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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 16807
[Civil]
Date Posted:
12/10/2006
8:41:18 am EST
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Views: 7,603
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Comments: 6
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Common Sense About Paine, Founding Fathers
Author: Clay Jenkinson Source: Bismark Tribune (ND)
Title: COMMON SENSE ABOUT PAINE, FOUNDING FATHERS
Error is the stuff of life. In a recent column I characterized Thomas Paine as an atheist. I had good reasons for doing so, and I was writing the truth as I knew it at the time. Several readers wrote to me to protest the characterization and to urge me to set things right.
So I did the only reasonable thing. I bought a couple of new biographies of Paine and luxuriated in reading about his long extraordinary life. Paine (1737-1809) was an amazing man: political radical, Enlightenment busybody and reformer, bestselling pamphleteer, inventor of an experimental iron bridge, citizen first of Britain, then the United States, and later France, where he served in the National Convention (parliament), and argued against the execution of Louis XVI. And deist, not atheist. He wrote, "I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life."
I was simply wrong about Paine. I'm sorry I was wrong, of course, because I hate to be wrong, but I don't at all mind admitting it, and setting the record straight.
Paine wrote three books that rocked the world.
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Community Thoughts: There are 6 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Thomas Paine (in The A** To Many People) | Dec 11th. at 12:33:47 pm EST
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Fred Lawrence (Kansas City, Kansas) - Email Me
Thomas Paine was one of the most interesting of our founding fathers. He had the unique ability to offend everybody! We need more people like him.
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| Debunketing Therafter | Dec 10th. at 7:22:19 pm EST
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Ahr-Ohn (Bridgeport, Connecticut) - Email Me
"He believed in one eternal and benevolent God, a clockmaker deity who created the universe and set it into motion. He scoffed at the idea of the Trinity. He believed in an afterlife, though he did not like to think of it as a reward for good behavior."
Jesus agreed about the Hereafter, debunking the Summerlands in the Sky, and Tir na'Nog under the Sea theories. But St. Thomas wasn't available, in his day.
I have questions about this Clockmaker Theory, but Eternity is temporily unthinkable, and Quantum Mechanics still had a few surprises. Jesus was correct in saying that we are all Gods, but the movement at the time was to disdain the rediculous superstitions that were being ventured by religious wholesalers.
Pythagoras was a religious teacher, like Jesus, or Mohammed, but his Logic was more similar to Sankhye Yoga.
Paine wrote, "The opinions I have advanced ... are the effect of the most clear and long-established conviction that the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world, that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the almighty; that the only true religion is Deism."
Orthodoxy was polluted by the need of the Council of Nicea to produce something teachable; Heterodoxy simply has comparable difficulties.
Jesus never taught Paganism, but the tolerance of Paganism. As Paul, the antithesis of Venus, converted Belligerence to Christianity, others converted Paganism. It's alright to regard Jesus as a Pagan Deity, but the sacrifice he requested involved listening to what he actually said. To worship without that sacrifice is something he described as Bad Engineering.
Theology is a great field of Question, but the only correct answers would be Her opinion. The problem of Universal Deism is, that while Reality has a common connection to Her, Reality is a myth, and all Frames of Reference are differently connected.
Arawn
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| Fear And Ignorance | Dec 10th. at 4:26:12 pm EST
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Lorca (Longview, Washington) - Email Me
Much like the experience of present day author Sam Harris ("The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation") , Paine was derided, cursed, and physically assaulted for publishing a scholarly and well reasoned work in "The Age of Reason". Yet another example of how fear and ignorance, in this case DELIBERATE ignorance, manifest themselves in violent reaction to the object of that fear. All he did was make the case that there is untterly no proof to support the assertions made in the scripture and doctrine of any of the world's organized religion, and suggest that, this being the case, there exists no rational basis for any worldly governmental authority derived threrefrom. The religions reacted to this because such thought threatened their very existence. The faithful, who take their cues from their religious "leaders", thus proving the inability or at least, the unwillingness to thing for themselves and even consider Paine's ideas, reacted in predictable fashion and punished him for making them squirm in a conflicted mire of dogma and straightforward reason.
I don't know that Paine would have categorically dismissed modern-day pagans as "off the mark". Most of those I would label as "pagan" are remarkably tolerant of the beliefs of others and grasp full well the idea that genuine spiritual growth comes from personal work, rather than having it delivered in the form of lecture once a week.
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| A Voice For Our Time. | Dec 10th. at 2:51:17 pm EST
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me
Mr. Paine might consider Pagans and others off the mark, but I do agree with a great many of his sentiments- especially concerning organized religions. He was a voice in the wilderness- one who stood for what he thought, and his views are far kinder than those of the religious right. We really need to bring him back into the forefront.
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| Confession: I Am A Tom Paine Groupie | Dec 10th. at 10:03:59 am EST
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KatRivers (Berea, Kentucky) - Email Me
What I always found interesting about the Founding Fathers was that they were so, well, *human.* Is there any one of us who could be squarely, 100% for-sure pegged into a particular hole?
Tom Paine has always been one of my favorite Revolutionists. I used to teach a class in American texts and students were always amazed by Paine's life and what he had to say in his writings. He definitely inspired some interesting class discussions.
I am one of those Americans who "share[s] Jefferson's and Paine's distaste for the Bible [and] their antagonism to institutional religion." (FTR, though, I hold a distate for using any religious tome as a rule book by which to guide -- or control, to my way of thinking -- a nation.)
It is true that "any honest participant [reader/scholar] acknowledges that there is plenty of "evidence" [for and against religion] on both sides of the argument [among the words of the Founding Fathers]. In other words, there is no definitive "intent of the Founding Fathers" on religious questions. (Perhaps there is no definitive agreement among them as a group -- I would be willing to agree to that.)
"It is certain that the United States is a more religious country in 2006 than it was in 1806. Jefferson, like Paine, believed that science and reason would emancipate mankind from faith systems, and that at some future, but near, date, all people would admire, though not worship, the one universal deity."
Ah, well, more's the pity all the way around, really. I must go read some Dawkins. ;-)
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