By ROEDY
Added: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 13:37:33 UTC

Many atheists tend to think a cynical attitude toward Christianity and gods started with us. But Mark Twain was taking wonderfully clever pot shots at religion back in the 1800s. He was considered America's top humourist, so it seems America was much more open to the atheist view back then, than it is today. You might find some of these quotes useful when you need a dead person to make your point for you.

Here are a few of his gems:

[The Bible] has noble poetry in it… and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies. ~ Mark Twain (born: 1835-11-30 died: 1910-04-21 at age: 74)

As for the dinosaur — But Noah’s conscience was easy; it was not named in his cargo list and he and the boys were not aware that there was such a creature. He said he could not blame himself for not knowing about the dinosaur, because it was an American animal, and America had not then been discovered. ~ Mark Twain

Faith is believing what you know isn’t so. ~ Mark Twain

I am plenty safe enough in his hands; I am not in any danger from that kind of a Deity. The one that I want to keep out of the reach of, is the caricature of him which one finds in the Bible. We (that one and I) could never respect each other, never get along together. I have met his superior a hundred times — in fact I amount to that myself. ~ Mark Twain

I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious — unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force. ~ Mark Twain

If there is a God, he is a malign thug. ~ Mark Twain

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. ~ Mark Twain

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. ~ Mark Twain

It is better to read the weather forecast before we pray for rain. ~ Mark Twain

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. ~ Mark Twain

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand. ~ Mark Twain

No god and no religion can survive ridicule. No church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field and live. ~ Mark Twain

One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have believed it. They also believed the world was flat. ~ Mark Twain

Our Bible reveals to us the character of our god with minute and remorseless exactness… It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in print anywhere. It makes Nero an angel of light … by contrast. ~ Mark Twain

To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master; to trust the true God is to trust a Being who has uttered no promises, but whose beneficent, exact, and changeless ordering of the machinery of His colossal universe is proof that He is at least steadfast to His purposes; whose unwritten laws, so far as the affect man, being equal and impartial, show that he is just and fair; these things, taken together, suggest that if he shall ordain us to live hereafter, he will be steadfast, just and fair toward us. We shall not need to require anything more. ~ Mark Twain

We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things and yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy for us. ~ Mark Twain

“In God We Trust.” I don’t believe it would sound any better if it were true. ~ Mark Twain

TAGGED: ATHEISM, HUMOR