Mark Twain
(Top Posts - History - 051401)

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Biography
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=75863&tocid=7470
Excerpt: " ... The popular image of Mark Twain was by
now well-established. He was a gruff but knowledgeable,
unaffected man who had been places and seen things and
was not fooled by pretense.

He talked and wrote with contagious humanity and charm
in the language of ordinary people. At the same time, he
scornfully berated man; evolution failed, he said, when
man appeared, for his was the only evil heart in the entire
animal kingdom.

Yet Mark Twain was one with those he scorned: what any
man sees in the human race, he admitted, 'is merely him-
self in the deep and private honesty of his own heart.'

Perceptive, comic, but also bitter, Twain seemed to be
the mirror of all men."

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"The Bible is a mass of fables and traditions, mere
mythology." [Mark Twain, "Mark Twain and the Bible"]

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"If there is a God, he is a malign thug." [Mark Twain]

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"There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad,
bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it
is - in our country particularly, and in all other Christian
countries in a somewhat modified degree - it is still a
hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible,
with its prodigious crime - the invention of Hell.

Measured by our Christianity of today, bad as it is,
hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither
the Deity nor His Son is a Christian, nor qualified for
that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion.
The fleets of the world could swim in spacious com-
fort in the innocent blood it has spilt." [Mark Twain,
"Reflections on Religion"]

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"There was no place in the land where the seeker could
not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave.
No place in all the land but one -- the pulpit. It yielded
last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn
fight, and then did what it always does, joined the pro-
cession -- at the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery
texts [in the Bible] remained; the practice changed; that
was all." ["Mark Twain and the Three R's, by Maxwell
Geismar, p.109]

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"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand
that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."
[Mark Twain]

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"The Christian Bible is a drug store. It's contents have
remained the same but the medical practice continues.
For 1,800 years these changes were slight--scarcely
noticeable... The dull and ignorant physician day and
night, and all the days and all the nights, drenched
his patient with vast and hideous doses of the most
repulsive drugs to be found in the store's stock...
He kept him religion sick for eighteen centuries, and
allowed him not a well day during all that time." ["Mark
Twain and the Three R's, by Maxwell Geismar, p.107]

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"These people's God has shown them by a million
acts that he respects none of the Bible's statues. He
breaks every one of them himself, adultery and all."
["Mark Twain and the Three R's, by Maxwell Geismar,
p.124]

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"There are no witches. The witch text remains; only
the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the
text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text
remains. More than two hundred death penalties are
gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized
them remains." ["Mark Twain and the Three R's, by
Maxwell Geismar, p.110]

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"Man is a Religious Animal. Man is the only Reli-
gious Animal. He is the only animal that has the
True Religion -- several of them. He is the only ani-
mal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his
throat if his theology isn't straight." [_Letters from
the Earth_, Mark Twain]

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"During many ages there were witches. The Bible
said so. The Bible commanded that they should not
be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing
its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for 800 years,
gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands,
and set about its holy work in earnest.

She worked hard at it night and day during nine cen-
turies and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned
whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the
Christian world clean with their foul blood.

Then it was discovered that there was no such thing
as witches, and never had been. One does not know
to laugh or to cry." [Mark Twain, "Europe and Else-
where"]

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"Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain
or freed a human soul." [Mark Twain]

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From Steven Weinberg, page 10 from article no longer
available online, but which may be purchased at ...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/354
"... Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely
good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but
who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery,
because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she
had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but
only countless sermons preaching that slavery was
God’s will. ..."

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The Bible According to Mark Twain: Writings
on Heaven, Eden, and the Flood, by Mark Twain
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684824396
"Mark Twain takes on Heaven and Hell, sinners
and saints, and showcases his own unique
approach to the Holy Scriptures including Adam
and Eve's divergent accounts of their domestic
troubles, Satan's take on our concept of the
afterlife, Methuselah's discussion of an ancient
version of baseball, and advice on how to dress
and tip properly in heaven.

Behind the humor of these pieces, readers will see
Twain's serious thoughts on the relationship between
God and man, biblical inconsistencies, Darwinism,
science, and the impact of technology on religious
beliefs."

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