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.