The Atheist Book Club discussion

We'll be reading The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine from February 18th through April 18th.

This book is about as good as it gets when it comes to critiquing religion. It's too bad it's filled with deistic nonsense.

But there is no denying his influence.

Here's an interesting story about what happened to Paine's body after his death. I copied it from another site:

A good trick question for a history quiz would be, “Where is Thomas Paine buried?” The correct answer would be, “No one knows!’

Paine died in New York City on June 18, 1809. His views on Christianity had made him persona non grata in the US, his services during the American Revolution to the cause of Independence being overlooked. A controversy has raged since his death as to whether he did or did not recant his attacks against Christianity. I would say the burden of the evidence is that he did not. Six people attended his funeral. No Christian church would bury him, so his corpse was interred in unhallowed ground under an oak tree on a farm he owned in New Rochelle. There his bones rested until September 1819, when his body was stolen.

The culprit was William Cobbett, an English admirer of Thomas Paine. He left with the corpse on a ship to England, just before the authorities could arrest him for grave robbing. Cobbett was part crank, part persuasive reformer. He was a political radical, farmer, pamphleteer, member of Parliament and journalist. He battled for many causes in England, including Catholic Emancipation, . . . although he was not a Catholic and against the birth restriction views of Thomas Malthus. Cobbett turned grave robber in order to build a shrine to Paine where his body could rest in honor.

Cobbett’s plans came to nothing, and at his death Paine’s remains were still in his possession. Cobbett’s son may have sold pieces of Paine to various collectors, although no one is really sure. Various people have claimed to have pieces of Paine’s remains at various times, including a Church of England bishop in the nineteenth century who claimed to have Paine’s skull on his mantle piece, although none of these pieces have been subjected to DNA testing. A sad end to the mortal remains of the author of Common Sense.

Scott wrote: "This book is about as good as it gets when it comes to critiquing religion. It's too bad it's filled with deistic nonsense."

I have actually recently written a review on this book and tried to refute Paine's deistic claims - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

This was a hard book for me to rate. There were times when I easily thought that it deserved 5 stars, and times where it went as low as 2. Overall I think that the good parts were so good that they vastly outweighed the bad, namely the deistic talk, where, as I show in my review, Paine contradicts himself numerous times and uses extremely fallacious reasoning (ironic enough). It still is a classic for me, especially considering that it was written by a Founding Father in the 1700s.

I am curious to hear opinions. Considering the times this work was written in, is it possible he might have 'padded' the work with theistic dogma, just to keep himself safe? It could explain Skyler finding contradictions and ironic logic.

I have a vision of a guy writing a biting critique for the intelligent, but leaving the text full of religious bones for the morons to find.

Michael, I did have a suspicion that Paine was just trying to 'save face' by adding the deist parts, especially since he always brings up the true religion of deism right after he heavily criticizes Christianity. It is almost like he was covering for himself.

That being said, I must admit his deism seems very sincere. It is just odd that he uses the exact same logic that he criticizes theists for using to justify his deism. Even if the desim was added just for protection, it didn't work, since almost everyone in America considered him an atheist, even up to our time.

Skyler, having just finished the book, I see your point. Still, a great read. As a bonus, I now know the source of about 95% of Facebooks atheist memes.

Michael wrote: "Skyler, having just finished the book, I see your point. Still, a great read. As a bonus, I now know the source of about 95% of Facebooks atheist memes."

Isn't it amazing!

I really enjoyed Paine's work. This was a quick read for me and I felt that he did make some great points about how the churches and organized religion act. This of course upset a lot people during his time and even afterwards. I'm so happy I read it and wish I would've read this before now.

Paine was a Deist like Voltaire, not much of anything particular.

I, too, was disappointed with his deist cop-out, and I, also, wondered if he was just covering up an atheistic view. After all, it took a lot of guts back then to come out as a complete atheist. By the way, I'm currently reading a pretty good biography on Paine - Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations. It's pretty good so far.

I think his deism should be forgiven, both because of the times and because of his commitment to actual reality. He believes in a deity only because of the beauty and order of the universe--and he died the same year Darwin was born! I think if Paine had known about natural selection his deism would've been out of the window.

His deism, I believe, should be viewed almost as the atheism of his time; his allegiance is with reality, with fact. In the following quote, instead of "creation" just read "universe" and it is a true representation of the highest point of the Enlightenment and the closest argument for the true value of science. Because the only way to know creation (or reality), Paine, says, is through the study only of what is true and not delusions (and if this isn't the road to atheism, considering the times, I don't know what is!):

"The Creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. 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."