Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
exciting nationalist passions as a means of gaining popular
approval and achieving high political office; or allowing bribery
and corruption as a way of life; or keeping pets; or eating
animals and jailing chimpanzees; or criminalizing the use of
euphoriants by adults; or allowing our children to grow up
ignorant.
Occasionally, in retrospect, someone stands out. In my book,
the English-born American revolutionary Thomas Paine is one
such. He was far ahead of his time. He courageously opposed
monarchy, aristocracy, racism, slavery, superstition and sexism
when all of these constituted the conventional wisdom. He was
unswerving in his criticism of conventional religion. He wrote in
The Age of Reason: 'Whenever we read the obscene stories, the
voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the
unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is
filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a
demon than the word of God. It . . . has served to corrupt and
brutalize mankind.' At the same time the book exhibited the
deepest reverence for a Creator of the Universe whose existence
Paine argued was apparent at a glance at the natural world. But
condemning much of the Bible while embracing God seemed an
impossible position to most of his contemporaries. Christian
theologians concluded he was drunk, mad or corrupt. The Jewish
scholar David Levi forbade his co-religionists from even touching,
much less reading, the book. Paine was made to suffer so much for
his views (including being thrown into prison after the French
Revolution for being too consistent in his opposition to tyranny)
that he became an embittered old man.*
Yes, the Darwinian insight can be turned upside down and
grotesquely misused: voracious robber barons may explain their
* Paine was the author of the revolutionary pamphlet 'Common Sense'. Published
on 10 January 1776, it sold over half a million copies in the next few
months and stirred many Americans to the cause of independence. He was the
author of the three best-selling books of the eighteenth century. Later
generations reviled him for his social and religious views. Theodore Roosevelt
called him a 'filthy little atheist' - despite his profound belief in God. He is
probably the most illustrious American revolutionary uncommemorated by a
monument in Washington, DC.