THE AGE OF REASON
By Thomas Paine
Watchmaker Publishing, 2010, 195 Pages
Reviewed by Michael Beach
The original work was published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1809, though the final version is delineated as parts I and II. The focus of the treatise is to show why the Bible and Christianity cannot be true. Paine also espouses the philosophy of Deism.
The author does not question the existence of God. In fact he argues, from the point of view of Deism, that the proof of the existence of God can be found in the discoveries of science. However, he draws the line at any knowledge of truth beyond what can be proven through science.
Most of the book is an examination of passages of the Bible and how they either disprove the validity of the Bible itself, or of some accepted traditional Christian (specifically Catholic or Protestant) belief about what a given passage means. Paine makes logical arguments, but they are based, as he says, solely on the text as it appears in the Bible and from the perspective of his own concurrent context. Much of the work feels like a mix of reasonable logic, conjecture, and church doctrine. Since he adds conjecture and then existent church doctrine he is, in fact, not sticking only to the text of the Bible as he claims. Viewing any writing outside of the context in which it was written can also cause the sort of argument Paine points to.
I have very specific views of his philosophical perspectives and will not tackle them here as this is a review of the book. I will post a few of my personal views in my Blog at bhaven.org/blog.html
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