Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason was published over two centuries ago, but it’s still a readable and enjoyable demolition of Biblical literalism. In its time, it provoked fury from the religious establishment. It will still upset some Christians today. He wrote it in the 1790s and issued it in three parts. He had to consider the first part finished when he was arrested in 1793 in the midst of France’s Reign of Terror. Like many other people that year, he was tried and convicted of treason, though such details as specifying the charges or having him present at his trial were omitted. He escaped the guillotine and died in 1809. By the end of his life, he was widely despised as a heretic, and only six people attended his funeral.

He is one of my top heroes of the American Revolution, and he’s best known to Americans as the author of Common Sense and The Crisis. Robert Ingersoll wrote a glowing essay on him. There’s good reason to believe he influenced Mark Twain as well.
(more…)