The Age of Reason - Thomas Paine (week 1)

In The Age of Reason (1794-1807), Thomas Paine portrays the Bible as a human construct full of historical inaccuracies, moral contradictions, and "fabulous" myths. He critiques supernatural revelation and institutionalized religion as tools of manipulation, instead advocating a theology based on reason and observation of the natural world, where "man's mind is his own church."

He wrote the first part of the book while imprisoned during the Reign of Terror, hoping to provide a rational alternative to the total atheism then prevalent in revolutionary France. Nevertheless, by presenting his views in a popular and irreverent style, using lucid and often humorous prose, Paine earned a reputation as an agitator and blasphemer. His commentary on the Book of Jonah is representative: "The story of the whale swallowing Jonah... borders greatly on the marvelous; but it would have approached nearer to the idea of a miracle, if Jonah had swallowed the whale."

Paine narrowly escaped execution in Jacobin France, where his views were perceived as not radical enough. But the British government, fearing that his influence was too radical, prosecuted printers and publishers of his book. Meanwhile, in the United States The Age of Reason became a best-seller, spurring a brief revival of Deism, but damaging his legacy over the long term.

Schedule:

• Week 1 (March 29): Part 1
• Week 2: Part 2

The Age of Reason:

• Standard Ebooks
• Gutenberg
• Google books
• Librivox (version 1) 8h11m
• Librivox (version 2) 11h37m
• Librivox (version 3) 8h11m

Extracts:

• "A book all but forsaken now / For more advanced ones not so frank, / Nor less in vogue and taking rank; / And yet it never shall outgrow / That infamy it first incurred, / Though—viewed in light which moderns know— / Capricious infamy absurd. / The blunt straightforward Saxon tone, / Work-a-day language, even his own, / The sturdy thought, not deep but clear, / The hearty unbelief sincere" (Clarel, 1.17)
• "So far back his Greek Church did plant, / Rome’s Pope he deemed but Protestant— / A Rationalist, a bigger Paine— / Heretic, worse than Arian" (Clarel, 3.23)
• "Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this historical story of Jonah and the whale." (Moby-Dick, 83)
• "I lost all respect for whales; and began to be a little dubious about the story of Jonah; for how could Jonah reside in such an insignificant tenement; how could he have had elbow-room there? But perhaps, thought I, the whale which according to Rabbinical traditions was a female one, might have expanded to receive him like an anaconda, when it swallows an elk and leaves the antlers sticking out of its mouth.... And, doubtless, Jonah himself must have been disappointed when he looked up to the domed midriff surmounting the whale’s belly, and surveyed the ribbed pillars around him. A pretty large belly, to be sure, thought he, but not so big as it might have been." (Redburn, 20)
• "Though [regarding Jonah and the whale], some sailors are slow believers, or at best hold themselves in a state of philosophical suspense. Say they—“That catastrophe took place in the Mediterranean; and the only whales frequenting the Mediterranean, are of a sort having not a swallow large enough to pass a man entire; for those Mediterranean whales feed upon small things, as horses upon oats.”" (Mardi, 1.95)

This meetup is part of the series In the Belly of the Whale.