What Atheists Don't Want You To Know About Mark Twain's Secret?

Question

Mark Twain believed in the supernatural, apparitions, and loved a Catholic Saint.

http://www.stjoan-center.com/twain/atheists.html

Answer 1

Frankly, I don't think atheists give a damn what you know about Mark Twain.



Fundamentalist Christians HATE Mark Twain, and I was never sure why. Twain wrote a lot of passages criticizing the Christians of his day for their sanctimoniousness and arrogance. Huckleberry Finn, for instance, had an internal fight between his religious teaching and his conscience!



I have discussions with Christians sometimes about The Devil. Christians believe if the Devil showed up on earth, masquerading as a human, they could tell him in an instant because he'd be really ugly and his evil would be obvious. But lots of authors have written fanciful stories about the Devil showing up and being very good looking and very persuasive, and unsuspecting Christians loved him and followed him believing he was good, and that was how he was able to mislead them and corrupt them. Even CS Lewis used this theme in Screwtape Letters.



Mark Twain wrote a story like this, and I'm sorry I can't remember the name of it. I always wondered if fundys badmouth him because of that story. The theme suggests that people of faith are easily corrupted through their own faith, IOW that strong, unquestioning, unskeptical faith can be harmful as well as good. Just for example, Mark Twain was appalled that Christianity in the South supported slavery!

Answer 2

I'm confused about your point.



Mark Twain wrote extensively to argue for his Atheist position.

There is no question at all that he was Atheist.



He also admired Joan of Ark and the Jews as a group.



Believe it or not --

normal humane people are capable of respecting and admiring people of different religious beliefs from their own.



For example -- both Pope John Paul II and Alexander the Great were so admired by Jewish society that they both became heroes of Jewish folk stories.

Answer 3

So what if he admired Joan of Arc? I'm an atheist and I think Martin Luther King Jr was an incredible human being. Dammit, you got me too! :) I said I liked a believer... guess I've gotta turn in my atheist card?



Just because you're an atheist, it doesn't mean you hate religious people. It means you disagree with them. (Also, when Mark Twain says that Joan of Arc believed in her apparitions, it does not mean Mark Twain believed in them...)

Answer 4

Ah Mark Twain, now there's someone who's never interested me in the slightest.

Answer 5

Yeah, he also hung out with Nikola Tesla and thought that there was something supernatural about the lightning experiments. It goes to show, don't trust your heroes too much. And I don't trust any of them. Carl Sagan, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence Krauss, Bill Nye. The moment you put your FAITH in some stupid celebrity is the moment you invent your own religion.

Answer 6

Why would I care about the superstitions that Mark Twain believed in??



He - like most famous people back then - were simply products of their time.



Too bad Twain died before the Age of Information began.

Answer 7

You were bragging about yourself in your other anonymous non-question comments to Jeff. https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20160922132949AA3A9aZ All you're doing is parroting bullet points you read on a website like this: http://www.stjoan-center.com/twain/atheists.html Do you have any original thoughts of your own, or can you just copy the work of others?



I don't know if that's true or not, but atheists don't care what people know about Mark Twain. Why would we? But if you insist, let's include a mix of his other thoughts:

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"Faith is believing what you know ain't so" -- Mark Twain

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"If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be – a Christian" -- Mark Twain

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"...why doesn't somebody write a tract on "How to Be a Christian and yet keep your Hands off of Other People's Things." -- Mark Twain

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"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also." -- Mark Twain

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"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

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"I have no special regard for Satan; but, I can at least claim that I have no prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a little his way, on account of his not having a fair show. All religions issue bibles against him, and say the most injurious things about him, but we never hear his side. We have none but the evidence for the prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English, it is un-American; it is French." -- Mark Twain

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"In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue, but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing."

"There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different." -- 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 eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries 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 whether to laugh or to cry." -- Mark Twain

.

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Answer 8

I admire Pope John XXIII but i am still an atheist. Really simplistic thinking on the writers part and your part. Just because you find great personal virtue in someone doesn't mean you believe the same things.

Answer 9

Mark Twain said:



"Taking into account, as I have suggested before, all the circumstances -- her origin, youth, sex, illiteracy, early environment, and the obstructing conditions under which she exploited her high gifts and made her conquests in the field and before the courts that tried her for her life, -- she is easily and by far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced".

Answer 10

Last Tuesday, Taylor found her vagina for the first time. Today, she discovered Google. Aren't we proud of her?



And now, she even answers her own questions...!

Answer 11

And that's supposed to be a surprise because....?

Answer 12

I was not aware that he had a secret worth five seconds of my time.

Answer 13

who gives a sheet?

Answer 14

And what would that "secret" be?

Answer 15

THANKS FOR SHARING BUT I DONT CARE what they do...in the long haul they wont be around..