The Age of Reason

Not to be confused with Age of Reason.

The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason.

The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a work by English and American political activist Thomas Paine, arguing for the philosophical position of deism. It follows in the tradition of 18th-century British deism, and challenges institutionalized religion and the legitimacy of the Bible. It was published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807.

Quotes

Part I (1794)

• I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
  • Dedication: To My Fellow-Citizens of the United States of America

• The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.
  • Dedication

• I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow creatures happy.
  • 1. The Author's Profession of Faith

• It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action; it begets a calamitous necessity of going on.
  • 1. The Author's Profession of Faith

• My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
  • 1. The Author's Profession of Faith

• It is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
  • 1. The Author's Profession of Faith

• It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
  • 1. The Author's Profession of Faith

• Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.
  • 2. Of Missions and Revelations

• When authors and critics talk of the sublime, they see not how nearly it borders on the ridiculous.
  • 2. Of Missions and Revelations (footnote)

It is only in the Creation that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read.

• The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon day, to all Jerusalem at least. [...] But it appears that Thomas did not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is equally as good for me and for every other person, as for Thomas.
  • 3. Concerning the Character of Jesus Christ, and His History

• When we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest every thing that is cruel.
  • 7. Examination of the Old Testament

• It is only in the Creation that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. [...] It is an ever existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other.
  • 9. In What the True Revelation Consists

• As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of atheism; a sort of religious denial of God. [...] It introduces between man and his maker an opaque body which it calls a redeemer; as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious or an irreligious eclipse of light. It has put the whole orb of reason into shade.
  • 11. Of the Theology of the Christians; and the True Theology

• That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology. [...] [I]t is not among the least of the mischiefs that the Christian system has done to the world, that it has abandoned the original and beautiful system of theology, like a beautiful innocent, to distress and reproach, to make room for the hag of superstition.
  • 11. Of the Theology of the Christians; and the True Theology

• Any system of religion that has any thing in it that shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system.
  • 13. Comparison of Christianism With the Religious Ideas Inspired by Nature

• There may be many systems of religion, that so far from being morally bad, are in many respects morally good: but there can be but One that is true; and that one, necessarily must, as it ever will, be in all things consistent with the ever existing word of God that we behold in his works. But such is the strange construction of the Christian system of faith, that every evidence the heavens affords to man, either directly contradicts it or renders it absurd.

• • 16. Application of the Preceding to the System of the Christians

Natural philosophy...is the study of the works of God.

• Of all the modes of evidence that ever were invented to obtain belief to any system or opinion, to which the name of religion has been given, that of miracle, however successful the imposition may have been, is the most inconsistent. [...] It is also the most equivocal sort of evidence that can be set up; for the belief is not to depend upon the thing called a miracle, but upon the credit of the reporter, who says that he saw it; and, therefore the thing, were it true, would have no better chance of being believed than if it were a lie.
  • 17. Of the Means Employed in All Time, and Almost Universally, to Deceive the Peoples

• Moral principle speaks universally for itself. [...] Instead therefore of admitting the recitals of miracles, as evidence of any system of religion being true, they ought to be considered as symptoms of its being fabulous. It is necessary to the full and upright character of truth that it rejects the crutch; and it is consistent with the character of fable, to seek the aid that truth rejects.
  • 17. Of the Means Employed in All Time, &c.

• Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie?

Part II (1795)

• To read the bible without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender, sympathising, 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.
  • 1. The Old Testament

• Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of down-right lies. The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level with the Arabian tales, without the merit of being entertaining; and the account of men living to eight and nine hundred years becomes as fabulous as the immortality of the giants of the mythology.
  • 1. The Old Testament

What can be greater blasphemy than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty?

• People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted, that the bible is true, and that it is good. [...] Good heavens, it is quite another thing! It is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty.
  • 1. The Old Testament

• The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.
  • 1. The Old Testament

• The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition; such as timid imaginations can always create in vision and credulity believe. [...] Once start a ghost and credulity fills up the history of its life, and assigns the cause of its appearance. One tells it one way, another another way, till there are as many stories about the ghost, and about the proprietor of the ghost, as there are about Jesus Christ in these four books.
  • 2. The New Testament

• There is not the least shadow of evidence of who the persons were that wrote [the books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John], nor at what time they were written; and they might as well have been called by the names of any of the other supposed apostles as by the names they are now called. The originals are not in the possession of any Christian church existing, any more than the two tables of stone written on, they pretend, by the finger of God, upon mount Sinai and given to Moses, are in the possession of the Jews; and even if they were, there is no possibility of proving the hand writing in either case.
  • 2. The New Testament

• The doctrine [Paul] sets out to prove by argument, is the resurrection of the same body, and he advances this as an evidence of immortality. [...] This doctrine of the resurrection of the same body, so far from being an evidence of immortality, appears to me to furnish an evidence against it; for if I have already died in this body, and am raised again in the same body in which I have lived, it is a presumptive evidence that I shall die again.
  • 2. The New Testament

• Every animal in the creation excels us in something. The winged insects, without mentioning doves or eagles, can pass over more space and with greater ease in a few minutes than man can in an hour. [...] Even the sluggish snail can ascend from the bottom of a dungeon, where man, by the want of that ability, would perish, and a spider can launch itself from the top as a playful amusement. The personal powers of man are so limited, and his heavy frame so little constructed to extensive enjoyment, that there is nothing to induce us to wish the opinion of Paul to be true. It is too little for the magnitude of the scene; too mean for the sublimity of the subject.
  • 2. The New Testament

• The slow and creeping caterpillar-worm of to-day passes in a few days to a torpid figure and a state resembling death; and in the next change comes forth in all the miniature magnificence of life, a splendid butterfly. No resemblance of the former creature remains; everything is changed; all his powers are new, and life is to him another thing. We cannot conceive that the consciousness of existence is not the same in this state of the animal as before; why then must I believe that the resurrection of the same body is necessary to continue to me the consciousness of existence hereafter?
  • 2. The New Testament

• Credulity [...] is not a crime, but it becomes criminal by resisting conviction. It is strangling in the womb of the conscience the efforts it makes to ascertain truth. We should never force belief upon ourselves in any thing.
  • 2. The New Testament

• The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race, have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the divinity, the most destructive to morality and the peace and happiness of man, that ever was propagated since man began to exist. It is better, far better, that we admitted, if it were possible, a thousand devils to roam at large, and to preach publicly the doctrine of devils, if there were any such, than that we permitted one such impostor and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God in his mouth, and have credit among us.
  • 3. Conclusion

• It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the Creator, and who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial miseries, and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick among mankind, to expel all ideas of revealed religion, as a dangerous heresy and an impious fraud. What is that we have learned from this pretended thing called revealed religion? Nothing that is useful to man, and every thing that is dishonourable to his Maker.
  • 3. Conclusion

• Loving of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides no meaning. It is incumbent on man as a moralist that he does not revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political sense; for there is no end to retaliation; each retaliates on the other, and calls it justice. But to love in proportion to the injury, if it could be done, would be to offer a premium for crime.
  • 3. Conclusion

• The belief of a God is so weakened by being mixed with the strange fable of the Christian creed, and with the wild adventures related in the bible, and the obscurity and obscene nonsense of the testament, that the mind of man is bewildered as in a fog. [...] The belief of a God is a belief distinct from all other things, and ought not to be confounded with any. The notion of a trinity of gods has enfeebled the belief of one God. A multiplication of beliefs acts as a division of belief, and in proportion as any thing is divided it is weakened.
  • 3. Conclusion

• Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.
  • 3. Conclusion

• The only religion that has not been invented, and that has in it every evidence of divine originality, is pure and simple deism. It must have been the first, and will probably be the last that man believes: but pure and simple deism does not answer the purpose of despotic governments. They cannot lay hold of religion as an engine, but by mixing it with human inventions, and making their own authority a part.
  • 3. Conclusion

• It has been the scheme of the Christian church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of governments to hold man in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support. 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 it admits of no conclusion.
  • 3. Conclusion

• If man must preach, let him preach something that is edifying, and from texts that are known to be true. [...] Every part of science, whether connected with the geometry of the universe, with the systems of animal and vegetable life, or with the properties of inanimate matter, is a text as well for devotion as for philosophy; for gratitude, as for human improvement. It will perhaps be said, that if such a revolution in the system of religion takes place, every preacher ought to be a philosopher. Most certainly; and every house of devotion a school of science.
  • 3. Conclusion

Part III (1807)

• It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error. But nature has not given to everyone a talent for that purpose; and among those to whom such a talent is given, there is often a want of disposition or of courage to do it.
  • Preface: To the Ministers and Preachers of all Denominations of Religion

• The prejudice of unfounded belief often degenerates into the prejudice of custom, and becomes, at last, rank hypocrisy. When men from custom or fashion, or any worldly motive, profess or pretend to believe what they do not believe, nor can give any reason for believing, they unship the helm of their morality, and being no longer honest to their own minds, they feel no moral difficulty in being unjust to others.
  • Preface

• As in my political works my motive and object have been to give man an elevated sense of his own character, and to free him from the slavish and superstitious absurdity of monarchy and hereditary government; so in my publications on religious subjects, my endeavors have been directed to bring man to a right use of the reason that God has given him; to impress on him the great principles of divine morality, justice, mercy, and a benevolent disposition to all men, and to all creatures, and to inspire in him a spirit of trust, confidence, and consolation in his Creator, unshackled by the fables of books pretending to be the word of God.
  • Preface

• People have been so long in the habit of reading the books called the Bible and Testament, with their eyes shut, and their senses locked up, that the most stupid inconsistencies have passed on them for truth, and imposition for prophecy. The all-wise Creator hath been dishonored by being made the author of fable, and the human mind degraded by believing it.
  • An Examination of the Passages In The New Testament

• Did we find in any other book pretending to give a system of religion, the falsehoods, falsifications, contradictions, and absurdities, which are to be met with in almost every page of the Old and New Testament, all the priests of the present day who supposed themselves capable, would triumphantly show their skill in criticisms and cry it down as a most glaring imposition. But since the books in question belong to their own trade and profession, they, or at least many of them, seek to stifle every inquiry into them, and abuse those who have the honesty and the courage to do it.
  • The Book of John

• When a book, as is the case with the Old and New Testament, is ushered into the world under the title of being the Word of God, it ought to be examined with the utmost strictness, in order to know if it has a well-founded claim to that title or not, and whether we are, or are not, imposed upon; for as no poison is so dangerous as that which poisons the physic, so no falsehood is so fatal as that which is made an article of faith.
  • The Book of John

• I speak a language full and intelligible. I deal not in hints and intimations. [...] First, that I may be clearly understood. Secondly, that it may be seen I am in earnest; and, thirdly, because it is an affront to truth to treat falsehood with complaisance.
  • The Book of John

• There is no man that believes in revealed religion stronger than I do; but it is not in the reveries of the Old and New Testament, nor of the Koran, that I dignify with that sacred title. That which is revelation to me exists in something which no human mind can invent, no human hand can counterfeit or alter. The word of God is the Creation we behold; and this word of God revealeth to man all that is necessary for him to know of his Creator.
  • The Book of John

• Had the news of salvation by Jesus Christ been inscribed on the face of the sun and the moon, in characters that all nations would have understood, the whole earth had known it in twenty-four hours, and all nations would have believed it; whereas, though it is now almost 2,000 years since, as they tell us, Christ came upon earth, not a twentieth part of the people of the earth know anything of it, and among those who do, the wiser part do not believe it.
  • The Book of John

• [T]he story of Christ has not one trait, either in its character, or in the means employed, that bears the least resemblance to the power and wisdom of God, as demonstrated in the creation of the universe. All the means are human means, slow, uncertain, and inadequate to the accomplishment of the end proposed; and therefore the whole is a fabulous invention, and undeserving of credit.
  • The Book of John

• When we behold the mighty universe that surrounds us, and dart our contemplation into the eternity of space, filled with innumerable orbs, revolving in eternal harmony, how paltry must the tales of the Old and New Testaments, profanely called the word of God, appear to thoughtful man! The stupendous wisdom and unerring order that reign and govern throughout this wondrous whole, and call us to reflection, put to shame the Bible!
  • An Essay on Dreams

• The whole world might be divided into two parts, numerically, but not as to moral character; and, therefore, the metaphor of dividing them, as sheep and goats can be divided, whose difference is marked by their external figure, is absurd. [...] There are some exceedingly good; others exceedingly wicked. There is another description of men who cannot be ranked with either the one or the other. They belong neither to the sheep nor the goats; and there is still another description of them, who are so very insignificant both in character and conduct, as not to be worth the trouble of damning or saving, or of raising from the dead.
  • My Private Thoughts on a Future State