Attain The Age Of Reason Presented By Thomas Paine EPub

the Bible book by book, chapter by chapter, . . even whilst a Deist. Stumbled upon this books years ago as an Evangelical Christian, and it rocked my world, Upon investigation into Paine's claims, I gave up Christianity, mostly due to this book, Against four thousand years of combined Jewish and Christian tradition, Thomas Paine answers with the eighteenth century equivalent of: "Bitch, please, " This isn't your NOMA Nonoverlapping magisterium kind of argument this is Total War, With a disciplined rationalism and an acidic wit, Paine produces an assault so complete on organized religion that it makes the socalled new atheist movement a bit of a misnomer.
Paine was not an atheist in any sense of the word, but one does wonder if he might have found himself with better company if he'd had the foresight to be born two hundred years later.


It's hard for me to convey how well written and put together this polemic is, Like with Common Sense, Paine proves himself to be a master of written argument, He starts with Genesis and marches forward until the end where he informs the reader: "I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees.
Here they lie and the priests, if they can, may replant them, They may, perhaps, stick them in the ground, but they will never make them grow, " And what is unique to Paine is that not a single one of his arguments is derived from anything but the text itself, Yet at the end it's hard to think that anything more was required,

The main axis of the argument is to show with respect to each book of the bible that it is anonymous and therefore without authority.
Internal evidence, contradictions, time references, etc, mostly serve the function to discredit Moses, Joshua and so forth as the authors of the books attributed to them, Modern scholarship such as the Documentary Hypothesis confirms this, And once the text is discredited as either inauthentic or the product of noneyewitness testimony which even if true is revelation to the witness only and hearsay to everyone else, all the rest comes tumbling down.
Paine is then able to conclude that: "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 admits of no conclusion.
" Once the pillar of a holy bookand this holds true for any religionis pried loose, not much remains to talk about,

Not many books are literally laughoutloud funny, but this is one of them, Paine has no patience for priestcraft or spin doctors, This trend is common among the aforementioned new atheists, who quickly learned that religious argument has a much lower survivability stripped of its atmosphere of guilt and reverence.
Forced to breathe the same rationalism as every other subject, religious fundamentalism must necessarily make a hasty retreat back into the mist of superstition,

I think reason that this book was more effective than your usual fanfare is that it goes straight to the text and never wavers from that aim.
Gone are the teleological, transcendental, cosmological, and moral sideshows that at best end up at deism which would actually work out rather well for Paine, This is the very heart of the matter,

I can't swear by everything here, but this is easily as entertaining and informative as anything else on the subject, Five.

"The Word of God is the Creation we behold and this word of God revealeth to man all that is necessary for man to know of his Creator.

Do we want to contemplate his power We see it in the immensity of his creation,
Do we want to contemplate his wisdom We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed,
Do we want to contemplate his munificence We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth,
Do we want to contemplate his mercy We see it in his not withholding that abundance, even from the unthankful,
Do we want to contemplate his will, so far as it respects man The goodness he shows to all, is a lesson for our conduct to each other.

In fine, do we want to know what God is Search, not the book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, or any impostor invent but the scripture called the Creation.
"


So, . . I was raised in a fundamentalist church with some crazy ass rules like women can't wear pants, music all electric music is from the devil, and a guy who claimed God told him to stop eating.
I'm not only acquainted with the religious lunatics but how they seem to be able to find justification for their nonsense with the bible as an aside and humble brag, I won a bible verse memorization contest and a cooldollars as a little kid so I know what of I speak.

Thomas Paine in the Age of Reason has some umm, . . strong opinions on the bible as well, Unlike myself Paine is no atheist, In fact Paine is quite eloquent here in describing how for him it is impossible to look around at the wonders of the universe, science, or mathematics and not feel the presence of God.
Yet Paine's God has no relation to the bible, For Paine, the bible is not only absolutely not the word of God, it is an abomination of greed, violence, hucksters selling false prophecies, genocide, and petty grievances.

He is in fact quite offended that anyone would have the gall to claim that the benevolent God he believes in would do some of the things contained there.

I have to say that this book with its chronological inconsistencies, outright lies, and senseless

bloodshed reminded me of why I left that craziness so many years ago.

I mean, what do you do with this story about:

", . . a parcel of children calling Elisha bald head, bald head and that this man of God, verse,
'Turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord and there came forth two shebears out of the wood, and tore fortyandtwo children of them.
' "

Thin skinned Elisha can't handle being called bald by a group of snotty kids so God helps him maul the kids via a couple of bears Seems unlikely but supposing it happened, why is it in the bible, what lesson is it imparting, what kind of God is this
Paine saves his biggest scorn for the story of Adam and Eve though.
Putting aside the macho head game of telling someone that the world is theirs but hey, see that beautiful apple tree over there, yeah don't eat those.
Have fun!
Add a talking snake and the absurdity really cranks into high gear:

"The Christian Mythologists, after having confined Satan in a pit, were obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable.
He is then introduced into the Garden of Eden, in the shape of a snake or a serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar conversation with Eve, who is no way surprised to hear a snake talk and the issue of this teteatete is that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the eating of that apple damns all mankind.
"

As for the violence, there are countless incidents where innocent men, women and children are slaughtered, raped and enslaved, What kind of God would do this:


"When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows: Numbers, chap.
xxxi. , ver.:
'And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle and Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the council of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord.
Now, therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him but all the womenchildren, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
'
Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true.
Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters!!, The Bible tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express command of God, To believe, therefore, the Bible to be true, we must unbelieve all our belief in the moral justice of God for wherein could crying or smiling infants offend And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo everything that is tender, sympathizing, and benevolent in the heart of man.
Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice.
"

Quite honestly, Paine's constant pointing out of the meanness and inconsistencies of the bible got almost tiresome, Not because of Paine's writing which strikes a nice balance between insight, humor and snark, but because, . . how much slaughter and lies can you read about before you just want to walk away from these crazy people
Thinking about all the vile and atrocious things that have been done in its name eventually takes a toll on you, as one suspects it did on Paine as he unloads in this book on a society that shall we say, didn't appreciate his opinions on the subject.

Even though this was writtenyears ago, one would imagine it would still offend people whose belief system is tied to the idea of a spiritual being that mauls kids with bears and kills innocent people to take their land.
If you can pull that off from the grave after all these years, you know you're doing something right,



The Age of Reason is a very insightful book by Thomas Paine, one of the most influential figure in American history, It is clear for me that Paine was deist, He was very passionate about God that he could not stand some sinister things related to Him in Holy books, After all, how can Almighty be so cruel

His thoughts and feelings arecorresponded with mine, a thiest,
I remember I was baffled by contradictory refers to God, Once, He is the greatest kind and merciful, The other times, He is the one who tortures human being over superfiscial issues, I remember when I read Quran for first time, I shut the book angrily and sobbed bitterly all night, just saying, "No, No. No. God cannot be like this!" I was ambivalent about religions ad God, It led me to athiesm, I eventually found God awaiting at the and of dark and cold valley of despair, The moment I truly felt God, was the most beautiful moment for me, Then, I felt all the religions I knew being enemies of God, They insulted He, the divine beauty, They preversed some, like me,

Paine logically and respectfully criticize religions, especially Christianity,
I watched Häxan, the silent documentary, some nights ago, It was about witchcraft and satanism in Medieval era, I believe, God was not the one to blame for such ignorance and misery, People were so obssesed with the fear of devil that it yielded in an eternal loop of savagery and despair, I imagine their lives could be different if they replaced love with fear,
Paine is not even antiChrist, He is antichurch. I believe Paine put down cards that reveal the true face of the Creator, Supersticions and distortions in all religions, I believe, shadowed the truth,

All in all, this book was very informative for me and I also felt empathy with the writer, for all his questions I had asked and all his feelings I had felt.
I like this book forreasons: respectful attitude, logical analysis, and insightful facts, I think it is one of the best books I had read so far, and I do have these feelings because I love God, :.