{"id":135736,"date":"2019-06-17T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2019-06-17T11:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=135736"},"modified":"2019-06-24T11:50:48","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T10:50:48","slug":"tom-paine-christianity-and-modern-psychiatry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/06\/tom-paine-christianity-and-modern-psychiatry\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Paine, Christianity, and Modern Psychiatry"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Friends of the People caricatured by Isaac Cruikshank, November 15, 1792, Joseph Priestley and Thomas Paine are surrounded by incendiary items.<\/p><\/div>\n

14 Jun 2019 – <\/em>Beyond Common Sense<\/em>, most Americans know little about Thomas Paine (1737-1809). Few know that at the end of Paine\u2019s life, he had become a pariah in U.S. society, and for many years after his death, he was either ignored or excoriated\u2014the price he paid for The Age of Reason<\/em> and its disparagement of religious institutions, especially Christianity.<\/p>\n

Early in The Age of Reason<\/em><\/a>, Paine attacks the hypocrisy of religious professionals:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If alive today, Paine may well have been even rougher on psychiatrists. Paine revered science, and he would have been enraged by professionals who pretend to embrace science by using its jargon but in fact make pseudoscientific proclamations that purposely deceive suffering people. \u201cTo subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe\u201d is exactly what many modern psychiatrists are routinely guilty of\u2014this by their own recent admissions. Before detailing this \u201cperjury,\u201d a little bit about Paine and his compulsion to confront all illegitimate authorities.<\/p>\n

Beginning in 1776, both Common Sense <\/em>and then The American Crisis <\/em>made Thomas Paine a hero for insurgent American colonials. Following the successful American revolt against British rule, the globetrotting revolutionary Paine returned to England where his Rights of Man<\/em> enraged William Pitt. Narrowly escaping arrest by Pitt\u2019s goons, Paine fled to revolutionary France, where Paine then narrowly survived the disloyalty of his \u201cfriend\u201d George Washington\u2014a betrayal that kept Paine (a victim of the Jacobins-Girondins gang war) rotting in Luxembourg Prison. Only with great luck would Paine avoid Robespierre\u2019s guillotine so as to return to the United States.<\/p>\n

Bertrand Russell (the English philosopher, mathematician, historian, and social critic) observed that Paine<\/p>\n

\u201cincurred the bitter hostility of three men not generally united: Pitt, Robespierre, and Washington. Of these, the first two sought his death, while the third carefully abstained from measures designed to save his life. Pitt and Washington hated him because he was a democrat; Robespierre, because he opposed the execution of the King and the Reign of Terror.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No one could intimidate Paine into shutting up, but he could be marginalized. By the end of his life, owing to his The Age of Reason<\/em> and its disparagement of Christianity, <\/em>Paine was ostracized, even refused service by many innkeepers. Historian Eric Foner notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cPaine slipped into obscurity. His final years were ones of lonely, private misery.\u201d Moreover, for many years after his death, Paine was either ignored or attacked by the American political and cultural elite; as even in 1888, Theodore Roosevelt scored political points by calling Paine a \u201cfilthy little atheist.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Paine, in truth, was not an atheist but a deist. He states at the beginning of The Age of Reason<\/em>: \u201cI believe in one God, and no more.\u201d While it was Paine\u2019s trashing of Christianity in The Age of Reason<\/em> that made him an outcast, he also made clear in it that \u201call 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paine had respect for Jesus (noting that \u201cHe was a virtuous and an amiable man\u201d); however, Paine had no respect for Christianity, for which Paine pulled no punches:<\/p>\n

\u201cOf all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As maddening as Christianity was for Paine, unlike psychiatry, Christianity didn\u2019t pour salt into Paine\u2019s wounds by pretending to embrace his beloved science. It is quite possible that Paine would be even more appalled by today\u2019s psychiatrists who claim the authority of science but who, in reality, have debased it. Paine\u2019s rebuke of clergy\u2014\u201cto subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe\u201d<\/em>\u2014perfectly fits psychiatrists with regard to both<\/p>\n