Thomas Paine & Swami Vivekananda

Thomas Paine, in his "The Age of Reason" (1794) propounded his scepticism of all Semitic religions because they were based on heresy, which one cannot be compelled to believe. He also questioned the revelations mentioned in the Bible (& Quran) for the same reason. Moses & his Ten Commandments, not to speak of Mohammad receiving the text of the Quran from a Divine source, are open to reasonable doubt.

Swami Vivekananda (being the son of an advocate) was one of the first Hindu religious leaders who counselled that nothing should be accepted without proof or evidence. He was the sceptic par excellence, who relentlessly questioned his own guru about his beliefs & even checked for himself whether his guru was practising what he preached & whether he had seen God as he claimed. In this he was the heir of the Upanishadic seers, for whom reason was paramount. Even later Swamiji reiterated that the same methodology used in proving scientific truths should be used in religion also for it to be valid.

But whereas Thomas Paine did not believe in miracles, Swami Vivekananda, who had studied Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, & also wrote his own Raja Yoga, accepted that under certain conditions, natural laws could be suspended.