50k-(a)theism

'Life's Purpose' author Eckhart Tolle is serene, critics less so - USATODAY.com

Bill Maher's political monologues delight him, and he laughed at his film Religulous "because there really are a lot of weird beliefs out there." The trouble with Maher, Tolle says, is "while he sees the absurdity of religious expressions, he misses the values they point toward."

In Tolle's view, "religion and ritual can be vehicles for entering stillness. It says in Psalm 46:10, 'Be still, and know that I am God.'

"But they are still just vehicles. The Buddha called his teaching a raft: You don't need to carry it around with you after you've crossed the river."

Tolle quotes often from the Bible, from Christianity and Buddhism, and half a dozen other world religions. But the words of Buddha and Jesus take a unique Tolle spin. For example, "Your thought identity, your words, are ultimately illusionary. Jesus knew this when he talked about 'deny thyself.' Most Christians do not fully understand what that means. It means 'no self.' Buddha, too, recognized the inherent unreality of our self-image" he says.

By submitting yourself to this thought-free state, you can finally recognize "The Truth" within yourself — that you already have all the joy, creativity, energy, love you seek. You possess all the higher power, you reach your own heaven, he says.

"Was Jesus the son of God?" he asks rhetorically. "Yes. But so are you. You just haven't realized it yet."

That inflames critics like the bloggers at Christian Skepticism, who call Tolle the Antichrist.

Thomas Paine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Religious views

Before his arrest and imprisonment in France, knowing that he would probably be arrested and executed, Paine, following in the tradition of early eighteenth-century British deism, wrote the first part of The Age of Reason, an assault on organized "revealed" religion combining a compilation of the many inconsistencies he found in the Bible with his own advocacy of deism, and calling for "free rational inquiry" into all subjects, especially religion.

About his own religious beliefs, Paine wrote in The Age of Reason:

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of.

My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

Though there is no evidence he was himself a Freemason,^[66] upon his return to America from France, Paine also penned "An Essay on the Origin of Free-Masonry" (1803–1805), about Freemasonry being derived from the religion of the ancient Druids.^[67]

In the essay, he stated that "The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally paid to the sun." Marguerite de Bonneville published the essay in 1810, after Paine's death, but she chose to omit certain passages from it that were critical of Christianity, most of which were restored in an 1818 printing.^[68]
While never describing himself as a deist,^[69] Paine wrote:

How different is [Christianity] to the pure and simple profession of Deism! The true Deist has but one Deity, and his religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavoring to imitate him in everything moral, scientifical, and mechanical.

And again, in The Age of Reason:

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

About the Quaker religion, he wrote in The Age of Reason:

The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true deism, in the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the Quakers ... though I revere their philanthropy, I cannot help smiling at [their] conceit; ... if the taste of a Quaker [had] been consulted at the Creation, what a silent and drab-colored Creation it would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a bird been permitted to sing.

In the second part of The Age of Reason, about his sickness in prison, he wrote: "... I was seized with a fever, that, in its progress, had every symptom of becoming mortal, and from the effects of which I am not recovered. It was then that I remembered, with renewed satisfaction, and congratulated myself most sincerely, on having written the former part of 'The Age of Reason'". This quotation encapsulates its gist:

The opinions I have advanced ... are the effect of the most clear and long-established conviction that the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world, that the fall of man, the account of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, and of his dying to appease the wrath of God, and of salvation, by that strange means, are all fabulous inventions, dishonorable to the wisdom and power of the Almighty; that the only true religion is Deism, by which I then meant, and mean now, the belief of one God, and an imitation of his moral character, or the practice of what are called moral virtues – and that it was upon this only (so far as religion is concerned) that I rested all my hopes of happiness hereafter. So say I now – and so help me God.

In December 1793, he was arrested and imprisoned in Paris, then released in 1794. He became notorious because of The Age of Reason (1793–94), his book that advocates deism, promotes reason and freethinking, and argues against institutionalized religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular.

He pioneered a style of political writing suited to the democratic society he envisioned, with Common Sense serving as a primary example. Part of Paine's work was to render complex ideas intelligible to average readers of the day, with clear, concise writing unlike the formal, learned style favored by many of Paine's contemporaries.^[24] Scholars have put forward various explanations to account for its success, including the historic moment, Paine's easy-to-understand style, his democratic ethos, and his use of psychology and ideology.^[25]

He also wrote the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1795), discussing the origins of property, and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income. In 1802, he returned to America where he died on June 8, 1809.

Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity.^[6]

Thomas Paine
Oil painting by Auguste Millière (1880)
Born	January 29, 1737^[1] Thetford, Norfolk, Great Britain
Died	June 8, 1809 (aged 72) New York City, New York, U.S.
Era	18th-century philosophy
Religion	Deism
School	Enlightenment, Liberalism, Radicalism, Republicanism
Main interests	Politics, ethics, religion
Influenced by[show]
Influenced[show]
Signature

American newspapers reprinted the obituary notice from the New York Citizen,^[55] which read in part: "He had lived long, did some good and much harm." Only six mourners came to his funeral, two of whom were black, most likely freedmen. The writer and orator Robert G. Ingersoll wrote:

Thomas Paine had passed the legendary limit of life. One by one most of his old friends and acquaintances had deserted him. Maligned on every side, execrated, shunned and abhorred – his virtues denounced as vices – his services forgotten – his character blackened, he preserved the poise and balance of his soul. He was a victim of the people, but his convictions remained unshaken. He was still a soldier in the army of freedom, and still tried to enlighten and civilize those who were impatiently waiting for his death. Even those who loved their enemies hated him, their friend – the friend of the whole world – with all their hearts. On the 8th of June, 1809, death came – Death, almost his only friend. At his funeral no pomp, no pageantry, no civic procession, no military display. In a carriage, a woman and her son who had lived on the bounty of the dead – on horseback, a Quaker, the humanity of whose heart dominated the creed of his head – and, following on foot, two negroes filled with gratitude – constituted the funeral cortege of Thomas Paine.^[56]

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Religious views

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