In Thursday’s class, we discussed Thomas Paine and his Common Sense and Age of Reason. Common Sense is Paine’s argument in favor of the American Revolution. He writes that the revolution is the most important thing to ever happen in the history of the world, and that it is the natural right of the colonies to rebel against Great Britain. His use of idealist language and sweeping generalizations, for example, “every tory is a coward,” helped to strengthen the moral of soldiers during the American Revolution.
The Age of Reason is Paine’s series of thoughts about religion. Unlike earlier writers like John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, and Johnathan Edwards, who focused solely on Christianity, Paine writes about Islam and Judaism. He also writes about ancient Greek, and Roman, gods and goddesses. While writers like Anne Bradstreet and Phillis Wheatley may have referenced them, Paine goes beyond the myths and focuses on specific similarities.
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Instead he notes the conflicts between faiths about which book contains the truth.
He describes common themes found across multiple religions, such as the holy book, and compares Christian saints to Roman gods. He writes that when Roman temples were being changed into churches, the goddess Diana was replaced with a statue of the Virgin Mary. He argues that the belief in “the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology [who] were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods” made the people in the time of Jesus Christ more accepting of the statement that He was the Son of