Paine, “Age of Reason”

            In “The Age of Reason, Part 1,” Thomas Paine advocates rational religion. Paine lays down many complaints against Christianity (as well as many other churchs), saying “All national institutions of churches…appear to me no other that human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit….”  His belief is that if one wants to know God, all they have to do is look to his creation of Earth and the laws of it, which are the book of God (not the Bible.)

 He sees the entanglement of church and government as a corruption and considers the Bible as nothing more than word of mouth stories and improbable prophecies and miracles.  One such story that Paine takes up issue with is that of Jesus Christ because “it is impossible to concieve a story more derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom, more contradictory to his power, than this story is” because “[Christians] represent this virtuous and amiable man…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.”

Ultimately, Paine’s belief is that the rejection of an organized religious institution is not the rejection of religuous belief.  We do not need the Bible to tell us how to live, how to treat others, or to prove that God exists.  All of these things can be discovered by observing the Almighty’s creation.

Kimberley Orr