WorkThomas Paine

The Existence of God

The author of *The Age of Reason* addresses a new Paris congregation, arguing from the motion of the planets that God exists.

by Thomas Paine12 passages held

English, the original language, and your language

First published: 1797(aged 60)
Original language: English

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Overview

A new religion held its first public service in Paris in January 1797, in the church of Sainte-Catherine. The Theophilanthropists, whose name means lovers of God and of humankind, kept belief in one God and in a life after death and let go of priests, revelation and the divine authority of the Bible. Thomas Paine had argued for exactly that creed in The Age of Reason; he joined them, and this discourse is what he gave them. It names two enemies of religion, fanaticism and atheism, and takes on the second. The universe, Paine argues, is the only Bible that carries God's signature, because it is the one thing people could not have written. Atheists explain the world by the properties of matter, but motion is not one of those properties: if it were, perpetual motion would be possible, and it is not. The planets could not keep circling the sun unless something outside matter had set them moving, and that something is what people call God. From there he proposed that the Theophilanthropists teach astronomy and the other sciences as the study of the Creator's work, and give working people the instruction in the mathematics of their trades that they could not get anywhere else. Atheism itself, he told them, had been bred by persecution, by people who preferred believing nothing to believing creeds that burned and massacred. In London the bookseller Thomas Clio Rickman printed the discourse with the alternative title Atheism Refuted, and an American paper, The Temple of Reason, reprinted it in 1801. In October of that year the government of Napoleon Bonaparte barred the Theophilanthropists from the churches, and in 1803 their worship was banned outright.

Key concepts

Why does Paine call the universe the only Bible God signed?

Because it is the one thing people could not have written. Every book, however sacred its claims, came from human hands and can be doubted as human work; the created world cannot. Paine therefore rests belief in God on what anyone can observe rather than on a text whose authors must be trusted, which makes the universe the only revelation that needs no messenger.

Why is motion not a property of matter, in Paine's argument?

Because if it were, matter would keep itself moving and perpetual motion would be possible, and it is not. So the planets' continuing circuit around the sun cannot be explained by what they are made of. Something outside matter must have set them moving, and that something is what people call God; the argument turns the atheist's own appeal to matter into the premise of a proof.

Where does atheism come from, according to this discourse?

From persecution. People who watched creeds burn and massacre in God's name preferred believing nothing to believing those creeds, so atheism, on Paine's account, was bred by religion's own cruelties rather than by reason. That is why he treats fanaticism and atheism as twin enemies of religion, and why his answer to atheism is a religion without persecution rather than a sterner church.

Why should a religious society teach science, according to Paine?

Because studying the creation is studying the Creator's work. Paine proposed that the Theophilanthropists teach astronomy and the other sciences in that spirit, and give working people the instruction in the mathematics of their trades that they could not get anywhere else. On this account a congregation becomes a school, and understanding the world becomes the way to honour whoever made it.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Universe as the Only Bible God Signed

What could prove God to someone who trusts only what can be observed? The motion of the planets, Paine argues, which matter cannot give itself.

Paine named two enemies of religion, fanaticism and atheism, and spent his discourse on the second. The universe is the only Bible that carries God's signature, because it is the one thing people could not have written. Atheists explain the world by the properties of matter, but motion is not one of those properties: if it were, perpetual motion would be possible, and it is not. Something outside matter set the planets circling the sun. From there he asked the Society to teach the sciences as the study of the Creator's work, and told it that persecution had bred atheism.

natural theology
motion
cosmological argument
matter
atheism
materialism
science and religion
first cause
gravitation
solar system
divine power
concept of god
arguments for god
science education
mathematics
public education
education
religious violence
religious toleration
reason and belief

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Within this work

passages held: 12
distinct concepts: 33
by passages held, corpus-wide: #810

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1776 Common Sense
The book that made Paine's name, so much so that he signed the Crisis papers of the following years with its title.
EN
1776 The American Crisis
A serial rather than a book: papers issued one at a time between December 1776 and December 1783, whenever the war's news called for one, each under the title The Crisis.
EN
1782 Letter Addressed to the Abbé Raynal on the Affairs of North-America (Letter to the Abbe Raynal)
Ten months after the victory at Yorktown, with the war winding down, Paine set out to put the record of the Revolution straight for European readers.
EN
1791 Rights of Man
Paine's contribution to the pamphlet war that Burke's Reflections set off in Britain; the writer Mary Wollstonecraft had answered Burke first, in November 1790.
EN
1793 Reasons for Wishing to Preserve the Life of Louis Capet (Reasons for Preserving the Life of Louis Capet)
Second of the three speeches Paine gave in the Convention on the king's fate: the first, in November 1792, argued that Louis should be tried; the last pleaded for a reprieve.
EN
1794 The Age of Reason
Between the two stretches in which it was written, Paine spent ten months in a Paris prison; it is his one sustained book on religion, and the one that cost him most.
EN
1795 Dissertation on First Principles of Government
Here Paine's political principles are condensed into a few dozen pages, in his last attempt to shape a French constitution from inside the Convention.
EN
1797 Agrarian Justice
Published in answer to a bishop's sermon on rich and poor, it carries the welfare proposals of Rights of Man to a principle: that the landless are owed a share of the earth.
EN
1797 The Existence of God you are here EN
1807 Examination of the Prophecies
A companion to The Age of Reason, giving the Gospels' use of prophecy the same close reading that its second part gave the authorship of the Bible.
EN

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