The Religious and Political Philosophy of Thomas Paine

by James Tepfer

Part 2 of a three-part series by James Tepfer from his seminar at the Institute of World Culture, Santa Barbara CA in October 2006. Part 1 [I. Deism and

II. God] appeared in the Bulletin, volume 8, number 1, March 2007, with Maurice Bisheff's companion article based on his seminar at the same conference.

III. Man

1. …(T)he choicest gift of God to man (is) the gift of reason; and having endeavored to force upon himself the belief of a system (Christianity) against which

reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason, as if man could give reason to himself. (Age of Reason, page 68)

2. It is only by the exercise of reason that man can discover God. Take away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding anything…. (AoR,

p. 70)

3. … (T)here are two distinct classes of what are called Thoughts; those that we produce in ourselves by reflection and the act of thinking, and those that

bolt into the mind of their own accord. I have always made it a rule to treat those voluntary visitors with civility, taking care to examine, as well as I was

able, if they were worth entertaining; and it is from them that I have acquired almost all the knowledge that I have. (AoR, p. 83)

4. Every person of learning is finally his own teacher, the reason of which is that principles, being a distinct quality to circumstances, cannot be impressed

upon the memory; their place of mental residence is the understanding and they are never so lasting as when they begin by conception. (AoR, p. 83)

5. …(T)he consciousness of existence is the only conceivable idea we have of another life, and the continuance of that consciousness is immortality. The

consciousness of existence, or the knowing that we exist, is not necessarily confined to the same form, nor to the same matter, even in this life….We have

not in all cases the same form, nor in any case, the same matter that composed our bodies twenty or thirty years ago; and yet we are conscious of being the

same persons. (AoR, p. 177)

6. Who can say by what exceedingly fine action of fine matter it is that a thought is produced in what we call the mind? And yet that thought when produced

… is capable of becoming immortal, and is the only production of man that has that capacity. (AoR, p. 177)

7. If then the thing produced has in itself a capacity of being immortal, it is more than a token that the power that produced it, which is the selfsame thing as

consciousness of existence, can be immortal also; and that as independently of the matter it was first connected with, as the thought is of the printing or

writing it first appeared in. (AoR, p. 178)

8. That the consciousness of existence is not dependent on the same form or the same matter is demonstrated to our senses in the works of the creation, as far

as our senses are capable of receiving that demonstration. A very numerous part of the animal creation preaches to us, far better than Paul, the belief of a

life hereafter. (AoR, p. 178)

9. The slow and creeping caterpillar-worm of today passes in a few days to a torpid figure and a state resembling death; and in the next change comes forth

in all the miniature magnificence of life, a splendid butterfly….No resemblance of the former creature remains; everything is changed; all his powers are

new, and life is to him another thing. We cannot conceive that the consciousness of existence is not the same in this state of the animal as before; why then

must I believe that the resurrection of the same body is necessary to continue to me the consciousness of existence hereafter? (AoR, p. 178)

10. As for morality, the knowledge of it exists in every man’s conscience. (AoR, p. 185)

11. I consider myself in the hands of my Creator, and that he will dispose of me after this life consistently with His justice and goodness. I leave all these

matters to Him, as my Creator and friend, and I hold it to be presumption in man to make an article of faith as to what the Creator will do with us

hereafter.

Commentary

· Paine contended that immortality is a rational belief. In The Age of Reason, Paine argues that immortality is not proved by an appeal to resurrection of the body. If the body can die once, then its resurrection is not any assurance that it will not die again. Immortality, says Paine, must refer to a continuous “consciousness of existence” without necessarily confining that conscious- ness to sameness of either form or of matter. Our form may change but our consciousness of existence continues. Furthermore, the matter we occupy now is not the same matter of twenty years ago. Nonetheless, we are the same individual or person. When we look at Nature, continues Paine, we can see most clearly the principle of immortality in miniature. Nature preaches the continuity of existence through a gradual change of state. Take for example the caterpillar and its transformation from its torpid form through a state that resembles death to that of a colorful butterfly. Its awareness is continuous even though its powers and form have gone through a transformation.

· The choicest gift of Deity to man is Reason. It is not human in origin because man cannot give reason to himself. Reason is both a telescope and a microscope. It reveals the wisdom and power of God in both directions – whether turned toward the heavens or toward the earth. Intelligible principles of thought and of nature reflect the eternality of God’s wisdom. As the great 20^th Century mathematician Ramanujan said: “An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God.”

To Paine, man possesses an innate moral sense or 'conscience.' It is a sort of a moral compass or what the Muslims call fitrah. However, while man does possess a conscience that can infuse reason with high purpose, man is susceptible to vice -- though not originally sinful. In a word, man is imperfect. For there to be a perfect man, contends Paine, God would have to replicate himself. Thus, man is imperfect and is naturally subject to passions which he is not always able to overcome. However, society is a civilizing force which fosters virtue. In the end, man's triumph over his vices is his badge of honor and his contributions to the happiness of society make him a true emulator of Deity.

…Continued on page 6, Paine's Philosophy

Bulletin of Thomas Paine Friends, vol. 8, no. 2, June 2007 3

…Paine's Philosophy, from page 3

IV. Religion

1. My own mind is my own church. (AoR, p. 50)

2. Religion, considered as a duty, is incumbent upon every living soul alike, and, therefore, must be on a level to the understanding and comprehension of all….He (man) learns the theory of religion by reflection. It arises out of the action of his own mind upon the things which he sees, or upon what he may happen to hear or to read, and the practice joins itself thereto. (AoR, p. 92)

3. All religions are in their nature kind and benign, and united with principles of morality. They could not have made proselytes at first by professing anything that was vicious, cruel, persecuting, or immoral. Like everything else they had their beginning; and they proceeded by persuasion, exhortation, and example. How is it then that they lose their native mildness, and become morose and intolerant? …. By engendering the Church with the State, a sort of mule-animal, capable only of destroying, and not of breeding up, is produced, called The Church established by Law.” ( Rights of Man, page 167,

In: Hook)

4. It is certain that, in one point, all nations of the earth and all religions agree. All believe in God. The things in which they disagree are the redundancies annexed to that belief, and therefore, if ever an universal religion should prevail, it will not be believing any thing new, but in getting rid of redundancies, and believing as man believed at first. Adam, if ever there was such a man, was created a Deist, but in the mean time, let every man follow, as he has a right to do, the religion and worship he prefers. (AoR, p. 98)

5. With respect to what are called denominations of religion, if every one is left to judge of his own religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is wrong; but if they are to judge of each other’s religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is right; and therefore all the world is right, or all the world is wrong. But with respect to religion itself, without regard to names, and as directing itself from the universal family of mankind to the Divine object of all adoration, it is man bringing to his Maker the fruits of his heart; and though those fruits may differ from each other like the fruits of the earth, the grateful tribute of every one is accepted. (RoM, p. 167, In: Hook)

6. If we suppose a large family of children, who, on any particular day…made it a custom to present to their parents some token of their affection and

gratitude, each of them would make a different offering and most probably in a different manner…. The parent would be more gratified by such a variety,

than if the whole of them had acted on a concerted plan, and each had made exactly the same offering. This would have the cold appearance of

contrivance, or the harsh one of controul. But of all unwelcome things, nothing could more afflict the parent than to know, that the whole of them had

afterwards gotten together by the ears, boys and girls, fighting, scratching, reviling, and abusing each other about which was the best or the worst present.

(RoM, p. 251, In: Appleby)

7. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief … that mental lying has produced in society. When a 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. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and, in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive anything more destructive to morality than this? (AoR, pp. 50-51)

8. As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me a species of Atheism – a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of Manism with but little Deism, and is as near to Atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque body, which it calls a Redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this

means a religious, or an irreligious, eclipse of light. It has put the whole orbit of reason into shade. (AoR, pp. 72-73)

Commentary

· The religious element in man may be a socially constructive force since it encourages the emulation of Nature’s God and therefore the doing of one’s duty by each and all.

· The greatest fault of organized religion is it encourages both mindlessness (the abandonment of reason) and hypocrisy. The latter is termed ‘mental lying’ by Paine and is the root cause of what we term religious infidelity. There is no worse mental sin than pretending to believe what you do not really believe – especially about the sacred.

Bibliography

1. The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine (introduction by Philip S. Foner), Citadel Press, 1988 [ISBN 0-8065-0549-4]

2. Common Sense and Other Writings, Thomas Paine (introduction by Joyce Appleby), Barnes and Noble Classics, 2005 [ISBN 10: 1- 59308 – 209 – 6]

3. Thomas Paine, (introduction by Sidney Hook), Meridian, 1984

4. A Discourse at the Society of Theophilanthropists, 1797, Paris [can be found at website, www.infidels.com ]

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6 Bulletin of Thomas Paine Friends, vol. 8, no. 2, June 2007