April Fools' Joke

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"April 1st: This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three-hundred and sixty-four." ~ Mark Twain

Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious
Animal. He is the only animal that has the
True Religion—several of them. He is the
only animal that loves his neighbor as
himself and cuts his throat if his
theology isn’t straight.
~ Mark Twain

Those who can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities.
~ Voltaire

Tentmaker

Men never do evil so completely
and cheerfully as when they do it
with religious conviction.
~ Blaise Pascal

Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst.
~ C.S. Lewis

* Mark Twain's "Secret Vendetta with the Almighty"

Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

As an adult, he adopted the Christianity of enlightened liberalism, congenial with his burgeoning deism. He discarded heaven and hell, the immortality of the soul, and the divinity of Jesus Christ. From Thomas Paine, whom he had read in his cub pilot days, Twain imbibed the idea that religions derive their authority from spurious claims by their founders that they had received revelations from God, transmitted to posterity as incontrovertible holy writ. Bibles diminished the grandeur of the real God by straitening "him" to the narrow confines of parochial imaginations.

Mark Twain's [aka Samuel Langhorne Clemens], Secret Vendetta with the Almighty

Cross-reference METAXY

* Mark Twain, 1835-1910 ~ A Bitter Critic of Religion

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), "better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American humorist, satirist, writer, and lecturer. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." He is also known for his fascination with science and his quotations.

Faith is believing something you know ain’t so. ~ Following the Equator, Ch. 12

Man is a marvelous curiosity . . . he thinks he is the Creator's pet . . . he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea. Letters from the Earth, 1909

Twain falls into the 'ambiguous' category regarding belief in gods but he was highly critical of organized religion. He did, however, maintain that the Presbyterian church, his childhood religion, was safe.

"In later years, Twain's family suppressed some of his work which was especially irreverent toward conventional religion, notably Letters from the Earth, which was not published until 1962. The anti-religious The Mysterious Stranger was published in 1916, although there is some scholarly debate as to whether Twain actually wrote the most familiar version of this story. Twain was critical of organized religion and certain elements of the Christian religion through most of the end of his life, though he never renounced Presbyterianism." Wikipedia

See also METAXY