Mark Steel: Thomas Paine 6 of 6

[icopaseticMHF]

the american right and the left both claim him, & they are both wrong. Clearly an individualist he woud despise what the left openly is & resent what the right pretends to be when it is fashionable

[fjordland]

@icopaseticMHF: I don't know what the founding fathers would have to say about the Military Industrial Complex that is contemporary America but from what I know they would be mortified to see it.

[icopaseticMHF]

@fjordland i absolutely agree with you. It is a huge burden on every tax payer. I'm sure Alexander Hamilton would love it, but certainly Paine, Jefferson & Madison would be disgusted with the size and goals of our over sized military might.

[ridgetownpimp]

Its funny how the Right in America wont to claim Thomas Paine as one of their own. He would be disgusted by the state of affairs in that country now a days.

[dudeiiaaa]

Paine, one of the greatest! I would have followed him to hell and back!

[QueenofCheesecake]

I remember watching this in my A-Level History class and enjoying it greatly. The Streets of Philadelphia bit is brilliant.

[TheWilliamcale]

outstanding thank you

[reggaejuggler]

How heartbreaking that the story of Tom Paine has never been filmed successfully (at all?) The proposed project from Attenborough and his team sounds bloody awful, I reckon I could do better myself! Paine was the greatest British rebel, he was appalled at at the treatment of the working classes and he deserves recognition in the form of government reform to give us back a say in our lives.

[fjordland]

I am surprised that Bill Maher or Ritchard Dawkins have not had a crack at it. If I was a producer I would Hire Mark Steel, He just works so well.

[randompalindrome]

what does this have such a low rating?

His lectures on the radio is brilliant- I don't think much of his new series.

[profglavin]

"A stinking atheist old troublemaker."

Sounds like a compliment to me.

[kallador1]

Excellent, fantastic part when Paine describes the king! lol.Mark has a talent for humour, history and biographies. I am studying Paine at the moment and this has been a great help. Thanks Fjordland.

[fjordland]

Thanks for the feedback,'specialy good feedback

****

[DarkMark999]

I've always enjoyed history, but i must admit. Mark Steel always makes me smile along with it. :)

Thanks for the upload

[tomsega]

Religion can be seriously critiqued without hard-science, with sociology, anthropology, psychology, a knowledge of world history, etc, but before the mid-1800s it would have been very difficult to become an absolute atheist, as we are familiar with today. The evidence against God and creation was not as strong as the cultural support FOR it, and religion still served the role as 'the only explanation we've got'.

Yet there were individuals who yearned for disproof, and I think Paine was one.

[theGetRealGuy]

Yes it all crumbled when Darwin Wrote his Book.

for another humourus take check out Lewis Black

on you tube under Bush + God + Evolution

[fjordland]

Yes I think Mr Steel is the History Best Lecturer I have come across.

the Bulk of His Material is for Radio

luckilly I found a Fellow in Australia

who collected most of them :-)

[PeteJones100]

im becomming a big fan of Mark Steel, he has an ability to make history both accessable and funny. The russian revolution lecture is also very good

[BonesUk1980]

thanks for uploading this.

PEACE

[fjordland]

I guess if Paine thought God was a human construct, maybe he thought we could get togeather and re-invent God to be more user freindly and some what less on the side of wealth and Status as a tool of supressing Humanity?

[thpaine]

It was very amusing, in that british sort of way. Too bad he kept representing Paine as an atheist when he clearly was not. Paine's Age of Reason explicitly explains his advocation of Deism, a belief in a Creator god based on Reason and Nature.

[tomsega]

Perhaps he was agnostic to some extent (as any objective theist OR atheist must remain) but I find it difficult to regard someone who said "The Christian system of religion is an outrage on common sense" as less than an atheist, certainly considering the puritanical times in which he lived. To be so sceptical THEN would have seemed more extreme than even the most outrageous anti-theism today.

Wouldn't happen to be Christian would you?!

[tomsega]

Let's not also forget, regarding 'Deism' as a creater God of nature, that Paine died the year Darwin was BORN.

[overmind25]

Well he did say he was a Deist.

[tomsega]

My point is, it should be quite expected for anyone to at least have fairly diest-ic views before Darwin's theory Evolution and so many other scientific and philosophical developments.

He lived in an age of mechanical materialism; in an age when scientific laws could just about explain simple laws such as 'motion', but when things such as 'growth' or 'cycles' in nature were still attributed to some sort of intelligent design - out of an ignorance which would be wiped away in the 19th Century.

[K2Tanner]

It says in the first page that he believes in God and hopes(not expects) for an afterlife. Deism in the most strict sense is a form of agnostic theism where one believes in a "first cause" and nothing else. I suppose I adhere to this philosophy somewhat. I don't believe in a God who played an active role in the origin of life as Paine may have, but that was as stated below before people even considered the possibility of evolution.

[tomsega]

Again, Deism, as "a form of agnostic theism where one believes in a first cause and nothing else", would have to be placed, in Paine's case, in a context before the discovery of the expansion of the universe and the big bang (as well as evolution). So when you say you adhere to the philosophy somewhat that's sort of what all atheists will agree on: That we have no real idea what happened BEFORE the universe. I think Paine was still edging as close to atheism as discovery had allowed back then.

[K2Tanner]

He was close but he wrote a deist manifesto. He was one of the most outspoken deists of the time. I am reading his book right now and in the first page he declares he believes in a God. He completely rejected religion though. It is a superb book if you have the time to read it.