Essay Questions

What is Paine's main argument against the validity of the Bible?

Thomas Paine seems to be something of an empiricist in the way he approaches religion and truth. The big qualifier for a belief-worthy system of ideas, for him, is verifiability. Anything based entirely on hearsay or the accounts of other people is naturally suspect, and when the reader is so far removed from the events being recorded, it is impossible to verify them, so they don't have enough evidence to warrant belief.

This is Paine's quarrel with the Bible: most of the important events (the bestowal of the Ten Commandments, the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, etc.) are presented as truth, but the only evidence to support this claim is the account of the author or the main character. In the circumstance of Jesus's resurrection, moreover, there were no witnesses to the actual resurrection, and the evidence is circumstantial, to say the least. Since these things cannot be proven, says Paine, it is foolish to believe in them; the only Bible that the religious man should use is the world around him, a wonderful creation pointing to some kind of Creator.

How does this pamphlet relate to Thomas Paine's more famous work Common Sense?

In Common Sense, Thomas Paine argued that the American people should realize their political predicament and rise up against the harsh rule of their ruler, the British Crown. This pamphlet was a major factor in the willingness of the American people to start the Revolutionary War with England, which resulted in the independence of the United States of America.

In the first chapter of The Age of Reason, Paine directly connects the two works, saying that after he published Common Sense, he realized that a revolution in the governmental sphere would soon be followed a religious revolution due to the tyranny of the existing institutions. This, he says, is the religious version of Common Sense; it stirs up the people to rebel against the tyranny of the Church, just as its predecessor stirred them up against the Crown. Ironically, critical response to this pamphlet was directly opposite to that of Common Sense; instead of heralding Paine as a visionary, the people condemned him as a heretic.