A critique of Thomas Paine’s book “The age of reason.”
Thomas Paine, the renowned British radical chose to launch an unrelenting assault on Anglo-Saxon Christianity through his infamous book “The Age of Reason” written in latter part of the eighteenth-century. A cardinal feature of the book entitled “The Age of Reason” was a call to critically bring to question what the writer calls the supposed claim to infallibility the Christian holy book the Bible. This call to scrutiny heralded a new dispensation of what has become known as the age of deistic consciousness. The book written in three parts, right from its publishing to its circulation and sales attracted widespread controversies. In Britain for instance, the book was utterly outlawed because the British conservative government had reasons to believe that its contents was fundamentally seditious coupled with the fact that it had the potential of inciting social apprehension in otherwise peaceful society. Meanwhile, the book was a bestseller in faraway America even though it still had some level of critical welcome in some quarters.
This essay will be conducting a critique of all the contending elements the writer raises with particular attention to the immediate and remote factors that influenced his line of thinking. Ultimately, the main aim of this essay is to settle on a charitable academic assessment of what Thomas Paine has bequeathed to both his contemporaries and succeeding generations regarding the sensitive question of religion and the place it occupies in not just in the life of an individual but also how this by extension shapes the social values. The writer undoubtedly did not leave his readers unscathed by his work considering the fact that the setting of the novel is eighteenth century Britain, France and the United States—societies that held the Christian faith so highly. For Paine to therefore venture to put forward a highly skeptical paper on institutions such as the church was not just a sign of remarkable bravery but also some deep seated firm convictions that he was willing to defend at all cost.
An Indepth Analysis of Paine-Inspired Deism
According to most observers, the views expressed by Paine are not exclusively his sole preserve. The argument being advanced is that prior to Paine’s work, some writers had touched either covertly or overtly on the subject of Christian religion and its place in society. There is therefore reason to believe that some of these earlier works could have served as the inspiration for Paine’s eventual “The Age of Reason.” It is worth stating that the “The Age of Reason” is fundamentally non-atheistic—it is important to stress this in order to establish the framework for this essay.
Processing your request, Please wait....
