I'm glad to found this lecture because I resonate. I do book reviews and just posted The Age of Reason in my channel.

If more Christians professed their faith in this manner,I would find it much more difficult to be an atheist. If the God this man worships exists, I hope that God finds a way to be more infectious. We are all capable of love and deserving of being loved. I believe that life is all about balancing the direction of that love.

1961 Agency (of) International Development Page 236 non-military U. S. foreign assistance programs.

Where is Sparta?

Amen! I do think Paine underestimated Christianity's power in creating an authentic relationship with God. In other words, we need a way to relate to God, and thinking "God is someone who gave His only son to save us" is a powerful metaphor for God's love for us (regardless of if it is true of not, it helps people understand God). Thus an age of reason cannot come by reason alone, becaue it appeals to the head but not the heart - there is still part of us that desires an authentic relationship with God. We need to put forward a better metaphor for understanding God, which we can believe without abandoning reason or lying to ourselves. I would propose this metaphor: 1. God is like a mother giving birth. God is aware of everything , including suffering, and so in a way must be suffering with us through all the history of human mistakes, ignorance, foolishness and selfishness. Creation is a painful thing, and yet God endures with us out of love - similar to a mother enduring the pains of childbirth. If we look at childbirth process without knowing the full picture of the baby at the end, then it appears as something horrible, but yet it is also the happiest day for the mother. Similarly, we look at the suffering of life and don't see the point, but it is only because we don't see ourselves the way God sees us. We miss out on the value of life itself, and then ask "is life really worth all this suffering?" God has already answered that question for us (or else we wouldn't exist) and lovingly endured the cost. P.S. I believe the question "is life really worth all this suffering?" can also be answered through reason and experience. Also, by the simple fact we continue to bring new little people into the world (by our own choice), or that we feel sad when hearing a youth pass away (before getting to fully experience life), these also answer our own question.

@gniwoed6494

5 жыл бұрын

What are these evil verses? Many many of them. Search online: kill, cruelty, slavery, plunder, bizzare verses in bible or quran. Where is the holiness, rightiousness, divinity, - Leviticus 26:29 You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters. - Deuteronomy 23:1 No man with crushed or severed genitals may enter the assembly of the LORD. - Exodus 21:7-11 NLT When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. - Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NAB- If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her. - Death to the Rape Victim (Deuteronomy 22:23-24 NAB) If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbors wife. It is clear that God doesn’t give a damn about the rape victim. He is only concerned about the violation of another mans “property”. - Kill Women Who Are Not Virgins On Their Wedding Night But if this charge is true (that she wasn’t a virgin on her wedding night), and evidence of the girls virginity is not found, they shall bring the girl to the entrance of her fathers house and there her townsman shall stone her to death, because she committed a crime against Israel by her unchasteness in her father’s house. Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst. (Deuteronomy 22:20-21 NAB)

@tyavfm

3 жыл бұрын

I think heart comes before the head: If something appeals to the head, it has appealed to the heart first.

@user-hg1rx2xv4g

8 ай бұрын

God created Adam & Eve, placed them in the Garden of Eden, then warned Don't eat that fruit. They ate that fruit. God was furious, He then drove Adam & Eve out of the Garden and condemned them and all their future offsprings to burn in everlasting hell fire. In the real world, any parent finding his or her own child doing something he/she has been told not to do, would gently correct the child, or at most give a smack, certainly not kick this child out of the house or worse still, send the child to burn in everlasting hellfire. But that's how the Holy Book begins and that's the kind of monster they ask kids in Sunday Schools to believe in, to pray to and to worship. So began the Crusades, the Inquisition, the 30-yrs War...WWI, WWII, and now on the brink of WWIII.

If Thomas Paine had written the age of reason at the same time that he wrote common sense they would’ve canceled each other out.

@Jacked2B

2 жыл бұрын

Right. Its confusing. He based his argument in Common Sense on biblical lessons lol

@wizarddragon

9 ай бұрын

@@Jacked2B He did that to relate to the common folk. He knew who his audience would be. It was a clever bit of propaganda.

@Jacked2B

9 ай бұрын

@@wizarddragon It was biblically on point and furthered biblical truths. Not quite how propaganda works bud.

@wizarddragon

9 ай бұрын

@@Jacked2B What do you think Propaganda means? It sure as hell doesn't mean lies, disinformation. So get a dictionary bud.

"Making our fellow creatures happy" is largely ambiguous and absolutely impossible as happiness is an individual trait. Gods laws are the only rational means to the end.