The Age of Reason

Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Parts I–II (1794–95)

Thomas Paine — pamphleteer of the American Revolution, writing Part I in Paris in 1793 while expecting arrest

Catch rate: 66 / 255
Base research: 262
Stat total: 370

Base stats

Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.

Stamina92

Contend104

Defend76

Popularity98

Total370

Why these numbers

The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.

Stamina 92

STAMINA — Middling. Two parts, the second written in prison, where Paine nearly died.

Contend 104

CONTEND — High. Paine wrote for ordinary readers, and his sentences are short and hard.

Defend 76

DEFEND — Low. Part II goes through the Bible book by book, and many of his objections were answered in his own lifetime.

Popularity 98

POPULARITY — High. Cheap editions sold in huge numbers in Britain and America, and printers were jailed for selling it.

Cited for this book

Thomas Paine wrote The Age of Reason in the 1790s. He believed in one God and rejected every church and every revelation. It was cheap, clear and widely read. Richard Watson, a bishop, answered it in 1796 with An Apology for the Bible.

Moves learned

By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.

Lv	Move	Type	Cat.	Pwr	Acc	PP
1	My Own Mind Is My Own Church	Ecclesiology	Argument	86	100%	10
26	Doing Justice, Loving Mercy	Ethics	Argument	78	100%	15
42	Language Is Local	History	Argument	90	95%	10

The quotes behind its moves

How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.

Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.”
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794), public domain.public domain

My Own Mind Is My Own Church

EcclesiologyArgument · power 86 · 100% accurate

In the gamePaine wrote the first part in Paris in 1793, expecting to be arrested by the Revolution. He names every church he knows and refuses all of them.

“I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.”
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794), public domain.public domain

Doing Justice, Loving Mercy

EthicsArgument · power 78 · 100% accurate

In the gamePaine’s creed borrows the words of Micah 6:8. Micah’s verse has three parts, and Paine keeps two of them.

“Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.”
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794), public domain.public domain

Language Is Local

HistoryArgument · power 90 · 95% accurate

In the gamePaine argues that God could never speak through words, because words change from place to place and century to century. Only creation says the same thing everywhere.

What answers it

The specific move or chapter of Scripture that cuts through this one, and why. The number is how much harder it hits than usual — ×4 is four times the normal force.

Voluntarily Undergone×4

Paine says a report cannot bind a reader who was not there. Paley answers with what these particular reporters paid to keep repeating it — labour, danger, and in the end their own lives, for a claim none of them ever recanted.

Paley points to many witnesses, some once hostile, who chose hardship and death rather than take back what they said they had seen. People do not usually die rather than retract a story they know is false. Tested against a plain case like this, Hume’s rule asks us to doubt what no real skeptic doubts.
William Paley, A View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794), Proposition I.