The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine - Part 1, Chapter 8

One of the core precepts of Christianity and Islam is the doctrine of redemption. We picture a man falling to his knees and begging the creator for forgiveness. He cries and scowls and calls out in agony admitting every sin he has committed or imagined he committed and an ever-satisfied god listens to His slave ready to bestow His mercy and throw kindness on the prostrated and humbled figure. This is a spiritually satisfying activity for those who truly need to find redemption, but it is a mockery of one's self-worth for those who do it out of expectation or disinginuity. Here Thomas Paine explains what this kind of grovelling and destruction of self-confidence does to a man and how lowliness makes him proud and judgemental of others.

"It is by his being taught to contemplate himself as an out-law, as an out-cast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as one thrown as it were on a dunghill, at an immense distance from his Creator, and who must make his approaches by creeping, and cringing to intermediate beings, that he conceives either a contemptuous disregard for everything under the name of religion, or becomes indifferent, or turns what he calls devout. In the latter case, he consumes his life in grief, or the affectation of it. His prayers are reproaches. His humility is ingratitude. He calls himself a worm, and the fertile earth a dunghill; and all the blessings of life by the thankless name of vanities. He despises the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF REASON; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason, as if man could give reason to himself.


"Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility, and this contempt for human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions. He finds fault with everything. His selfishness is never satisfied; his ingratitude is never at an end. He takes on himself to direct the Almighty what to do, even in the government of the universe. He prays dictatorially. When it is sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is rain, he prays for sunshine. He follows the same idea in everything that he prays for; for what is the amount of all his prayers, but an attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he does? It is as if he were to say—thou knowest not so well as I."