The Paine(s) of Reason

           Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason is a text that, in my opinion, was way ahead of it’s time. From the very first chapter where he states his belief about a governmental revolution precluding a religious one that would undo the connection between church and state, his ideas about the existence of a God are ideas that would not be seen again for a number of years after his death.

            His prediction that a religious revolution overthrowing the connection between church and state proved to be 100 percent true, at least as far as the United States is concerned. The church went from having a hand in almost everything government related, to not even being able to teach it’s doctrine in public schools. As far as the relationship between church and state goes between Paine’s time and now, society has made almost a complete 180.

            Coming from a Catholic education myself, I did learn a bit about Thomas Paine in high school, but I did not get to actually read anything regarding his writings. In fact, looking back, all I really remember learning about him was who he was, and that his ideas about God conflicted with the church’s, and not much else. Learning about him now, and actually being able to read his book, I was a little surprised to find that not only were my original thoughts regarding Paine incorrect, but his beliefs regarding the existence of God, as well as the writings in the Bible are actually not that far off from my own.

            Paine critiques the writings in the Old Testament Bible, saying that the writings were most likely written by poets, which I tend to agree with, seeing as a lot of the stories in the Old Testament are stories that appear to be based off of tales from earlier civilizations. He also states that science is something that is discovered, not a creation of man, which I also agree with; just looking at Mathematics alone, one can see that its laws can not be ‘created’ by a person, Mathematics is the language that man uses to understand the mechanics of the world around us. Two plus two equals four because the laws of reality make it so, not because man decided that was what two plus two should equal.

            Originally, I had considered Paine to be atheistic in his beliefs (which is understandable, given how he was presented at my old school), but reading through his book, I can see that this belief could not be any further from the truth; not only is he not an Atheist, but I get the vibe that he is also staunchly against Atheism.

His beliefs are based mostly (if not completely) on reason and logic, which is largely how I formed my beliefs, and for that, especially given the time period he came from and their outlook on religion at the time, I find him a highly respectable person.

Conflicting Philosophy?

                        The philosophies of both the East and West are both very intriguing. At face value, they both appear to be very different, but how different are they really? Sure, there are some differences, like-

-Western Religion (Christianity) has a God or deity that it teaches should be worshiped

-Eastern Religion (Daodeijing) seems to focus more on its system of values and morals than a deity.

But while differences like this are present, both religions strive to accomplish the same thing – to get us to live a good moral life, the only real difference between the two is their reasons for why we should follow their morals. Christianity (particularly in the Genesis section we read in class) seems to be trying to deter us from committing immoral acts with threats of Holy vengeance from God, whereas the Daodeijing seems to be saying that we should follow its morals simply because they will lead to happiness.

            When we look at the actual morals that the two books try to get across, we can see that, while there are some differences in certain places, their overall messages are the same. For example, in chapter 74 of the Daodeijing, the book speaks of the idea of an executioner, and how the threat of death could be used to keep people in line so to speak. The reading then goes on to explain that those who would carry out the executions would probably be guilty of committing crimes themselves, thus creating a sort of paradox. In short, the message I got out of this passage was that murder, particularly capital punishment, is wrong.

            Western religions also seem to support this outlook, as the Catholic church is opposed to the death penalty in almost all cases because of the Bible’s depiction of the idea. The most common reason for using the death penalty is for when the convict is themselves, guilty of murder, but this idea is refuted in our first Genesis reading during the story of Cain Kills Abel. Cain murders his brother Abel, and God punishes Cain by exiling him, and branding him with a mark. Cain then goes on to say to God, that he would surely be killed, to which God responded by saying that anyone who killed him would be punished sevenfold. In other words, no one should kill Cain just because he himself committed murder.

            There are many other examples of where the moral virtues of the two religions seem to converge, as well as areas where they seem to diverge, but the ultimate goal of the two seems to be to get people to live a good moral life, so that society will be peaceful. So in that respect, they really aren’t all that different.

Du Bois and Booker T.

             Education is a fundamental right of all people, regardless of race, sex, religion, or anything else. W.E.B. Du Bois believed that during his time however, this was not the case. In his book The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois analyses the importance of education, he also shows how this lack of education has affected the African American community. He also critiques Booker T. Washington’s ideas.

            Coming from an excellent educational background himself, Du Bois explains that without such education, people will become lost. He shows this in his explanation for why crime increased after the emancipation; if the former slaves had no idea of how the world worked, then how are they going to be able to take care of themselves? They will not be able to, they needed to be shown how the free world at the time operated. Further, he says that someone – namely the government – should have taken on that responsibility.

                       

            Du Bois also takes the time to analyze Booker T. Washington’s ideas. Du Bois explains that while Washington’s ideas did have their benefits, he believed that African Americans should not settle for it. Du Bois believed that African Americans needed to band together and get good educations so they could vote for African supporters into the Senate, that way new laws promoting the equality of blacks could get passed. Washington’s idea called for African’s to go to Tech/vocational schooling; he believed that Africans could show their importance in society by doing this, and ultimately gain equality as time went on.

            Du Bois believed that because Democracy was founded on the right to voice one’s opinions on unjust laws, that African Americans should assert themselves now, not wait for equality to come to them. They needed to act if they wanted to gain equality.

            I tend to agree with Du Bois, in that if someone wants to be recognized as an equal, they need to assert themselves. This has always been the case, during the Union Labor movements the workers needed to band together to show that they did not intend to stand for being treated with the injustice that the businesses were showing them, and it was not until they did so that they were treated better. It is nice to think that they would have been treated better by showing their worth through their work, but as history shows us, this was not the case.

 There are many other examples of this shown throughout the course of history as well, how did the Jews gain their freedom from Egypt? It wasn’t by pleasing their Egyptian overseers. How did Women gain equality in America during the early 20^th century? It wasn’t by sitting around and performing housework. As sad as it may sound, if people have wanted to gain equality in this world, they have needed to fight for it. I’m not saying that this is a good thing, it’s just the way that the world has worked over the passed few thousand years; sitting around and accepting your current condition is not going to get you a better place in society.