
2. Paine, Thomas, The Age of Reason, New Jersey, Citadel Press, 1974.

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