Age of Reason I. Chapter XI - Of the Theology of the Christians; and the True Theology.
by Thomas Paine
As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of
atheism; a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe
in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of
man-ism with but little deism, and is as near to atheism as twilight
is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker an opaque
body, which it calls a redeemer, as the moon introduces her opaque
self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a
religious or an irreligious eclipse of light. It has put the whole
orbit of reason into shade.
The effect of this obscurity has been that of turning everything
upside down, and representing it in reverse; and among the
revolutions it has thus magically produced, it has made a revolution
in Theology.
That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole
circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is
the study of the works of God, and of the power and wisdom of God in
his works, and is the true theology.
As to the theology that is now studied in its place, it is the study
of human opinions and of human fancies concerning God. It is not the
study of God himself in the works that he has made, but in the works
or writings that man has made; and it is not among the least of the
mischiefs that the Christian system has done to the world, that it
has abandoned the original and beautiful system of theology, like a
beautiful innocent, to distress and reproach, to make room for the
hag of superstition.
The Book of Job and the 19th Psalm, which even the church admits to
be more ancient than the chronological order in which they stand in
the book called the Bible, are theological orations conformable to
the original system of theology. The internal evidence of those
orations proves to a demonstration that the study and contemplation
of the works of creation, and of the power and wisdom of God revealed
and manifested in those works, made a great part of the religious
devotion of the times in which they were written; and it was this
devotional study and contemplation that led to the discovery of the
principles upon which what are now called Sciences are established;
and it is to the discovery of these principles that almost all the
Arts that contribute to the convenience of human life owe their
existence. Every principal art has some science for its parent,
though the person who mechanically performs the work does not always,
and but very seldom, perceive the connection.
It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences 'human
inventions;' it is only the application of them that is human. Every
science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and
unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed.
Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.
For example: Every person who looks at an almanack sees an account
when an eclipse will take place, and he sees also that it never fails
to take place according to the account there given. This shows that
man is acquainted with the laws by which the heavenly bodies move.
But it would be something worse than ignorance, were any church on
earth to say that those laws are an human invention.
It would also be ignorance, or something worse, to say that the
scientific principles, by the aid of which man is enabled to
calculate and foreknow when an eclipse will take place, are an human
invention. Man cannot invent any thing that is eternal and immutable;
and the scientific principles he employs for this purpose must, and
are, of necessity, as eternal and immutable as the laws by which the
heavenly bodies move, or they could not be used as they are to
ascertain the time when, and the manner how, an eclipse will take
place.
The scientific principles that man employs to obtain the
foreknowledge of an eclipse, or of any thing else relating to the
motion of the heavenly bodies, are contained chiefly in that part of
science that is called trigonometry, or the properties of a triangle,
which, when applied to the study of the heavenly bodies, is called
astronomy; when applied to direct the course of a ship on the ocean,
it is called navigation; when applied to the construction of figures
drawn by a rule and compass, it is called geometry; when applied to
the construction of plans of edifices, it is called architecture;
when applied to the measurement of any portion of the surface of the
earth, it is called land-surveying. In fine, it is the soul of
science. It is an eternal truth: it contains the mathematical
demonstration of which man speaks, and the extent of its uses are
unknown.
It may be said, that man can make or draw a triangle, and therefore a
triangle is an human invention.
But the triangle, when drawn, is no other than the image of the
principle: it is a delineation to the eye, and from thence to the
mind, of a principle that would otherwise be imperceptible. The
triangle does not make the principle, any more than a candle taken
into a room that was dark, makes the chairs and tables that before
were invisible. All the properties of a triangle exist independently
of the figure, and existed before any triangle was drawn or thought
of by man. Man had no more to do in the formation of those properties
or principles, than he had to do in making the laws by which the
heavenly bodies move; and therefore the one must have the same divine
origin as the other.
In the same manner as, it may be said, that man can make a triangle,
so also, may it be said, he can make the mechanical instrument called
a lever. But the principle by which the lever acts, is a thing
distinct from the instrument, and would exist if the instrument did
not; it attaches itself to the instrument after it is made; the
instrument, therefore, can act no otherwise than it does act; neither
can all the efforts of human invention make it act otherwise. That
which, in all such cases, man calls the effect, is no other than the
principle itself rendered perceptible to the senses.
Since, then, man cannot make principles, from whence did he gain a
knowledge of them, so as to be able to apply them, not only to things
on earth, but to ascertain the motion of bodies so immensely distant
from him as all the heavenly bodies are? From whence, I ask, could he
gain that knowledge, but from the study of the true theology?
It is the structure of the universe that has taught this knowledge to
man. That structure is an ever-existing exhibition of every principle
upon which every part of mathematical science is founded. The
offspring of this science is mechanics; for mechanics is no other
than the principles of science applied practically. The man who
proportions the several parts of a mill uses the same scientific
principles as if he had the power of constructing an universe, but as
he cannot give to matter that invisible agency by which all the
component parts of the immense machine of the universe have influence
upon each other, and act in motional unison together, without any
apparent contact, and to which man has given the name of attraction,
gravitation, and repulsion, he supplies the place of that agency by
the humble imitation of teeth and cogs. All the parts of man's
microcosm must visibly touch. But could he gain a knowledge of that
agency, so as to be able to apply it in practice, we might then say
that another canonical book of the word of God had been discovered.
If man could alter the properties of the lever, so also could he
alter the properties of the triangle: for a lever (taking that sort
of lever which is called a steel-yard, for the sake of explanation)
forms, when in motion, a triangle. The line it descends from, (one
point of that line being in the fulcrum,) the line it descends to,
and the chord of the arc, which the end of the lever describes in the
air, are the three sides of a triangle. The other arm of the lever
describes also a triangle; and the corresponding sides of those two
triangles, calculated scientifically, or measured geometrically, --
and also the sines, tangents, and secants generated from the angles,
and geometrically measured, -- have the same proportions to each
other as the different weights have that will balance each other on
the lever, leaving the weight of the lever out of the case.
It may also be said, that man can make a wheel and axis; that he can
put wheels of different magnitudes together, and produce a mill.
Still the case comes back to the same point, which is, that he did
not make the principle that gives the wheels those powers. This
principle is as unalterable as in the former cases, or rather it is
the same principle under a different appearance to the eye.
The power that two wheels of different magnitudes have upon each
other is in the same proportion as if the semi-diameter of the two
wheels were joined together and made into that kind of lever I have
described, suspended at the part where the semi-diameters join; for
the two wheels, scientifically considered, are no other than the two
circles generated by the motion of the compound lever.
It is from the study of the true theology that all our knowledge of
science is derived; and it is from that knowledge that all the arts
have originated.
The Almighty lecturer, by displaying the principles of science in the
structure of the universe, has invited man to study and to imitation.
It is as if he had said to the inhabitants of this globe that we call
ours, "I have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and I have
rendered the starry heavens visible, to teach him science and the
arts. He can now provide for his own comfort, and learn from my
munificence to all, to be kind to each other."
Of what use is it, unless it be to teach man something, that his eye
is endowed with the power of beholding, to an incomprehensible
distance, an immensity of worlds revolving in the ocean of space? Or
of what use is it that this immensity of worlds is visible to man?
What has man to do with the Pleiades, with Orion, with Sirius, with
the star he calls the north star, with the moving orbs he has named
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury, if no uses are to follow
from their being visible? A less power of vision would have been
sufficient for man, if the immensity he now possesses were given only
to waste itself, as it were, on an immense desert of space glittering
with shows.
It is only by contemplating what he calls the starry heavens, as the
book and school of science, that he discovers any use in their being
visible to him, or any advantage resulting from his immensity of
vision. But when be contemplates the subject in this light, he sees
an additional motive for saying, that nothing was made in vain; for
in vain would be this power of vision if it taught man nothing.