"It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him." - Thomas Paine
So obvious, but I couldn't seem to figure this out for myself before I joined the ranks of the brainwashed!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/2011 11:00AM by freegirl10.

I have read many of Paine's statements and "The Age of Reason". Some of my favorite quotes:

"The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed." - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

"Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange believe that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies." - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

"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." - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

"It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime." - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason


"Priests and conjurors are of the same trade." Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

"The declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice." - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason


"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistant that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel." - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason


"..but the Bible is such a book of lies and contradictions there is no knowing which part to believe or whether any..." - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason


"The NT, compared with the Old, is like a farce of one act..." - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

Thank you for your additions! I neglected to state that MY quote was also taken from The Age of Reason.

"Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system." -- Thomas Paine

Timothy

Keep 'em coming! This man was ahead of his time

..."Which is more likely; that a miracle would happen or a man would lie?"

The actual quote:

"Miracles should be thought of as a crutch for truth, and should be rejected."

"When a person says he saw a miracle that falls outside the laws of nature, it raises a question in our minds. Which is more likely... that something happened outside the laws of nature, or that a man might tell a lie? We have never in our life seen nature break its own laws. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told. There is at least a million to one odds that the reporter of the miracle told a lie."

"The claim of miracles to prove a religious system is the most inconsistent that religion has; even if it caused someone to believe they were real. In the first place, whenever one has to put on a show (miracles are nothing but a show) to get someone to believe something, it indicates a weakness in the doctrine being preached. In the second place, it degrades God into a carnival showman who does tricks to make the people stare and wonder."

"Any way you look at it, miracles are probably not real or necessary."

-Thomas Paine

That's funny freegirl. Before I clicked on the discussion that was the first quote that popped up in my head. It still amazes me that people like Thomas Paine were able to see through religion the way they did during that time period. It took me a good deal of time to get out of the church; even with the giant leaps in our understanding of the world that we have made since Mr. Paine's time. I've often asked myself if the falseness of the church had been any less, would I have been able to figure it out?

I quoted some Thomas Paine to the missionaries in 1979--mostly the idea of seeing revelation in the universe around us: "The word of God is in the creation we behold," or words to that effect.

They didn't seem to appreciate it very much. I think it got me crossed off the Golden Contact list...

Similar from "The Age of Reason":

"When it is revealed to me, I will believe it to be a revelation; but it is not, and cannot be incumbent upon me to believe it to be revelation before; neither is it proper that I should take the word of man as the Word of God, and put man in the place of God."

And I like this one because I think it explains mormonism, et al, as a continuing religion:

"It is possible to believe, and I always feel pleasure in encouraging myself to believe it, that there have been men in the world who persuade themselves that what is called a pious fraud might, at least under particular circumstances, be productive of some good. But the fraud being once established, could not afterward be explained, for it is with a pious fraud as with a bad action, it begets a calamitous necessity of going on."

"Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."

"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."

"The study of theology as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and admits of no conclusion. Not any thing can be studied as a science without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing."



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/2011 04:47PM by jw the inquizzinator.

Wonderful contributions...what a bunch of thinkers we are! Isn't it wonderful???????

Which just shows how profound Paine's thought was!