In the opening year, 1793, when revolutionary France had beheaded its king, the wrath turned next upon the King of kings, by whose grace every tyrant claimed to reign. But eventualities had brought am...

It has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my thoughts upon religion; I am well aware of the difficulties that attend the subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to a m...

It has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my thoughts upon religion; I am well aware of the difficulties that attend the subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to a m...

Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ,...

Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practiced was...

It is upon this plain narrative of facts, together with another case I am going to mention, that the Christian mythologists, calling themselves the Christian Church, have erected their fable, which fo...

Putting aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity, or detestation by its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to an examination of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a s...

But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born⁠—a world...

These books, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelations, (which, by the by, is a book of riddles that requires a revelation to explain it) are, we are told, the word of God. It is, therefore, ...

Thus much for the Bible; I now go on to the book called the New Testament. The new Testament! that is, the new Will, as if there could be two wills of the Creator. Had it been the object or the intent...

But some perhaps will say⁠—Are we to have no word of God⁠—no revelation?16 I answer yes. There is a Word of God; there is a revelation. The word of God is the creation we behold: And it is in this wor...

The only idea man can affix to the name of God, is that of a first cause, the cause of all things. And, incomprehensibly difficult as it is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at t...

As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of atheism; a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly ...

As the Christian system of faith has made a revolution in theology, so also has it made a revolution in the state of learning. That which is now called learning, was not learning originally. Learning ...

Having thus shown, from the internal evidence of things, the cause that produced a change in the state of learning, and the motive for substituting the study of the dead languages, in the place of the...

That part of the universe that is called the solar system (meaning the system of worlds to which our earth belongs, and of which Sol, or in English language, the Sun, is the center) consists, besides ...

It is an idea I have never lost sight of, that all our knowledge of science is derived from the revolutions (exhibited to our eye and from thence to our understanding) which those several planets or w...

But, in the midst of those reflections, what are we to think of the Christian system of faith that forms itself upon the idea of only one world, and that of no greater extent, as is before shown, than...

Having thus shown the irreconcileable inconsistencies between the real word of God existing in the universe, and that which is called “the word of God,” as shown to us in a printed book that any man m...

Having now extended the subject to a greater length than I first intended, I shall bring it to a close by abstracting a summary from the whole. First, That the idea or belief of a word of God existing...

I have mentioned in the former part of The Age of Reason that it had long been my intention to publish my thoughts upon Religion; but that I had originally reserved it to a later period in life, inten...

I have mentioned in the former part of The Age of Reason that it had long been my intention to publish my thoughts upon Religion; but that I had originally reserved it to a later period in life, inten...

It has often been said that anything may be proved from the Bible; but before anything can be admitted as proved by Bible, the Bible itself must be proved to be true; for if the Bible be not true, or ...

The New Testament, they tell us, is founded upon the prophecies of the Old; if so, it must follow the fate of its foundation. As it is nothing extraordinary that a woman should be with child before sh...

In the former part of The Age of Reason I have spoken of the three frauds, mystery, miracle, and prophecy; and as I have seen nothing in any of the answers to that work that in the least affects what ...

It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error. But nature has not given to everyone a talent for that purpose; and among those to whom such a tale...

It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error. But nature has not given to everyone a talent for that purpose; and among those to whom such a tale...

As a great deal is said in the New Testament about dreams, it is first necessary to explain the nature of dreams, and to show by what operation of the mind a dream is produced during sleep. When this ...

The passages called prophecies of or concerning Jesus Christ in the Old Testament, may be classed under the two following heads:⁠— First⁠—Those referred to in the four books of the New Testament calle...

There are but few passages in Mark called prophecies; and but few in Luke and John. Such as there are I shall examine, and also such other passages as interfere with those cited by Matthew. Mark begin...

There are no passages in Luke called prophecies, excepting those which relate to the passages I have already examined. Luke speaks of Mary being espoused to Joseph, but he makes no reference to the pa...

John, like Mark and Luke, is not much of a prophecy-monger. He speaks of the ass, and the casting lots for Jesus’s clothes, and some other trifles, of which I have already spoken. John makes Jesus to ...

In the New Testament, Mark 16:16, it is said, “He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” This is making salvation, or, in other words, the happiness...

I have said, in the first part of the Age of Reason, that “I hope for happiness after this life.” This hope is comfortable to me, and I presume not to go beyond the comfortable idea of hope, with resp...

Science and Christian Tradition, p. 18 (Lon. ed., 1894). ↩ It is, however, necessary to except the declamation which says that God “visits the sins of the fathers upon the children.” This is contrary ...