QuestionsDoes God exist?The only word of God is the Creation we behold
Does God exist?DeismMiracles and testimony

The only word of God is the Creation we behold

Paine's deism; Creation as revelation

Thomas Paine 1737 · 1809The rights of man come from his birth, not from a king, and every generation has the same rights as the one before.
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What it claims

The only word of God is the Creation: to know what God is, one must not search the book called scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation.

Why

A word of God for all must be universal and unalterable; no book is, only the Creation that anyone can read.

The same idea through history
Voltaire1766Voltaire: the ordered world points to a workman, a God that reason reaches without Church or sacred book. Paine pushes the same idea further, against written revelation itself.
Thomas Paine1794The Age of Reason, Part I (Paris, 1794), then Part II (1795): Paine writes against atheism and against revealed religions. He believes in one God, and rejects the Bible as the word of God.
In short

"The only word of God is the Creation we behold" is an argument by Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason, 1794-1795, 1794) on the question "Does God exist?" (answer: deism). Its claim: The only word of God is the Creation: to know what God is, one must not search the book called scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 0 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

The Age of Reason, 1794-1795
Valid with an implicit premise

Thomas Paine, a thinker of the American Revolution, believes in one God and rejects the Churches. His reason is a simple idea. If God spoke to all men, he would do it in a way all can understand, everywhere, with no one able to change it. No book meets that condition: a language is local and changes, a second-hand account is only hearsay. What speaks to all peoples, without translation, and which no one can forge, is Creation. The only scripture of God is therefore the world itself, and reason is enough to read it.

P1God's means are always equal to his end: infinite power and wisdom cannot fail as man fails. If God wants to make himself known to all, he uses a universal means.
P2Human language is local and changeable, and therefore incapable of serving as a means of universal and unchangeable information. A written word of God cannot be that means.
P3What is revealed to one person is a revelation to that person only; for everyone else it is hearsay, and they are not obliged to believe it.
P4Creation is an ever-existing word, which everyone can read, and which cannot be forged, lost, altered or suppressed.
P5 · implicit premiseThere is indeed a word of God, and if no written text meets the conditions, it is the Creation, which meets them, that is this word.
The only word of God is the Creation: to know what God is, one must not search the book called scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a world where no book meets the conditions, Creation meets them, but God does not speak at all: the other premises are true, the conclusion is false.
Valid with P5. Without it, we show that no book can be the universal and unalterable word of God, but not that such a word exists: one could conclude that God does not speak. P5 is therefore Paine's choice: he believes in God and in a revelation, but a natural one. This is the point where the atheist and the believer in revelation, each in his own way, oppose him.
Analogy. A message written in a language almost no one understands, copied a thousand times, cannot prove it comes from the sender: we no longer know what was changed. A message written in the sky, which everyone sees, cannot be altered. Paine says: the first is a book, the second is the world. His opponents answer that the sky does not say what the sender wants.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

R
Richard Watson 1796 · attacks premise 3

Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, answers Paine in An Apology for the Bible (1796). Paine, he says, mixes up two kinds of proof: mathematical demonstration and the probability that comes from testimony. The evidence that is enough to say that an ancient book such as those of Plato or Cicero is genuine is also enough for a sacred book.

no reply
Paine did reply, but that text is not yet in our corpus.
The debate goes on (our summary) Paine prepared a reply to Watson, but it is not in our sources. A defender of Paine answers that the credibility of a book does not change the fact that it is written in a local language, and that no text can bind all men. A supporter of Watson answers that Paine asks God for a way of speaking that neither nature nor any witness can meet perfectly.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: must a revelation meant for all be universal and unalterable (Paine), or can it pass through witnesses, books and a Church (Watson)? The debate also concerns the historical reliability of the Bible, which Part II of The Age of Reason attacks.
David Hume 1779 · attacks premise 4

In the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Philo takes up Epicurus's old questions: is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is impotent. Able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. If Creation is the word of God, it also speaks of suffering.

no reply
see the argument
We have not yet found a direct reply by Paine in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Paine does not treat the problem of evil in the passage read here: he cites God's power, wisdom, generosity and mercy, which we see in Creation (ch. 9). A deist can answer that evil is the price of a stable order; a sceptic answers that Creation then says nothing of God's goodness. See also Hume's argument on evil.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Core point: does nature reveal a good God, or only a powerful and wise cause? Paine's deism holds the first two; Hume's objection concerns the third.
Joseph Butler 1736 · attacks premise 1

In The Analogy of Religion, Butler, writing against the deists of his day, answers this kind of argument in advance: the difficulties raised against revelation (that it is partial, obscure, passed on by men) are found in the same way in nature. Whoever rejects Scripture for these difficulties should, for the same reason, deny that God formed the world.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Paine in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Paine does not cite Butler in the passages read. A deist can answer that Butler's argument does not show that revelation is true, only that it is no worse than nature. A defender of Butler answers that Paine asks of revelation what nature itself does not give: to be clear and complete.
Where the debate stands (our summary)The debate concerns the burden of proof: must Paine show that an imperfect revelation is impossible, or Butler that it is real? Both recognise that nature is not clear on everything.
In the same family · Miracles and testimony
Against miraclesDavid Hume
Does God exist?Agnosticism 3
Natural religion is perfect: revelation can add nothing to itMatthew Tindal · 1730
Does God exist?Deism 3