Jamie_L

Is it just me, or does that Thomas Paine passage sound a lot like the 1700's version of one of us mouthing off on a chat board about philosophy, politics, or some other topic we think we know about, but that we haven't studied all that much?

Jamie

Friar Bellows

Not just you, but I fear it's not enough of us.

Tharmas

Considering that by the time he gave the speech from which this passage is taken, Thomas Paine had actively participated in the American Revolution as a speechwriter, propagandist and Secretary to Congress, and was at the time an elected representative to the revolutionary government of the French Republic following their Revolution, and that he had been educated as an engineer and spent a good deal of time constructing and distributing orreries to working class societies in order to teach people how to understand celestial mechanics without using the (personal)God explanation, and that he was only a couple of years shy of publishing *The Age of Reason*, I think that I for one would be willing to give him a little more credit for understanding the politics and philosophy of his day than the average twit mouthing off in an Internet chat room. But maybe that�s just me...
(edited to add "personal" before "God")

[ July 09, 2002: Message edited by: Tharmas ]</p>

Godless Dave

I resemble that remark!