Ryan and Debi Cragun’s Blog

The Age of Reason (Parts I and II)

Author:

Thomas Paine

Publisher:

C Trade Paper

Date of Publication:

1793/2006

ISBN:

0806505494

Rating:

8

Introduction:

I heard about this book from two different sources over the years. Some Mormon authors claim that much of Joseph Smith’s theology that later made up the belief system of the Mormons was a direct response to the criticisms of religion leveled by Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason. If that is true, Joseph Smith failed miserably in attempting to refute Paine’s arguments (with some very minor exceptions). More recently, contributors to the dialog on atheism floating around the internet have mentioned Paine’s book as one of the earliest and clearest criticisms of religion.

With both groups mentioning this famed work, I figured I should read it. As it was originally published over 200 years ago, I figured the copyright must have expired, meaning Project Gutenberg was bound to have a copy of it available for free (and, indeed, they do: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3743). Armed with my new Sony Reader, I downloaded the text file, loaded it onto my new book reading device, and away I went. This is the first book I read on my Sony Reader – what a way to christen my new device!!

Summary:

Paine wrote the work in two parts. The first part he wrote quickly and under duress while living in France during the revolution in that country in the late 1700s. His own introduction explains that he held off writing about religion until later in life, likely to avoid much of the controversy that would result from his criticisms. The first section of the book, therefore, jumps around quite a bit but covers everything from The Bible (both Old and New Testaments) to Catholicism to Christian theology to rituals and so on. He doesn’t have a lot of time to delve into the meat of these topics like he does in the second section.

The second part of the book delves more deeply into the contradictions and problems with the Bible, with separate sections on the Old and New Testaments. The primary focus is internal inconsistency, which Paine superbly illustrates.

The version provided on the Project Gutenberg site was edited by Moncure Daniel Conway and includes a lengthy and wandering introduction by Mr. Conway. The introduction describes some of the setting in which the book was written but does not provide much background on Paine himself. The book also includes occasional editorial comments that are inserted into the text as brackets.

Review:

Paine was a deist. A deist? What’s that? Basically he believed in a supreme being or god but did not affiliate with an organized religion and his conception of god was of a somewhat neutered being that basically just explained everything that science could not explain at the time (e.g., the origins of life, how plants grow, etc. - all things “mysterious”). As Paine puts it, “My own mind is my own church” (p. 20; my page numbers correspond to how they displayed on my e-reader, so don’t hold me to them). I think it behooves the reader to keep in mind that Paine lived a good 50 to 60 years before Charles Darwin propounded the theory of evolution. If Paine had lived to see that day, I’m almost certain he would have been an atheist as his primary argument for god is that he has no other explanation for the origin of life.

In the first part of the book, Paine is less critical of Jesus and the New Testament. In the second part he makes some very good points about Jesus, even though he takes the safest possible position, which is that there may have been a historical figure named Jesus who lived in that time. But a miracle worker? Of course not. As Paine puts it, “Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie?” (p. 115). I don’t think anyone has ever put this criticism of the supernatural more succinctly, though saying, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” comes pretty close. The point being, of course, that there is no reason to believe miracles occur when there is no overwhelming evidence to indicate they actually occurred. As no such evidence exists, it is far more likely that people lied. People lie all the time – that isn’t unusual. People walking on water or raising the dead, that is unusual. I’ll believe it when I see it. Which is also the position Paine takes, arguing that the authors of the Bible knew others would think that way – which is precisely why they introduced “doubting Thomas,” to give the impression that others saw it and believed it. But, as Paine makes clear, there is very little reason to believe the Bible – it’s full of lies.

One more point about Paine’s religious views is in order here before I touch on his criticisms of religion. Paine argues that religion must have very specific characteristics – basically, the characteristics that would make him religious (i.e., a deistic belief and a worship of science; a skeptical purview of all claimed miracles, etc.). I really hate it when people do this. The basic idea is that, because he considers himself religious, and because he is convinced he is right in his beliefs, he must therefore find a way to distance himself from all those who do not share his views of religion. To do so he redefines religion. In one of my classes I described how a Christian had killed a doctor who performed abortions. One of the students said, “I’m a Christian and I wouldn’t do that. So, he must not be Christian.” That murderer was a Christian – and people who hold different conceptions of religion than does Paine are also religious. Just because you don’t like to be associated with someone doesn’t mean they don’t belong to the same group of people as you do. I may not like all sociologists and I may disagree with many of them, but that doesn’t mean I redefine what it means to be a sociologist – they’re still sociologists. So, Paine falls short on this point – there are a lot of religious people who don’t share his worldview, and they are still religious.

Criticisms of Paine’s religious views and lack of scientific understanding aside, Paine does a great job illustrating how flawed organized religion is. His attacks of the Bible are particularly poignant. For instance, Paine talks about what “revelation” really is – coming into knowledge of something by supernatural means (i.e., without personally experiencing it or having it told to you). If that is what is meant by revelation, how much of the Bible, then, is revelation? “Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon earth of which man is himself the actor or the witness; and consequently all the historical and anecdotal part of the Bible, which is almost the whole of it, is not within the meaning and compass of the word revelation, and, therefore, is not the word of God” (pp. 56-57 ). Think about it! It’s a brilliant criticism (and the same holds true of the Book of Mormon) – much of the Bible is anecdotal and quasi-historical. Stories are not revelation – they either describe something someone saw or something someone was told. Revelation is when information sprouts out of nowhere into your head. Only a small portion of the Bible can actually be considered revelation. So much for it being the “literal word of god.”

Paine also uses the internal inconsistencies of the Bible to illustrate just how flawed the book is. Because I was raised Mormon, I don’t consider myself an expert on the Bible. If I had spent more time studying it I may have realized that Jesus Christ’s genealogy described in both Matthew and Luke is so disparate as to be humorous – only the first and last people on the lists are the same. No others on the list are even close (and the lists vary in length by over a dozen names). If some omnipotent being inspired Matthew and Luke to write that genealogy it must be a schizophrenic being.

Another Biblical criticism leveled by Paine involves the authorship of the early books of the Bible. Paine notes that many people believe Moses actually wrote the earliest books in the Bible. But, as Paine illustrates, that makes no sense when you actually read the books – Moses is talked about in the third person throughout. Paine grants that, but illustrates the problems nonetheless, “But granting the grammatical right, that Moses might speak of himself in the third person, because any man might speak of himself in that manner, it cannot be admitted as a fact in those books, that it is Moses who speaks, without rendering Moses truly ridiculous and absurd: — for example, Numbers xii. 3: “Now the man Moses was very MEEK, above all the men which were on the face of the earth.” If Moses said this of himself, instead of being the meekest of men, he was one of the most vain and arrogant coxcombs; and the advocates for those books may now take which side they please, for both sides are against them: if Moses was not the author, the books are without authority; and if he was the author, the author is without credit, because to boast of meekness is the reverse of meekness, and is a lie in sentiment” (p. 133). Paine goes on to point out that Moses is alleged to have described his own death – now that is a miracle. He makes this same point about Joshua, “In Joshua xxiv. 31, it is said “And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that over-lived Joshua.” How, in the name of common sense, can it be Joshua that relates what people had done after he was dead? This account must not only have been written by some historian that lived after Joshua, but that lived also after the elders that out-lived Joshua” (p. 149). These are just a sampling of the contradictions Paine describes. When you read them it makes it quite clear that the Bible really is just a hodgepodge of parchments that were voted upon by a bunch of self-serving religious charlatans with little to no knowledge as to their contents.

I think my favorite criticism of the Bible is one that Paine mentions almost in passing. He points out that a close reading of the Bible illustrates that what is originally meant by the word “prophet” is actually “poet.” When I first read that my jaw dropped! It makes so much sense, “We read of prophesying with pipes, tabrets, and horns – of prophesying with harps, with psalteries, with cymbals, and with every other instrument of music then in fashion. Were we now to speak of prophesying with a fiddle, or with a pipe and tabor, the expression would have no meaning, or would appear ridiculous, and to some people contemptuous, because we have changed the meaning of the word” (p. 61). I was dumbfounded by this notion. He’s right – when you replace “prophet” with “poet,” the Bible makes so much more sense (not that it really makes any sense, but it is more intelligible). Here’s another example, “Deborah and Barak are called prophets, not because they predicted anything, but because they composed the poem or song that bears their name, in celebration of an act already done. David is ranked among the prophets, for he was a musician, and was also reputed to be (though perhaps very erroneously) the author of the Psalms. But Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not called prophets; it does not appear from any accounts we have, that they could either sing, play music, or make poetry” (p. 62). Paine also mentions that there is talk in the Bible of “greater” and “lesser” prophets. I never understood those descriptives. I do now! The modern definition of a prophet is a person who communes with god, receiving revelation from him/her/it. How can you have a “lesser” or “greater” prophet by that definition? You can’t!! Either you receive revelation or you don’t. But you can have a better or worse poet. Some poets are great; some suck! Lesser vs. greater. Finally, the Bible is starting to make some sense – as a collection of myths and stories claimed as the words of tribal gods to the power hungry leaders of the tribes. Yep… Makes sense now!

Paine, like Joseph Campbell, draws some pretty clear connections between Catholicism and Greek and Roman mythology (as well as other mythologies that predated Christianity), “The Mythologists had gods for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything. The church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and Rome was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud” (p. 43). I’m not certain Paine is correct on another point in this regard, but I found it compelling. He argues that the supernatural paternity of Jesus was far more compelling for the Greeks and Romans because they had pre-existing mythology that supported such an idea. The Jews didn’t, which helps explain why they didn’t and don’t accept it (p. 47).

One final point is worth noting as it drives at the heart of Christian theology. Paine tackles the notion of a savior head on, “If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge” (p. 70). I remember watching a movie produced by the Mormon religion that depicted the atonement of Jesus Christ as the very scenario Paine illustrates above – that of a financial debtee being saved from the justice of a financial debtor by a third party. But, as Paine points out, this isn’t a financial debt we are talking about when it comes to sin (which is a manipulative social construct anyway). This is a moral crime. That is like killing an innocent in the place of a murderer and claiming that the murderer’s guilt has been absolved. That is morally and ethically absurd. So, too, is the idea that Jesus Christ can absolve people of their moral sins. He could pay your financial debts (though he is more likely to help create them), but he can’t pay your moral debts. Doing so destroys the very notion of morality. Another point for Paine!

Paine didn’t have all the amenities of a modern, rational society with all of the advances of science, including the marvelous insights of archeology and anthropology. What Paine’s book does is illustrate what a critical, skeptical mind reading a book like the Bible or studying theology should do – it should focus on the contradictions and absurdities and dismiss them outright. As it succeeds in illustrating that organized religion, in all its incarnations, is deeply flawed, Paine’s book is well worth reading. It is, however, unfortunate, that Paine’s dream of an Age of Reason is yet to be realized… Maybe one day…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 at 2:26 pm and is filed under reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.