All I wanted to do was read for book club, but here we are. Again. I’m so fucking tired.
May make the first three shorter, but not tonight. Should probably wait and see how the lowercase turns out anyway.
Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth and represents it in distortion. Truth never invelops itself in mystery; and the mystery in which it is at any time inveloped, is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself.
Religion, therefore, being the belief of a God, and the practice of moral truth, cannot have a connection with mystery. The belief of a God, so far from having any thing of mystery in it, is of all beliefs the most easy, because it arises to us, as is before observed, out of necessity. And the practice of moral truth, or in other words, a practical imitation of the moral goodness of God, is no other than out acting towards each other, as he acts benignly towards all. We cannot serve God in the manner we serve those who cannot do without such service; and, therefore, the only idea we can have of serving God is that of contributing to the happiness of the living creation that God has made. This cannot be done by retiring ourselves from the society of the world, and spending a recluse life in selfish devotion.
~Tomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part One, 1794.