What do you make of this quote?

[geocajun]

A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.

- Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

I'm not sure on the context, but taken by itself it seems like it could refer to anything from atheism to individual thinking in a cult causing one to be pushed out.

What do you think?

 

[Mom2Alex]

Hi Geocajun

Mark Twain wrote a lot about religion - and I have seen anything very positive in his writings. Granted, he did have a gift as humorist, but I don't think he was saying it to get laughs. It is documented that he was Presbyterian (his mother's affiliation), which doesn't really point to what theology he cleaved to.

What I get from the quote you pasted in the OP is that he was deeply immersed in an age of 'enlightenment' mixed with deism. He was putting his nose up at organized religion in general, Christianity in specific.

My two cents.

Kelly

 

[MoNiCa4316]

It seems to me like he is saying that what church teaches is not fact, and once you find out the "truth" you have to leave it..

I might be wrong though...

he might be just making an observation on a person's experience of leaving a church...and the differences between faith and feeling like you "know" something based on evidence.

 

[ShannonMcCatholic]

I think Mark Twain rocks...but I also think it's important to note that he had very hostile views on religion. Well hostile might me overstating--but he thought the Bible a not very well written work of fiction.

 

[ShannonMcCatholic]

My favortie Twain religion quote just seems like it ought to be posted in a banner here :

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

and it's corollary:

I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's.

 

[MoNiCa4316]

so sad

 

[geocajun]

Thanks for the insights

I found that among a list of quotes about atheism, but I don't think that one is an atheist quote.

 

[Antigone]

I think if Mark Twain said it, it's probably true.

 

[ZuZu]

my view (and why I think it's listed with atheist quotes) is that as long as you believe all that a particular church teaches then you are accepted, but once you start to question any of those beliefs, you are shunned...he also said "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."

 

[Cosmic Charlie]

A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows.

- Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)

I'm not sure on the context, but taken by itself it seems like it could refer to anything from atheism to individual thinking in a cult causing one to be pushed out.

What do you think?

I don't know what it means but as a means of clarity by abstraction I wonder if its not related to a Phenomena I have noticed:

Like black lung with coal miners I believe atheism is an occupational hazzard of doing advanced sceintific reserach.

The prossess of learning by direct experiementation and theory makes one doubt everything they cannot objectively prove.

Maybe its part of our fallen nature that there seems to be a paradox between knowledge and faith. Maybe that's the real point of the story of Adam and Eve.

 

[BAFRIEND]

Mark Twain was a very cynical and negative person.

Given a couple more years of life, he probably would have been the one who authored Catcher in the Rye.