'Filthy Little Atheist" Thomas Paine
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Religion, Faith, and Spirituality
bastasch8647 — 9 years ago(December 29, 2016 11:33 PM)
How strict, narrow "puritanical" Christians cast aspersions upon this early American patriot and Deist -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/j-h-mckenna-phd/filthy-little-atheist_b_13803410.html -
phe_de — 9 years ago(December 30, 2016 12:11 AM)
Teddy Roosevelt was a strict, narrow, puritanical Christian?
I don't know that much about him; but from what I know (or read on Wikipedia) this statement is as accurate as his statrment about Paine.Everything is possible, and nothing is sure.
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OldSamVimes — 9 years ago(December 30, 2016 03:56 AM)
Some Christian ideas were outright immoral to Paine, as the supposed atoning death of an innocent man, and Gods purported need for blood to satisfy Gods injured sense of justice.
The Christian version of God does seem to be overly sensitive, one might say 'humanly sensitive'.
Paine challenges the idea of any religion based upon a special message from God offered in a revealed holy book. The only revelation from God, and the only script from God, is nature itself. Paine critiques the concept revelation and says a revelation thats given to one person is thereafter hearsay to all others and not bound to convince anyone of its veracity. He criticizes the notion of a revealed holy book by saying the words of God cannot be accurately conveyed in a book to a humanity with many thousands of languages and dialects.
God communicates only with the universal language of nature.
Smart man.
But why would Roosevelt, living more than a hundred years after Paine, even venture an opinion of Thomas Paine? Heres why. The Age of Reason was in a new loop of fame in the early twentieth century and the vice league lawyers could no longer suppress the book: booksellers and printers and type-setters and shop girls could not be jailed any more. How then to muffle the influence of the most damaging book Christianity ever faced? Simple. Get a United States President to slander the author. Get a President to refuse to retract three big inaccuracies in three small words: Filthy Little Atheist.
What were they so afraid of?
Oh yeah, losing their power and control over others. -
DramatisPersona — 9 years ago(December 30, 2016 06:27 AM)
God communicates only with the universal language of nature.
This is antithetical to Church doctrine due to the word "only". Natural Law has been part of Catholic teaching for centuries, i.e., that God reveals His ends via Nature, and according to Aquinas is "nothing else than the rational creature's participation in the eternal (God's) law". It can be essentially grasped by human reason.
I want a unicorn.
