We print pictures of George Washington on our money, we hang his picture in our state and federal buildings, and throughout our school systems we teach the history of George Washington. Yet, when the Continental Army under George Washington was deserting because they had little food, arms, and the situation looked as if it couldn't get much worse, it was not Washington, Adams, Franklin or Jefferson who provided the faith and money needed to carry on--it was Thomas Paine.

Why then is Mr. Paine not honored and loved by every American who ever lived? That's an easy question. He spoke out against Christianity. "When also I am told that a woman called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not; such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it; but we have not even this — for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves; it is only reported by others that they said so — it is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not choose to rest my belief upon such evidence.

"It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given to the story of Jesus Christ being the son of God. He was born when the heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story. Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new thing, at that time, to believe a man to have been celestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited with hundreds: the story, therefore, had nothing in it either new, wonderful, or obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed among the people called Gentiles, or Mythologists, and it was those people only that believed it. The Jews who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited the story." (ushistory.org/paine/reason/reason2.htm)

The ages can come and go but the belief that the Christian god swooped down and humped Mary, the wife of a carpenter named Joseph, giving the world a savor named Jesus will endure. Now any woman who believes this fairytale has only to try and tell the world that she's pregnant and it wasn't her husband who got her pregnant, it was God. Likewise, the husband who returns three days late from a fishing trip with the story that he spent that time in the belly of a whale will not find his Christian brothers and sisters rushing to hear his witness unless, of course, they're psychiatrists. The reported deeds of the gods of the Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Christians will endure because these celestial beings provide society with a very important service. They bring together those in need of wool and those in need of shearing. Although I deeply respect men like Thomas Paine and Mahatma Gandhi, I see most of their heartaches needless. These religious cults are going to do what they were set up to do by their very human gods--wage wars against each other irrespective of logic. In my later years, I have come to realize that the third party position is much safer and extremely profitable. One need only supply these cults with weapons, stir the pot of hatred, and sit back, enjoy the profits and watch the believers slaughter each other.