"The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine- WOW!

[Clintonista2]

I randomly picked this up at a used bookstore the other day, it's absolutley great! Paine uses the bible to show how the Christian faith is filled with contradictions, hypocracy, and a contempt for science and justice. The great thing about this book is that Paine never uses proof outside of the bible, because, as he puts it, "I will not go out of the bible for proof against the supposed authenticity of the Bible. False testimony is always good against itself."

It's a great book, I recommend it! :applause: :applause:

[midnight]

1. I love Thomas Paine's thinking. Here is one of his quotes.

"Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be true" Thomas Paine

[Mythsaje]

2. And freely available to anyone who wants to read it...

Excellent piece of work.

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/age_of_reason/part1.html

[Mythsaje]

3. Thanks for turning me onto this...

I knew it existed, but had never bothered to find and read it.

I'm quite beside myself. What a brilliant mind he had.

"It seems as if parents of the christian profession were ashamed to tell their children any thing about the principles of their religion. They sometimes instruct them in morals, and talk to them of the goodness of what they call Providence; for the Christian mythology has five deities: there is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the God Providence, and the Goddess Nature. But the christian story of God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it, (for that is the plain language of the story,) cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind happier and better, is making the story still worse; as if mankind could be improved by the example of murder; and to tell him that all this is a mystery, is only making an excuse for the incredibility of it."

[harlinchi]

4. Make sure to take a peek at part two.

Part one was written while he was in jail. In part 2 he had access to a bible. It gets a little more specific!

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/age_of_reason/index.html

[Sequoia]

5. He's my favorite founding father!

I read this book a few years back and was floored. Thomas Paine almost got his head chopped off in Paris during their revolution but his cell door, with the white cross painted on it (execute this guy), was opened and the jailer did not see it when he was rounding up the other prisoners to be killed.

That book turned the Americans against him and he was hated for years and years and years afterwards. Just look it up. Only recently has Thompas Paine became popular again. The Dems and Repubs want to reclaim him as their guy.

http://www.thomaspaine.org/

[nealmhughes]

6. I tell my students to pattern their prose after Paine's!

There are actually 2 additions, he went back and redid the whole thing after he got out of the Paris prison. It is much more stinging than the first edition. That was what broke his friendship with Ed. Burke, by the way.
And it was James Madison who saved him from Mme. Guillotine!

[David Zephyr]

7. "The Age of Reason" resonates loudly today, doesn't it?

Thomas Paine!