The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and of Fabulous Theology. By Thomas Paine | 
"The more unnatural anything is, the more it is capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration."
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"The more unnatural anything is, the more it is capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration."
"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."
pickThis is absolutely fantastic, and another book I wish I would've read in high school or early college years when my belief in religion was teetering and could've used a push to get me to where I am today. The great 18th-century American patriot and deist Thomas Paine was ahead of his time, he was an enlightened soul along the lines of the the great Scotsman David Hume when it came to absolutely dismantling the tenets of religions.
There really is a pack of extra Christmas lights on my mega-messy desk @LibrarianRyan 😀 (I swear I just cleaned my desk a couple weeks ago. I don‘t know how it gets this way so quickly.)
Also I have a very small part of the #tbr pile on the corner of my desk (the majority is in several stacks on the floor) & my new book enamel pin that says “Go away! I‘m reading”
I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
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.
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.
