kudzu (01-08-2019)
I view 'Christianity' as a Slave Religion. The Philosophy strikes me as 'survival'. Not to mention the concept of a 'Man-God', the 'Miracles', and the idea of 'Resurrection'. If you view it objectively, it's like some Fable a lost Tribe in the upper Amazon would embrace. What's incredulous, you have people in the 21st century thinking it is true and real.
kudzu (01-08-2019)
He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death. Thomas Paine
Jack (01-08-2019)
I'm reading 'The Age of Reason' again.
"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 eighteenth-century British deism, and challenges institutionalized religion and the legitimacy of the Bible. It was published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Reason
He's a Deist, and that's it. He was in a French Prison during the (their) Revolution as he finished writing it.
evince (01-08-2019)
"n December 1793, he was arrested and was taken to Luxembourg Prison in Paris. While in prison, he continued to work on The Age of Reason (1793–1794). Future President James Monroe used his diplomatic connections to get Paine released in November 1794. He became notorious because of his pamphlets. The Age of Reason, in which he advocated deism, promoted reason and free thought and argued against institutionalized religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular. He published the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1797), discussing the origins of property and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income. In 1802, he returned to the U.S. where he died on June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity.[8]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine
from Wiki:
"About his own religious beliefs, Paine wrote in The Age of Reason:"
"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life."
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. 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."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine
"... appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
hahaha ... that pretty well sums it up.
Jack (01-08-2019)
Jack (01-08-2019), Phantasmal (01-08-2019)
Phantasmal (01-08-2019)
"Thomas Paine’s father was a Quaker and, as John Keane states in his acclaimed definitive biography, ‘Paine’s moral capacities ultimately had religious roots that were to have a lasting impact on his life and, eventually, the political shape of the modern world.’ "
https://thefriend.org/article/thomas...-revolutionary
kudzu (01-08-2019)
Jack (01-08-2019)
Jack (01-08-2019)
"Between his birth in 1737 and his death in 1809, enormous political upheavals turned the Western world upside down - and Paine was in the middle of the biggest ones. His writings put his life at risk in every country he lived in - in America for rebellion, in England for sedition, in France for his insistence on a merciful and democratic revolution. At the end of his life, he was shunned by the country he helped create, reviled as an infidel, forced to beg friends for money, denied the right to vote, refused burial in a Quaker cemetery. His grave was desecrated, his remains were stolen."
https://www.wired.com/1995/05/paine/
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