GETTING THE CORE OF MY BELIEFS CHALLENGED, TESTED BY AN OLD BOOK

 

Christian Snake Handlers

In a letter to a group in Corinth, Greece, one of the middle managers of Christianity in the first century told his fellow believers to "keep testing to see in they were in the faith."

That's not bad advice for agnostics, atheists or even true believers who handle poisonous snakes.

Anyone locked into a belief system or point of view should welcome having his position at least challenged, if not disproven.

After all, we could be on a direct course to  eternal punishment in a fiery Hell or we could be wasting our lives sucking up to a God who doesn't exist, so he will fly us at death to a nonexistent Heaven or make-believe Paradise.

Isn't it true that many folks don't do much real living in their present life because of being totally consumed with what might come afterwards?

Every few years I let my beliefs or lack of beliefs be jolted by rereading Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, written in 1793-95, a book for which he earned no money, but did a year's worth of hard labor in England and was found worthy of the guillotine in France.(That punishment was never executed because of a clerical error.)

First of all, Paine claims that there is no such thing as Revelation, that is, God communicating with mankind through a spokesperson.

States Paine:  

"No one will deny the power of the Almighty to make such a communication if he pleases.  But, admitting for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, it is revelation to that person only.  When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a forth, and so on, it ceases to be revelation to all those persons.  It is revelation to the first person only and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged to believe it."

Paine applies "reason" to the so-called Immaculate Conception:

"When also I'm told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and said that her betrothed husband Joseph said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not even this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves.  It is only reported by others that they said so.  It is hearsay upon hearsay and I do not choose to rest my belief on such evidence."

Paine easily dismantles the Bible using its own internal evidence.

While he applauds the morality and teachings associated with Jesus, he's less than sure of the entire story around him:

"Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or anything else.  Not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his writing.  The history of him is altogether the work of other people."

While you might think Paine didn't believe in God, he did, just not the God written about in any religious book.

Paine believed man could learn about God by looking at what he called his Creation:

"Do you want to contemplate his power?  We see it in the immensity of the creation.  Do you 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 (generosity)?  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.  Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand could make, but the scripture called the Creation."

Having someone challenge your beliefs is not a negative thing.

It could simply reinforce what you believe to be true or it could move you to continue searching for truth.