This was a quote on a poster always present in the office of Fox Mulder from the X-Files. The last X-Files season ended about a month or two ago in South Africa.
Wanting to believe in something seems to be inherent in most of humanity. If you want to believe there is a God, whatever you want to call him, or if you want to believe there is NOT a God, it is your choice. However, we all strive to believe in something. There has been a proliferation of people calling themselves “spiritual but not religious”. How wonderful it is that we can claim to believe in a higher power without really committing ourselves to the cause.
Today I was surfing the Web and stumbled across an article by one of my favourite religious commentators: DM Murdock’s views on The Passion of the Christ. Reading through this reminded me of the confirmation of her views I found in the writing of Thomas Paine back in 1795. Paine wrote his most controversial piece, The Age of Reason, while in a French Prison. One of the founding fathers of America, and his views are expressed so crisply and clearly, if only people were willing to be more open-minded.
🧠 The Core Argument: Your Mind is Your Own Church
Paine’s most powerful idea is that institutional belief systems are often constructs of power and control. He saw national churches as “human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolise power and profit.” In today’s terms, think of this as the ultimate critical thinking hack: don’t outsource your core beliefs to any authority—be it religious, corporate, or algorithmic—without subjecting them to your own reason. Just as we teach kids to question online content, Paine urged everyone to question theological dogma.
⚖️ A Scathing Critique of Christian Dogma
Paine applied relentless logic to dismantle core Christian doctrines:
The Trinity & Original Sin: He saw these as irrational “fables” and “amphibious frauds” that corrupt the simple, rational idea of one God. He found the moral logic of salvation through Christ’s death to be an unjust “outrage.”
Miracles & Revelation: He demanded public, verifiable evidence for miraculous claims like the resurrection, which he found lacking. He argued that so-called “revelation” is hearsay to everyone except the original recipient and therefore not binding.
The Bible Itself: He viewed scripture as a human-authored text full of contradictions and absurdities, famously stating it taught “cruelty, rapine, and murder.”
🌍 The Positive Vision: Deism as the Original “Open Source” Truth
While tearing down organised religion, Paine built up Deism—a belief system based on reason and nature. His creed was simple and ethical: belief in one God, human equality, and the duty to do justice and show mercy.
His key insight is profoundly modern: “The Word of God is the Creation we behold.” He argued that the laws of nature are God’s true, universal, and uncorruptible revelation, accessible to all through observation and reason, unlike human-written texts. This is akin to trusting direct, empirical evidence over curated or manipulated information streams.
💡 The Ramon Thomas Take: Lessons for the Digital Age
Reading Paine through a modern lens offers crucial lessons:
1. Cultivate Intellectual Sovereignty: “My own mind is my own church” is the 18th-century version of controlling your own digital identity and narrative. Don’t let any platform, influencer, or ideology think for you.
2. Audit Your “Beliefs”: Just as Paine audited biblical claims, we must audit the sources of our information. Who benefits from this narrative? What evidence supports it? This is foundational for online privacy and security literacy.
3. Seek Universal “Revelation”: In an age of personalised algorithms and filter bubbles, Paine’s trust in the universal “revelation” of nature is a metaphor for seeking out objective, verifiable facts—the shared reality that isn’t subject to manipulation.
4. Ethics Over Dogma: Paine reduced true religion to ethical action. Similarly, our digital lives should be guided by core ethics—justice, mercy, and the well-being of others—rather than blind adherence to tribal online behaviours.
In essence, The Age of Reason is more than a religious critique; it’s a primer on intellectual self-defence. Paine champions the individual’s reason against the “priestcraft” of his day, which in our context translates to the “platform-craft” and “clickbait-craft” of the digital world. His work reminds us that the most important firewall is the one in our minds.
I hope this summary provides a useful perspective. If you’re interested in how these principles of critical thinking apply specifically to parenting in the digital age, my blog has several related posts you might find valuable.
The X-Files: I Want To Believe is a 2008 Film based on the TV series.
It seems a lot of people were disappointed with this movie. A lot of people went into it thinking it was going to be the usual X-Files storyline of looking for aliens/government conspiracies. So I read about it before the movie was released and knew it was more of a crime/mystery/suspense movie. It would have been too much if they had done another movie based on finding the flying saucer, like the first movie. It was nice to see a change of pace, and I think if a lot of people gave the movie a chance, it would grow on them. Altogether, I liked the storyline, the plots and the characters. I also think it would have done a lot better at the box office if it hadn’t opened around the same time as some big box office movies (The Dark Knight). I think maybe if it had opened at another time, more people would have given it a chance and gone to see it. I’m definitely happy, though, with the DVD, and I hope there will be another movie. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for all the other X-Philes wanting another movie.