Last week, Substack Central sent a communiqué suggesting we could re-post older pieces so as to lessen the burden of having to come up with new content constantly.
I first read Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason (1807) long, long ago and was so very grateful to find him. I think I read it even before his best-known book that no one seems to read anymore.
The thing I find hard to get a grip on is that Paine was quite scathing about church, superstition, un-reason, yet elsewhere describes himself as a deist. Was it impossible for even the likes of them to view the cosmos without a creator/deity? I guess. I find the history of free-thinking fascinating.
I studied Deists in Darlene Sherrick's class. They were essentially agnostic, many of them. They rarely believed in miracles or any sort of "magic." They did not require or even accept the divinity of Jesus. Yes, Freethinkers is the right term. Jefferson rewrote the KJ translation of Matthew without the miracles. It was pure philosophy. I have been "politely agnostic" since I was a child. I see no evidence of and feel no need for a cosmos containing a creator/deity but I honor morality and ethics, the latter more than the former most of my life. I can respect the teachings of Jesus, most of what he is said to have said, and even honor ceremony and ritual—I can feel that, even without "belief." I have always thought, despite slavery and Sally Hemings, and despite his likely autism, that I might have enjoyed a talk with Jefferson. I believe he had ethical standards (not mine) and he kept to them. Paine would not, I think, be one to talk to over a meal. A debate, much yelling and laughter perhaps.
In Paine's day, the Church was the crown in all of Europe. The church was the bloody faithful owning slaves and denying all women souls. It was the practice of an essentially unequal society that used scripture to prop up a caste system that still persists. The current king of England got to uni under his own efforts and learned Welsh before he was absurdly named Prince of that country—the first of his line to accomplish either—and yet, he is still bowed to and given respect not for those noble efforts but because of the accident of his birth.
The Puritans and Quakers—all the faithful in the colonies—were busy solidifying their power. In the mean time, others were reaching for something better, the notion of all created equal. Imagine. You see, I really should have been a Social Studies teacher—ha! Instead, I taught English for all those years.
I wrote a novel exploring what humanity might become if competition were absent and collaboration were honored above all. What if society were less football game, more church choir? Like you wrote a novel to discover how afterlife might allow us the joys we missed the first time through. Thank you again for that one. One of my favorite all-time reads.
I first read Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason (1807) long, long ago and was so very grateful to find him. I think I read it even before his best-known book that no one seems to read anymore.
The thing I find hard to get a grip on is that Paine was quite scathing about church, superstition, un-reason, yet elsewhere describes himself as a deist. Was it impossible for even the likes of them to view the cosmos without a creator/deity? I guess. I find the history of free-thinking fascinating.
I studied Deists in Darlene Sherrick's class. They were essentially agnostic, many of them. They rarely believed in miracles or any sort of "magic." They did not require or even accept the divinity of Jesus. Yes, Freethinkers is the right term. Jefferson rewrote the KJ translation of Matthew without the miracles. It was pure philosophy. I have been "politely agnostic" since I was a child. I see no evidence of and feel no need for a cosmos containing a creator/deity but I honor morality and ethics, the latter more than the former most of my life. I can respect the teachings of Jesus, most of what he is said to have said, and even honor ceremony and ritual—I can feel that, even without "belief." I have always thought, despite slavery and Sally Hemings, and despite his likely autism, that I might have enjoyed a talk with Jefferson. I believe he had ethical standards (not mine) and he kept to them. Paine would not, I think, be one to talk to over a meal. A debate, much yelling and laughter perhaps.
In Paine's day, the Church was the crown in all of Europe. The church was the bloody faithful owning slaves and denying all women souls. It was the practice of an essentially unequal society that used scripture to prop up a caste system that still persists. The current king of England got to uni under his own efforts and learned Welsh before he was absurdly named Prince of that country—the first of his line to accomplish either—and yet, he is still bowed to and given respect not for those noble efforts but because of the accident of his birth.
The Puritans and Quakers—all the faithful in the colonies—were busy solidifying their power. In the mean time, others were reaching for something better, the notion of all created equal. Imagine. You see, I really should have been a Social Studies teacher—ha! Instead, I taught English for all those years.
I wrote a novel exploring what humanity might become if competition were absent and collaboration were honored above all. What if society were less football game, more church choir? Like you wrote a novel to discover how afterlife might allow us the joys we missed the first time through. Thank you again for that one. One of my favorite all-time reads.
That’s quite a challenge you set for yourself!