A few decades ago, a friend who was a member of the Thomas Paine Unitarian Fellowship (in Collegeville, Pennsylvania) asked me to address his fellowship on Paine's views about religion. Members were thinking about dropping Paine's name from their fellowship. I arrived not really knowing how the members would respond to my talk. As I quoted from "Age of Reason" and other of Paine's writings on religion, the members frequently smiled and occasionally laughed. After my talk, they held their business meeting, and (I later learned from my friend) decided based on what they heard from me to retain "Thomas Paine" in the name of their fellowship. Here is the link to my talk for those who might be interested:
Thanks as always, Ed. I'll try to get a few minutes to look at the talk and THANK YOU for sharing it. Anyone who thinks Paine was an atheist can have had little or no exposure to Paine. He was very much the son of his Quaker father.
Thanks for bringing this error of Thom's up, Ken. Here's a quote from The Age of Reason from Thomas Paine which states the second reason he wrote The Age of Reason. It was to stop people in France from becoming Atheists. He wrote: "In the second place, the people of France were running headlong into atheism, and I had the work translated and published in their own language to stop them in that career, and fix them to the first article (as I have before said) of every man’s creed who has any creed at all, I believe in God."
Thanks, Bob. Always good to hear from you. And a GREAT quote ! I guess you can tell, it always ticks me off a little when people spread that old slander. My closest friend and colleague in France wrote me privately that "it was the common propaganda of that time ... And yet slander is stronger than truth. This reputation would dog him for a long, long time. It will be a powerful repressor in the collective imagination. Didn't Othello kill his lovely Desdemona because of Iago's rumors?"
A few decades ago, a friend who was a member of the Thomas Paine Unitarian Fellowship (in Collegeville, Pennsylvania) asked me to address his fellowship on Paine's views about religion. Members were thinking about dropping Paine's name from their fellowship. I arrived not really knowing how the members would respond to my talk. As I quoted from "Age of Reason" and other of Paine's writings on religion, the members frequently smiled and occasionally laughed. After my talk, they held their business meeting, and (I later learned from my friend) decided based on what they heard from me to retain "Thomas Paine" in the name of their fellowship. Here is the link to my talk for those who might be interested:
https://www.cooperative-individualism.org/dodson-edward_spirituality-of-thomas-paine-1998.htm
Ed Dodson
Thanks as always, Ed. I'll try to get a few minutes to look at the talk and THANK YOU for sharing it. Anyone who thinks Paine was an atheist can have had little or no exposure to Paine. He was very much the son of his Quaker father.
Thanks for bringing this error of Thom's up, Ken. Here's a quote from The Age of Reason from Thomas Paine which states the second reason he wrote The Age of Reason. It was to stop people in France from becoming Atheists. He wrote: "In the second place, the people of France were running headlong into atheism, and I had the work translated and published in their own language to stop them in that career, and fix them to the first article (as I have before said) of every man’s creed who has any creed at all, I believe in God."
Thanks, Bob. Always good to hear from you. And a GREAT quote ! I guess you can tell, it always ticks me off a little when people spread that old slander. My closest friend and colleague in France wrote me privately that "it was the common propaganda of that time ... And yet slander is stronger than truth. This reputation would dog him for a long, long time. It will be a powerful repressor in the collective imagination. Didn't Othello kill his lovely Desdemona because of Iago's rumors?"