Arken

I was just beginning re-reading Paine's Age of Reason and it suddenly struck me that despite Paine having been labeled as an atheist in his day and even in the present day I see him referred to as an atheist while in the first chapter of the aforementioned book, he explicitly says, "I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life."

Obviously Paine, like many of his contemporaries, is a deist... and, in fact, there is a large amount of that book which is very deistic... yet he still gets labelled as an atheist... and not just by theists who are ignorant. I have seen atheists time and again refer to Paine as one of our own. Can someone explain this to me?

Toto

Paine's deism was as close as you could get to atheism in those days.

Before the development of modern scientific theories on evolution and cosmology, there was no real foundation for atheism. The world existed, something or someone created it, so define that thing or one as "god" and look to nature for more answers. If you looked to nature rather than holy scripture, you were a freethinker

Arken

I disagree. There were people contemporary to Paine who were true atheists-

The Marquis de Sade wrote "The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." in 120 Days of Sodom.

Napoleon Boneparte was quoted as saying: "Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet." and "All religions have been made by men."

They are, IMO, truly atheists. They reject the notion of God entirely.

Amaranth

If memory serves, Paine had a certain disdain for atheists.

emotional

Baron d'Holbach is a good example of an atheist contemporary with Thomas Paine. Of course, the atheists of the day weren't "intellectually fulfilled" until Darwin came with his Theory of Evolution. And conversely, I'm a Deist of today believing in theistic evolution...

The Deists were Ingersoll's precursors for freethought, human rights and Biblical criticism. That's why atheists take Thomas Paine for an atheist, since his goals and manners of criticism were so similar to those of the agnostic Ingersoll later.

Shadowy Man

Though calling religion bad or created by men has no bearing on whether he believed in a creator or any kind of divine ideals/forces.

vixstile

I never really noticed atheists claiming Paine as an atheist.

He was one of the greatest skeptics/rationalists/critical thinkers of his day.

Rational BAC

Excellent point. That quote of Napoleon in no way makes him an atheist. Many Fundies disparage "religion"

I disparage "organized religion." So did Voltaire.

Pyrrho

He may very well have been a deist, but you seem to be forgetting the fact that publicly saying that you are an atheist has not generally been socially acceptable (an obvious understatement), and therefore one might claim to believe in a god to avoid the negative consequences of saying that there is no god. The century before, heretics were burned at the stake in England. In the 1700's, it was still unwise in most places to admit that you were an atheist.

AmericanHeretic

In The Age of Reason, Paine is clear about being a Deist, and clear about why he was. He saw Creation (with a capital C) as being accomplished by a Creator, he assumed this via natural immutable laws and orderly processes of the universe as he understood them to be at that time in history. This was very akin to the Law of Nature inspired type of Deism somewhat popular back then, additionally, he definately believed in an afterlife.

President Roosevelt publicly called Paine an Atheist. This may be because Paine railed against Christianity vividly and regarded the Bible as 'stupid', to use the term he favored many times in his book.

Paine was most decidely anti-Christian, or perhaps better stated, anti-Biblical, but very much in favor of freedom of religion, of course.

I read only quotes of Paine's first, and thought he was an Atheist, but now that I've just read The Age of Reason, I understand his positions correctly. I don't think it's an awful mistake to read his popular quotes and see him as an Atheist although he was certainly a Deist.


That appeared to me as a statement for belief in rationality or Reason, initially. One has to read the entire book to understand his actual framework of beliefs and how he thought. He was an honest, extremely intelligent Deist arguing against a religion, Christianity, and arguing for another he regarded as pure, Deism. It is little different than a Muslim arguing his religion is true over that of a Jew.

Paine did make statements that Atheism was not a thing he respected, however, he did this only in passing, while the vast majority of The Age of Reason is a steady and intensive grilling of the Bible.

I advise anyone to read The Age of Reason. It's fascinating in it's own right and a terrific critique of the Bible and extremely common sense oriented. You can read it in full here for free.

http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/D/1776-1...ne/Ar/arxx.htm

One thing is for sure though, Thomas Paine, the Founding Father who named the United States of America, was absolutely in no way a Christian, he despised the religion. This completely shoots down the popular modern Christian fundamentalist lie that America has either Christian roots or foundation, in a nutshell.

Resistance is fertile