"I believe in the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy." - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (1794)
Via Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope by Sarah Bakewell
It's still difficult for me to wrap my mind around how someone could express this kind of sentiment and end up so despised (only 6 people saw fit to attend Paine's funeral, despite him having played a significant part in the birth of the United States and generally lived as an avatar for democracy.)
People are fickle and take it personally when their beliefs are criticized; and many were inclined to see his criticism of superstition and organized religion to be corrosive to organized society. But Paine believed that "[i]nfidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what [one] does not believe."
No comments:
Post a Comment