Are Churches Wordly Establishments Set-Up for Power and Profit by Creating Fear in Mankind? : An Analysis of "The Age of Reason"

The issue, I believe, in Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason" is: are churches wordly establishments set-up for power and profit by creating fear in mankind? Paine concludes, that yes, it appears that all national institutions of churches are no other than human inventions. He mentions specifically Jewish, Christian and Turkish churches.

His reasons are, first, that every church or religious group has established itself based on a special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. He gives specific examples such as Christians and Jesus, Jews and Moses, Turks and Mahomet. He goes on by stating that each church has certain books, which according to him, they call the Word of God or revelation. Once again, he gives examples including how the religious groups received their messages. According to Paine, Christians call their books the Word of God and say that it came from "divine inspiration".

Paine defines revelation which, when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man. According to Paine, when it is told to the second, third or fourth person it is no longer revelation but it becomes hearsay. It's kind of like that childhood game where kids sit around a lunchroom table and the first kid whispers a secret or message in the second kids ear and the secret gets passed along and when it comes back it is very different than the original message.

He speaks of Moses and the Ten Commandments. Because Moses was alone on Mt. Sinai, Paine believes there is no verifiable evidence that the commandments were written by the hand of God. He does remark that because of their good moral quality, any man qualified to be a lawgiver or legislator could have written them himself without spiritual intervention. He writes the same for the Koran and states that because he did not see the angel himself he has a right not to believe.

I can understand why individuals like Paine are skeptics. There is alot of hypocrisy among churches. However, clarification is needed on the definition of Christianity. Paine seems to write as if the Christian faith were more like a single church, with Jesus as God. Christianity is more like a group of separate religions who claim to have accepted Jesus as their savior; however, not all Christian churches claim Jesus as God but claim him as being the Son of God. Jehovah's Witnesses claim to be Christians who have accepted Jesus as savior but claim him to be the Son of God. They do this for numerous reasons. One reason being that they claim it was omitted from the Bible that God has a name which is Jehovah; therefore God couldn't possibly be Jesus. Then there is the issue of the trinity. The witnesses don't accept the trinity as do the Catholics. Different religions have different doctrines or beliefs.

What I find interesting is the witnesses preach the importance of questioning everything read or heard including things of biblical nature. Thereby, they feel it wil furthur one's belief that Jehovahs' Witnesses are the "true path to everlasting life" as their doctrine teaches. However, if one was to look in a Bible, such as Jehovah's Witnesses version The New Translation of the Holy Scriptures, one would find flaws in every Christian religion, including Jehovah's Witnesses.

I do agree that most churches are power and profit-crazed human establishments set-up to enslave us by using fear and mind-control tactics. Catholics use hellfire as one form of manipulation. My studies of the Bible have shown me that this is not from the Bible but is a doctrine from the twisted minds of the Catholic Church. Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists have a slew of regulations. Most of which cannot be found in the Bible. I prefer not to belong to any organized religion.