858 Paine, Thomas
most world religions, deists do not believe that God
plays a role in the daily lives of humans; rather,
God created the world and merely “watches” it in
motion.
Paine’s The Age of Reason applies a critical lens
to many of the accepted doctrines of Christian reli-
gion. In his exploration, he addresses such themes
as religion, the individual and society, freedom,
ethics, nationalism, and spirituality.
LuElla Putnam
etHIcS in The Age of Reason
Thomas Paine wrote the first section of The Age
of Reason after the execution of Louis xVI during
the French Revolution. Although he was originally
a supporter of the Revolution, he did not believe
that the bloodshed enacted in that case was fair.
Paine was afraid that because of the revolutionaries’
extremism, France would become a country of athe-
ists. He felt that well-reasoned and therefore ethical
decision making was vanishing from the Revolution,
and that it was his duty to bring about its return.
Paine wanted to ensure that “in the general wreck
of superstition, of false systems of government, and
false theology” in France, the countrymen there
did not “lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of
theology that is true.” Because of his ties with the
American Revolution, Paine also desired for his
writing to reach and affect the new American nation
as well. As a deist in particular, he felt it was his mis-
sion to oppose what he believed to be the false belief
systems most of humankind seemed to uphold. It
was his sincere hope that “man would return to the
pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one God,
and no more.” Paine did not believe that the world’s
religions had any use; rather, he wished to topple
them and for man to begin finding God through the
use of his own mind.
Obviously, then, Paine did not want any man to
base his morality on books or on stories that had
been passed down to him. In fact, in “The Age of
Reason,” he openly admonishes this type of “passed
on” thinking, which he sees as perpetuating religion.
He writes that most of the men who believe in reli-
gion “were educated to believe it” and “would have
believed anything else in the same manner.” In other
words, these men were not employing their own
critical skills of analysis to understand what the best
way to act in a particular situation would be; rather,
they were merely accepting what others told them
and were relying on belief and trust alone to render
ethical judgments. Paine goes so far as to say that the
Christian faith “professes to believe in a man rather
than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of
man-ism with but little deism.” To Paine, reliance on
stories passed down through men is a type of “athe-
ism,” or, as he terms it, “man-ism.” There is no “real”
spiritual truth in these stories, only a faith that what
other men have said is accurate.
To Paine, this refusal to use reason to generate
one’s ethical opinions is ludicrous, especially since
there are so many logical ways to understand the
universe and God’s will. Paine writes: “It is only in
the creation that all our ideas and conceptions of
a word of God can unite.” By “creation,” he means
the physical world surrounding humankind, in
which he believes all answers about God can be
found. God’s wisdom can be found in the order
the natural world possesses. His mercy can be seen
in allowing all humans to experience nature, and
his power can be seen in the sheer vastness of his
creation. Through the application of one’s own
reason, man can find all of the answers he needs
about life.
Therefore, ultimately, Paine believes that reason
and ethics are synonymous. He also argues that,
since he can best see God in the reasoned structure
of the natural world, then science provides the most
logical venue through which to understand the Cre-
ator’s desires. He states: “That which is now called
natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of
science . . . is the study of the works of God . . . and
is the true theology.” In Paine’s mind, science is not
an antithesis to religion, but it is religion. Hence,
men should take the logical principles that are the
basis of science and use them in their own lives.
He adds, “It would . . . be ignorance, or something
worse, to say that the scientific principles, by the
aid of which man is enabled to calculate and fore-
know when an eclipse will take place, are an human
invention.” In other words, an eclipse is the physical
manifestation of God. Humans did not create it;
God did. Accordingly, through their use of reason to
understand science, humans can better understand