But you are invited to help in a different way: Use your money to buy one of Paine's books (like Age of Reason) and give it to someone who could benefit by reading it, especially your local politicians and preachers. We're serious! Even children recognize "love one another" is a universal truth. How it became a business in so many cultures is another story, but maybe we can help a few people think for themselves and stand up to modern-day Pharisees who pretend to speak for "God".

   Very few people are truly inspirational. Thomas Paine was. Please help keep the memory of this great humanitarian alive. But more than that, keep his wisdom alive. In every country there are a lot of people telling us "what God says," as if they have some access to the Almighty that the rest of do not. And for thousands of years people have been dying because of it. Do something! Every voice of reason heard from has to help a little bit.

   "The world is my country, to do good, my religion."   Thomas Paine

   Though Paine was no perfect person, he was a hero. Vilified by countless numbers of practitioners of priestcraft, who were humiliated by the wisdom he wrote in the Age of Reason, Paine stands today a better man and far more Christ-like than any of his persecutors ever achieved. Indeed, the comparison of Christ's persecution by the Pharisees for his good teaching is similar to Paine's persecution by Preachers and Priests for his. And in both cases it had to do with the persecutors having their livelihood threatened, for they were all guilty of turning "love one another" into a business.

   And it should be noted, though Paine was not a "Christian", he did in fact admire Jesus greatly, and said so. In fact, Paine said that no one ever exceeded his wisdom. That's pretty high praise. What Paine disagreed with was all the supernatural fantasy that the businessmen long ago added. Words like "love one another" carry with them their own authority, and no "miracles" or "prophecies" are necessary for honest people to recognize the self-evident truth of that maxim.

   Paine wanted us to think for ourselves and he gave his honest opinions without fear of how those in authority might respond. He only hoped we would listen. The price he paid for his honesty was high and even today the vast majority of preachers suppress his writings, some even saying he was an atheist. Terrible liars, for Paine was as devout a Deist as ever lived.

  He wrote, (I paraphrase), "If there ever was such a man as Adam, he was certainly a Deist. The only religion that has not been invented is pure and simple deism. But deism does not answer the purpose of despotic governments. They cannot lay hold of religion as an engine of power unless they mix it with human inventions and make their own authority a part. Neither does Deism answer the avarice of priests, who incorporate themselves and their functions with a religion and become, like the government, a party in the system. Deism teaches us all which is necessary to be known, without the possibility of being deceived by others. The creation is the Bible of the deist. He reads there, in the hand-writing of his Creator, the immutability of God’s power, the certainty of his own existence, and understands all man-made Bibles and Testaments are forgeries."

   The bottom line is that "love one another" is a universal truth and nothing stands between any of us and our maker