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Age of Reason

Age of Reason. Deism and American Political Reason. Definition of Deism.

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Age of Reason

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  1. Age of Reason Deism and American Political Reason

  2. Definition of Deism • Deism: “Trend of religious thought, characterized by belief in the existence of a God who rules natural phenomena by established laws, not by miracles, and in a the rational nature of men, who are capable of understanding these laws and of guiding their lives by them” (Cambridge Companion to American Lit. 166).

  3. Development of Deism • Protest against Calvinism • Attempt to reconcile religious belief with scientific thought (Ex. Planet of the Apes)

  4. Age of Reason • What was Paine’s motive for writing Age of Reason? • What are Paine’s “articles,” so to speak, of his faith? • One God • Equality of Man • Doing justice • Loving mercy • Endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy • What other documents in American Literature do these articles remind you of?

  5. Mode of Argumentation • How does Paine attempt to persuade his audience? What is his mode of argumentation? • Indicates his belief by explaining what he does not believe. Why does he do this? • Does not believe in any formal church dogma • The worst a “man” can do is “profess to believe what he does not believe” (948). • What kind of principle is he attempting to establish in this statement?

  6. Quotes • “Affix right ideas to words” • John Dryden (1631-1700), “The Author’s Apology for Heroic Poetry and Heroic License”: “[Wit] is propriety of thoughts and words; or in other terms, thought and words elegantly adapted to the subject” (Norton 5th Ed. 1848). • “They [the Ten Commandments] contain some good moral precepts such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could produce himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention” (950). • “The more unnatural anything is, the more is it capable of becoming the object of dismal admiration” (952). • “It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite” (952). • “As to the learning that any person gains from school education, it serves only, like a small capital, to put him in the way of beginning learning for himself afterwards” (953).

  7. Implications • How has Paine’s ideas about science shaped “modernism” as it emerged in America?

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