Bill to Honor Paine Stalls in Arkansas

[suffragette]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/11/us/11paine.html


Legislation designating Jan. 29 as Thomas Paine Day in Arkansas failed after a member of the state House of Representatives protested Paine’s criticism of religion.
~snip~
Representative Sid Rosenbaum, however, took exception to Paine’s stated preference for reason rather than religion.
~snip~
Representative Lindsley Smith, a Democrat who presented the legislation to the House, expressed surprise that it provoked controversy.

“I think if Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were standing here today, they would give you the same presentation,” Representative Smith said. Paine, she added, “should be respected and honored.”

[originalpckelly]

1. The Age of Reason is a pamphlet written by Paine later on after Common Sense:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Reason

[suffragette]

2. Looks to me like the people who voted against this

are rejecting both reason and common sense.

[Gman]

5. Not only that

but they are specifically rejecting one of the pillars that this country was founded on, the freedom of (and from) religion. This is a big telltale item revealing that the RW is well aware this country was NOT founded as a Christian country but as a very secular one. Imagine, they even like what a major founding father had to say about religion and government. How very unpatriotic.

[suffragette]

12. Yes, that's exactly what they're doing.

And it is telltale.

[NovaNardis]

3. People like Paine

criticized religion because it is a fuel for people killing each other, and they decided that was stupid. Seems some people just want to be idiots. Maybe they should go crusade in Iraq.

[originalpckelly]

4. I say all the sane people move to a part of the world and start a country...

and let these religious nuts kill each other off.

[Benhurst]

6. I'm at a loss here. Why in god's name would the Arkansas legislature consider

honoring the author of The Age of Reason and of Common Sense, two books which would seem to inspire little interest in or have relevance to The Razorback State?

[originalpckelly]

8. It would seem that they didn't like Age of Reason for this reason:

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe."

[eagler]

9. Very well said . Although I am a believing Christian

I can see that you nonetheless respect others and deserve respect for your convictions in return.

[jody]

15. In #8 above, originalpckelly quoted Thomas Paine. n/t

[brentspeak]

14. There are lots of intelligent people in Arkansas

And as a New Jersey resident, I can tell you we've got more than our own share of non-thinking knee-jerkers. Quite a few people here voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004.

[Benhurst]

18. Yeah, I sure they have intelligent people; but if the Arkansaw and New Jersey

are anything like the states where I have lived, the state legislatures are generally the last place in which to look for them.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

7. dawn heah, we prefer faith to reason. Got dat, boy?

yall come visit us afta church.

[sutz12]

10. I got into a discussion with a fundie once....

I forget the exact wording I used, but I said something about "The greatest and most influential document of the Age of Reason" or something like that. He drew a complete blank, and I had to flat out tell him that I was referring to the US Constitution.

Most of them get confused nervous when we remind them that God is not mentioned in the Constitution at all. They don't believe us when we tell them that their no requirement to take their oath of office on the Bible, or any other book or object. They seem to not know of the existence of Article Six at all.

[suston96]

11. Small wonder....

...that Thomas Paine gets no respect these days.

Paine's startingly innovative thesis - that all power comes from the people, and the people decide how they shall be governed, and who will govern them, and the people will change that governance whenever it does not meet the people's expectations -

Yeah, that idea - power from the people - is unacceptable to way too many these days.

[sakabatou]

13. OH NOES!

Not critical thinking! That's blasphemy!

[The Flaming Red Head]

16. None of them were Christians they were all Deist

de·ism

de·ism

rational belief in God: a belief in God based on reason rather than revelation, and involving the view that God has set the universe in motion but does not interfere with how it runs.
Deism was especially influential in the 17th and 18th centuries.



Encarta ® World English Dictionary

[rcdean]

17. Paine's writing is thrilling! It's the best I have ever read. Witness this...

Do we want to contemplate His power? We see it in the immensity of the creation. Do we want to contemplate His wisdom: We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate His munificence? We see it in the abundance with which He fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate His mercy? We see it in His not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful."

As to the Bible, whether true or fabulous, it is a history, and history is not a revelation...

But if we admit the supposition that God would condescend to reveal Himself in words, we ought not to believe it would be in such idle and profligate stories as are in the Bible; and it is for this reason, among others which our reverence to God inspires, that the Deists deny that the book called the Bible is the Word of God, or that it is revealed religion.

Books, whether Bibles or Korans, carry no evidence of being the work of any other power than man. It is only that which man cannot do that carries the evidence of being the work of a superior power. Man could not invent and make a universe - he could not invent nature, for nature is of divine origin. It is the laws by which the universe is governed.

When, therefore, we look through nature up to nature's God, we are on the right road... but when we trust to books as the Word of God, and confide in them as revealed religion, we are afloat on the ocean of uncertainty, and shatter into contending factions.

Thomas Paine
The Age of Reason

[suffragette]

19. Very powerful, indeed.

And welcome to DU.


:hi:

[genie_weenie]

20. Well why should "leaders" be any different than the

"leaders" of yesteryear.

Paine was shunned by Washington, who let him rot in a French jail he and was a called a "filthy little athesit" by Teddy Roosevelt.