The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine

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_Maksutov
_Emeritus
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Joined: Thu Mar 07, 2013 8:19 pm

Re: The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine

Post by _Maksutov »

If we consider the nature of our condition here, we must see there
is no occasion for such a thing as revealed religion. What is it we
want to know? Does not the creation, the universe we behold, preach
to us the existence of an Almighty Power that governs and regulates
the whole? And is not the evidence that this creation holds out to our
senses infinitely stronger than anything we can read in a book that
any impostor might make and call the word of God? As for morality,
the knowledge of it exists in every man's conscience.

Here we are. The existence of an Almighty Power is sufficiently
demonstrated to us, though we cannot conceive, as it is impossible
we should, the nature and manner of its existence. We cannot
conceive how we came here ourselves, and yet we know for a fact that
we are here. We must know also that the power that called us into
being, can, if he please, and when he pleases, call us to account
for the manner in which we have lived here; and, therefore, without
seeking any other motive for the belief, it is rational to believe
that he will, for we know beforehand that he can. The probability or
even possibility of the thing is all that we ought to know; for if
we knew it as a fact, we should be the mere slaves of terror; our
belief would have no merit, and our best actions no virtue.

Deism, then, teaches us, without the possibility of being
deceived, all that is necessary or proper to be known. The creation is
the Bible of the Deist. He there reads, in the handwriting of the
Creator himself, the certainty of his existence and the immutability
of his power, and all other Bibles and Testaments are to him
forgeries. The probability that we may be called to account
hereafter will, to a reflecting mind, have the influence of belief;
for it is not our belief or disbelief that can make or unmake the
fact. As this is the state we are in, and which it is proper we should
be in, as free agents, it is the fool only, and not the philosopher,
or even the prudent man, that would live as if there were no God.

But the belief of a God is so weakened by being mixed with the
strange fable of the Christian creed, and with the wild adventures
related in the Bible, and of the obscurity and obscene nonsense of the
Testament, that the mind of man is bewildered as in a fog. Viewing all
these things in a confused mass, he confounds fact with fable; and
as he cannot believe all, he feels a disposition to reject all. But
the belief of a God is a belief distinct from all other things, and
ought not to be confounded with any. The notion of a Trinity of Gods
has enfeebled the belief of one God. A multiplication of beliefs
acts as a division of belief; and in proportion as anything is divided
it is weakened.
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
_Maksutov
_Emeritus
Posts: 12480
Joined: Thu Mar 07, 2013 8:19 pm

Re: The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine

Post by _Maksutov »

Religion, by such means, becomes a thing of form, instead of
fact- of notion, instead of principles; morality is banished to make
room for an imaginary thing called faith, and this faith has its
origin in a supposed debauchery; a man is preached instead of God;
an execution is an object for gratitude; the preachers daub themselves
with the blood, like a troop of assassins, and pretend to admire the
brilliancy it gives them; they preach a humdrum sermon on the merits
of the execution; then praise Jesus Christ for being executed, and
condemn the Jews for doing it. A man, by hearing all this nonsense
lumped and preached together, confounds the God of the creation with
the imagined God of the Christians, and lives as if there were none.

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. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to
convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart
torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. 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.

The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it
every evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple Deism. It
must have been the first, and will probably be the last, that man
believes. But pure and simple Deism does not answer the purpose of
despotic governments. They cannot lay hold of religion as an engine,
but by mixing it with human inventions, and making their own
authority a part; neither does it answer the avarice of priests, but by
incorporating themselves and their functions with it, and becoming,
like the government, a party in the system. It is this that forms
the otherwise mysterious connection of church and state; the church
humane, and the state tyrannic.
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
_Maksutov
_Emeritus
Posts: 12480
Joined: Thu Mar 07, 2013 8:19 pm

Re: The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine

Post by _Maksutov »

Were man impressed as fully and as strongly as he ought to be with
the belief of a God, his moral life would be regulated by the force of
that belief; he would stand in awe of God and of himself, and would
not do the thing that could not be concealed from either. To give this
belief the full opportunity of force, it is necessary that it acts
alone. This is Deism. But when, according to the Christian Trinitarian
scheme, one part of God is represented by a dying man, and another
part called the Holy Ghost, by a flying pigeon, it is impossible
that belief can attach itself to such wild conceits.*

*The book called the book of Matthew says, chap, iii, verse 16,
that the Holy Ghost descended in the shape of a dove. It might as well
have said a goose; the creatures are equally harmless, and the one
is as much of a nonsensical lie as the other. The second of Acts,
verse, 2, 3, says that it descended in a mighty rushing wind, in the
shape of cloven tongues, perhaps it was cloven feet. Such absurd stuff
is only fit for tales of witches and wizards.

It has been the scheme of the Christian church, and of all the
other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the
Creator, as it is of Government to hold man in ignorance of his
rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and
are calculated for mutual support. The study of theology, as it stands
in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on
nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities;
it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no
conclusion. Not any thing can be studied as a science, without our
being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as
this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the
study of nothing.

Instead then, of studying theology, as is now done, out of the
Bible and Testament, the meanings of which books are always
controverted and the authenticity of which is disproved, it is
necessary that we refer to the Bible of the creation. The principles
we discover there are eternal and of divine origin; they are the
foundation of all the science that exists in the world, and must be
the foundation of theology.

We can know God only through his works. We cannot have a
conception of any one attribute but by following some principle that
leads to it. We have only a confused idea of his power, if we have not
the means of comprehending something of its immensity. We can have
no idea of his wisdom, but by knowing the order and manner in which
it acts. The principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the
Creator of man is the Creator of science; and it is through that
medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face.

Could a man be placed in a situation, and endowed with the power
of vision, to behold at one view, and to contemplate deliberately, the
structure of the universe; to mark the movements of the several
planets, the cause of their varying appearances, the unerring order in
which they revolve, even to the remotest comet; their connection and
dependence on each other, and to know the system of laws
established by the Creator, that governs and regulates the whole, he
would then conceive, far beyond what any church theology can teach
him, the power, the wisdom, the vastness, the munificence of the
Creator; he would then see, that all the knowledge man has of
science, and that all the mechanical arts by which he renders his
situation comfortable here, are derived from that source; his mind,
exalted by the scene, and convinced by the fact, would increase in
gratitude as it increased in knowledge; his religion or his worship
would become united with his improvement as a man; any
employment he followed, that had any connection with the principles
of the creation, as everything of agriculture, of science and of the
mechanical arts has, would teach him more of God, and of the
gratitude he owes to him, than any theological Christian sermon he
now hears. Great objects inspire great thoughts; great munificence
excites great gratitude; but the groveling tales and doctrines of the
Bible and the Testament are fit only to excite contempt.

Though man cannot arrive, at least in this life, at the actual
scene I have described, he can demonstrate it, because he has a
knowledge of the principles upon which the creation is constructed.*
We know that the works can be represented in model, and that the
universe can be represented by the same means. The same principles
by which we measure an inch, or an acre of ground, will measure to
millions in extent. A circle of an inch diameter has the same
geometrical properties as a circle that would circumscribe the
universe. The same properties of a triangle that will demonstrate upon
paper the course of a ship, will do it on the ocean; and when
applied to what are called the heavenly bodies, will ascertain to a
minute the time of an eclipse, though these bodies are millions of
miles from us. This knowledge is of divine origin, and it is from
the Bible of the creation that man has learned it, and not from the
stupid Bible of the church, that teacheth man nothing.

*The Bible-makers have undertaken to give us, in the first chapter
of Genesis, an account of the creation; and in doing this, they have
demonstrated nothing but their ignorance. They make there to have
been three days and three nights, evenings and mornings, before
there was a sun; when it is the presence or absence of the sun that is
the cause of day and night, and what is called his rising and setting
that of morning and evening. Besides, it is a puerile and pitiful idea, to
suppose the Almighty to say, Let there be light. It is the imperative
manner of speaking that a conjuror uses when he says to his cups and
balls, Presto, begone, and most probably has been taken from it; as
Moses and his rod are a conjuror and his wand. Longinus calls this
expression the sublime; and by the same rule, the conjuror is sublime
too, for the manner of speaking is expressively and grammatically the
same. When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how
nearly it borders on the ridiculous. The sublime of the critics, like some
parts of Edmund Burke's Sublime and Beautiful, is like a windmill just
visible in a fog, which imagination might distort into a flying mountain,
or an archangel, or a flock of wild geese.

All the knowledge man has of science and of machinery, by the
aid of which his existence is rendered comfortable upon earth, and
without which he would be scarcely distinguishable in appearance and
condition from a common animal, comes from the great machine and
structure of the universe. The constant and unwearied observations
of our ancestors upon the movements and revolutions of the heavenly
bodies, in what are supposed to have been the early ages of the world,
have brought this knowledge upon earth. It is not Moses and the
prophets, nor Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, that have done it. The
Almighty is the great mechanic of the creation; the first
philosopher and original teacher of all science. Let us, then, learn
to reverence our master, and let us not forget the labors of our
ancestors.

Had we, at this day, no knowledge of machinery, and were it
possible that man could have a view, as I have before described, of
the structure and machinery of the universe, he would soon conceive
the idea of constructing some at least of the mechanical works we
now have; and the idea so conceived would progressively advance in
practice. Or could a model of the universe, such as is called an
orrery, be presented before him and put in motion, his mind would
arrive at the same idea. Such an object and such a subject would,
while it improved him in knowledge useful to himself as a man and a
member of society, as well as entertaining, afford far better matter
for impressing him with a knowledge of, and a belief in, the
Creator, and of the reverence and gratitude that man owes to him,
than the stupid texts of the Bible and of the Testament from which, be
the talents of the preacher what they may, only stupid sermons can
be preached. If man must preach, let him preach something that is
edifying, and from texts that are known to be true.

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 philosophyfor
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.

It has been by wandering from the immutable laws of science, and
the right use of reason, and setting up an invented thing called
revealed religion, that so many wild and blasphemous conceits have
been formed of the Almighty. The Jews have made him the assassin of
the human species to make room for the religion of the Jews. The
Christians have made him the murderer of himself and the founder of
a new religion, to supersede and expel the Jewish religion. And to
find pretence and admission for these things, they must have
supposed his power or his wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable;
and the changeableness of the will is imperfection of the judgement.
The philosopher knows that the laws of the Creator have never
changed with respect either to the principles of science, or the
properties of matter. Why, then, is it supposed they have changed
with respect to man?

I here close the subject. I have shown in all the foregoing
parts of this work, that the Bible and Testament are impositions and
forgeries; and I leave the evidence I have produced in proof of it, to
be refuted, if any one can do it: and I leave the ideas that are
suggested in the conclusion of the work, to rest on the mind of the
reader; certain as I am, that when opinions are free, either in
matters of government or religion, truth will finally and powerfully
prevail.

END OF THE SECOND PART.
THE END
"God" is the original deus ex machina. --Maksutov
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