The author, though professing a belief early in the work in a single God, almost immediately attacks a written and printed word of God as inherently flawed and fallible. Paine contends that the books of each religion, called revelations by their members, are untrue because of the single member to whom God communicates his Word. Paine's argument here is that the revelation of truth is to this one person only, and all others who hear or read this truth receive it as hearsay. When delving deeper into the definitions Paine uses to bolster his assertions, one may find that, indeed, Paine's definitions must have been different than those Webster defines for us today. A revelation is merely light cast on something previously unknown, and the legal definition of hearsay requires only that evidence be based on reports of others in the place of first-hand personal knowledge, and thus not admissible as testimony. To come to the aid of Christianity and its Bible after such harsh accusations from Paine, if one honestly examines the Bible, one can clearly see that the assertions made by the writers thereof are nearly all eyewitness accounts to the claims they make, for the New Testament is written almost exclusively by eyewitnesses to Jesus Christ and his words and works, and the Old Testament, backed up by over one-thousand documents and copies, stands as the most reliable and factually-based historical text we have today. Paine next argues that translation errors and the "mutability of language" (508) increase the chances of misunderstandings or, worse, miscommunications of the textual truths. Again, if one simply looks back through the translations, it would be difficult to lose such simple meanings as Christ telling the people that the only way to God was through faith in him, repeated clearly throughout both the New and Old Testament scriptures. Finally, Paine's attack that the texts' writers fabricated and altered the texts through the years falls short once more, for in looking back at all of the copies and documents, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls or more definitive texts, one can easily look passed Paine?s bias and misinformation to see the immutability of Biblical truth.
Flexing his opinionated muscles, Paine soon turns his attention to the Creation of God to state that it is God's Word manifest. Paine contends that nature and all of creation proclaims his power and demonstrates his wisdom. He states correctly that "[i]t is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end" (506). Indeed, Paine further goes on to write that "[i]t is only by the exercise of reason, that man can discover God" (506). Paine then shies away from the very logic and reasoning he supposes to champion by arguing, again contra Bible, that man cannot reason the character of God past the knowledge that he is omnipotent. Paine's error arises in his failure to reason the truth of the Bible and of the historically- and textually-recorded life of Jesus Christ and his spoken truths. Since the accounts of Christ are primarily first-hand accounts, one can logically assume the validity therein, and if Christ is correct (as he claimed he was), he clearly tells Philip, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father?'" (John 14:9). If Paine were truly using his God-given wisdom, he would have seen that, indeed, creation is God's goodness and beneficence manifest, though the author backs down from the entire truth when he says, "What more does man want to know, than that the hand or power that made these things is divine, is omnipotent" (507)? Paine stops short of reasoning to the logical end and truth of his assertions when the answer is in the very reasoning he sets out to debase.
Thomas Paine brings up several arguments for the superiority of reason when put up against what he dismisses as blemished, blind faith. He asserts that one must reason for oneself, and he then presents his own biased view of religious fallacies, focusing primarily on the Christian doctrine. Paine's assertions fly wide of the mark, however, when he himself fails to reason that Christianity is not truly a religion to follow a doctrine, but instead a relationship in following a man, God in the flesh and the Spirit. In one way, this critical respondent reasons as Paine does: "let every man follow, as he has a right to do, the religion and worship he prefers" (508). It is simply the sincere hope of this writer that one truly reasons in order to see not personal preference, but tangible truth.
