Paine’s The Age of Reason, expresses his views of Christianity and the Bible. Through reason, he points out the flaws of the Old and New Testaments. Although he believes in a God, Paine criticizes that the Bible is not the “Word of God”. Paine defines a revelation as a direct communication between God and man (Paine 23). However, the three Abrahamic religions have no such connection because anything passed on is no longer a revelation therefore people have the right to disbelieve them. “Arguing that Christianity failed to conform to the dictates of reason, he compared it to Greek mythology and suggested that it was nothing more than a collection of fables” (Smith). By rejecting the ideas of mythologist, churches, and the Bible, people can move forward in science.
Paine disbelieves the myths contained in the Bible and is only concerned with the beginning. “… I know, by positive conclusion resulting from this search, that there is a power superior to all things, and that power is God” (Paine 49). That the idea of God is necessary to explain existence, but that is all reason can conclude and nothing else. Deism is critical for science because it allows the studies to continue without religious persecution. “…that held it to be irreligious to study and contemplate the structure of the universe that God had made” (Paine 61).
Rationally, the stories the Bible do not hold according to Paine, and he attempts to separate the God from Bible. From a deist point of view the practices of organized religions is not beneficial to society. There is no point of having a thinking mind if people are restricted to what a Church believes. “...nothing was made in vain; for in vain would be this power of vision if it taught man nothing” (Paine 55).
Smith, Jay E. "THOMAS PAINE AND THE AGE OF REASON'S ATTACK ON THE BIBLE." Historian 58.4 (1996): 745. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 5 Oct. 2009.
"Thomas Paine." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. 6 Oct. 2009
this blog, to me, centralizes around the fact the the bible and god do not go hand in hand. That fact it self opens so many doors. Personally, I was really interested in the argument the blog put up and how Thomas Paine was the power house for that idea.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that Paine did not believe the words in the Bible because he thought that those words in the Bible were not God’s words and they were just some translations. Moreover, he also wanted to explain to everybody that God was just a man who created everything. In addition, he did not like Christianity because he thought that Christianity makes immoral people and it just base on the ideas of God sacrifice. I also like when you wrote in your blog that Paine was have a deism point of view because he wanted to discover the evidence of how everything started and who is God by using science and brains.
ReplyDeleteYes, Paine did want the reader to know that he believes in God as a deist, while trying to prove that the bible was written to benefit a certain society by immortalizing others. He wanted to help society by removing the immoral religions.
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