検索キーワード： "Thomas Paine" 聖職・福音主義

In these volumes, Paine demonstrates the anonymity of the books contained in both the Old and the New Testaments, the only certainties being that most of them have been incorrectly ascribed to the persons whose names they bear and that they cannot be proved to be the “word of God.” Calling himself a deist, he identifies the physical universe and every individual’s private conscience as the only infallible revelations of the Almighty’s power, character, and will. His argument is based on reason and common sense, and his sole scholarly resources are the words of the Bible itself. He ...

Col. Ingersoll begins his lectures on famous people as follows: [i]"It is hard to overstate the debt we owe to the men and women of genius. Take from our world what they have given, and all the niches would be empty, all the walls naked—meaning and connection would fall from words of poetry and fiction, music would go back to common air, and all the forms of subtle and enchanting Art would lose proportion and become the unmeaning waste and shattered spoil of thoughtless Chance."[/i] One of the most famous orators of his day, a contemporary and personal friend of Mark Twain and General Grant,...