Miracles and Prophecy Set Aside

Deism affirms that miracles and revealed prophecy are not credible. Because the deist holds that God established the world with a fixed, rational order, the reported suspension of natural law in a miracle is judged improbable and unnecessary, and claims to foretell the future by divine revelation are treated with the same scepticism. Enlightenment deists argued that testimony to miracles is weaker than the standing evidence for the regularity of nature, and that a wise Creator would not need to violate the order he had made. Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, published in two parts in 1794 and 1795 while Paine was imprisoned in France during the Revolution, became deism's most widely read and most controversial popular statement, arguing that organised Christianity's miracle stories were either invented, exaggerated in retelling, or explicable by natural causes later dressed up as supernatural, and that reported prophecy fared no better under the same historical scrutiny.

Published amid the upheaval of the French Revolution and read by a mass audience unusual for a work of religious philosophy, it provoked fierce backlash in Britain and America, where Paine, previously celebrated for Common Sense and his support for American independence, found his reputation permanently damaged among many former admirers.