The Logical Atheist

[A]dmitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and, consequently, they are not obliged to believe it. --Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason:  Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology , 1794-1807 

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) Here's is freethinker Robert G. Ingersoll's take on Thomas Paine, the deist and great 18th-century champion of liberty and reason, and author of, among other things,  The Rights of Man and The Age of Reason , which debunked the Bible:   Thomas Paine having done so much for political liberty, turned his attention to the superstitions of his age. He published "The Age of Reason;" and from that day to this, his character has been maligned by almost every priest in Christendom. He has been held up as the terrible example. Every man who has expressed an honest thought, has been warningly referred to Thomas Paine. All his services were forgotten. No kind word fell from any pulpit. His devotion to principle, his zeal for human rights, were no longer remembered. Paine simply took the ground that it is a contradiction to call a thing a revelation that comes to us second-hand. There can be no revelation beyond the first communication. All after that is...