I'll grant that Paine was technically a Deist, though had you done some background research you would know that a Deist god shares almost nothing with the traditional Christian God. A Deist god (often called a "watchmaker god") is believed to have created the universe, then to have taken no further role. Deists do not believe in any sort of heavenly intervention in matters of this world.
Samuel Clarke in his 'Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God' (1704-6) distinguished four classes of Deists: a) those who believed that God was the creator but had no further relation to the world, b) those who believed God was the creator and the providential guide of the natural but not the moral or spiritual order, c) those who admitted God?s moral attributes but denied a future life, d) those who accepted all of natural religion - God as creator and providential guide in the natural, moral, and spiritual order together with belief in the immortality of the soul - but rejected revelation.
Which ever one of these Paine believed, he was a far cry from an atheist.
And I must be imagining the fact that several Philosophy texts (and my Professor) mention that Hume was never permitted a teaching position on account of his atheistic views. I should very much appreciate the citation for the quotation that you attribute to Hume, as I am quite firmly of the belief that it is taken rather severely out of context.
I wonder if you would mind giving me a source of a Philosophy text that mentions this about Hume. I know he had problems due to his beliefs, but these were not atheistic beliefs. As can be easily demonstrated, Hume was a deist. My source is 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion' by David Hume (1779); taken from the introduction. The full paragraph follows:
Happily, these circumstances are all to be found in the subject of NATURAL RELIGION. What truth so obvious, so certain, as the being of a God, which the most ignorant ages have acknowledged, for which the most refined geniuses have ambitiously striven to produce new proofs and arguments? What truth so important as this, which is the ground of all our hopes, the surest foundation of morality, the firmest support of society, and the only principle which ought never to be a moment absent from our thoughts and meditations? But, in treating of this obvious and important truth, what obscure questions occur concerning the nature of that Divine Being, his attributes, his decrees, his plan of providence? These have been always subjected to the disputations of men; concerning these human reason has not reached any certain determination. But these are topics so interesting, that we cannot restrain our restless inquiry with regard to them; though nothing but doubt, uncertainty, and contradiction, have as yet been the result of our most accurate researches.
Be that as it may, any Philosophy professor worth his salt can tell you that Paine was a Deist and that Hume was an atheist. If you dispute this, you are disputing established facts of history.
Then they would be right on Paine, and wrong on Hume. They were both Deist. Hume, by his own words, believed in NATURAL RELIGION. By definition he was not an Atheist.
You show great ability to misquote things
Such as....? I have misquoted nothing. I wonder again about your Philosophy Texts.
Also, your Robert E. Lee quote does nothing to help your credibility.
Just a bit of the un-Reconstructed Southerner in me making itself known. I'll be happy to let my credibility stand on confirmable source material rather than baseless declarations.