The Age of Reason

            Upon first delving into Thomas Paine’s classic text, The Age of Reason, I had a few biases towards the book that had stemmed from my prior education of it and the radical thoughts of its creator.  I learned in numerous classes throughout high school that Thomas Paine was in fact a revolutionary thinker unlike any other of his time and that this should be appreciated, but I have always found myself thinking of this man as a staunch atheist that in fact lived in opposition to all of the ideas surrounding religion that I believe in wholeheartedly.  I suppose it is because of my strong Christian background that I always become frustrated when reading excerpts by Thomas Paine, let alone entire works, and this is precisely why this text was difficult for me to get through because of its ferocious opposition of organized religion and his established mission to debunk the claims of Christian doctrine.  It was only through this book, however, that I was able to see that Paine was not in fact an atheist, but an individual who stood firmly by his convictions just as I do by the beliefs I hold in my own religion.  I was able to appreciate this fact and acknowledge how he conveyed his points through careful word usage and complex philosophical thought.  It was interesting to see how Paine spends most of the text making very strong points using the simplest of words that are often only one or two syllables in length.  This doesn’t seem all that impressive, but to me it is remarkable how he was able to convey his ideas about such revolutionary thoughts and phenomena through a basic rhetoric.  Even though his ideas challenged my mind to think critically and to doubt what I had been previously taught, the text itself was fairly basic on a sentence-by-sentence basis, and this kept me interested throughout the readings.   Paine goes on to detail the overlying point of the entire book that the only proof that a particular scripture of any religious sect is a divine revelation is the assertion by those believers in it that it is.  This was a mind blowing statement to me even though I could not immediately contrive a plausible response and I truly believe this point will have me thinking for a long time after I finish reading Thomas Paine’s words.  I do believe in my heart and through my faith that the Bible is a much more sacred piece of text than “any other piece of reportage” like Paine attempts to assert, but I can entirely acknowledge the fact that believers in any religion will argue the very same point about their scripture.  Ultimately, I think Paine wrote with the intention of leaving the interpretation of his texts up to the minds of his readers and that is what he is remembered most vividly for today.  He truly did believe all that he wrote and this is what makes his works among some of the most read and analyzed in the world today.  While he wrote with extreme force and forwardness, I think that Thomas Paine felt that whatever he wrote about government or religion would one day be viewed as the powerful truth that he always intended it to be.  While that hope may never come to fruition, I believe that his work will continue to be studied as an important alternative viewpoint to traditional religious confines for many years to come.