Twain and Religion
Mark Twain wasn’t really satisfied with religion and always questioned religion. Mark Twain always asked questions about religion, “how can we be sure of what we believe or claim to know?” Twain was a Presbyterian, He was critical of organized religion and certain elements of Christianity through his later life. He wrote, for example, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so", and "If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be – a Christian". When he was an adult he engaged in religious discussions and attended services. At this time he didn’t publish any of his controversial work on religion, these pieces of work would later be published. In the essay Three Statements of the Eighties in the 1880s, Twain stated that he believed in an almighty God, but not in any messages, revelations, holy scriptures such as the Bible, Providence, or retribution in the afterlife. In the 1890’s he wasn’t to optimistic about the goodness of God, he said, "if our Maker is all-powerful for good or evil, He is not in His right mind". He questioned why God let bad things happen to people, why he let so much suffering to occur in the world if he was the maker and all mighty.
Twain's views on religion appeared in his final work Autobiography of Mark Twain, published on November 2010, 100 years after his death. In it, he said-
“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 to-day, 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 comfort in the innocent blood it has spilled.”
Mark Twain was a Freemason. He belonged to Polar Star Lodge No. 79 A.F.&A.M., based in St. Louis. He was initiated an Entered Apprentice on May 22, 1861, passed to the degree of Fellow Craft on June 12, and raised to the degree of Master Mason on July 10.
Definition of Freemason:
Freemason: Freemasonry consists of fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local fraternities of stonemasons, which from the end of the fourteenth century regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities and clients. The degrees of freemasonry retain the three grades of medieval craft guilds, those of Apprentice, Journeyman or fellow (now called Fellowcraft), and Master Mason. These are the degrees offered by Craft (or Blue Lodge) Freemasonry. Members of these organisations are known as Freemasons or Masons. There are additional degrees, which vary with locality and jurisdiction, and are usually administered by different bodies than the craft degrees.
Mark Twain Quotes on Religion
Quote from 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.” Although he doesn’t really say he’s atheist, we still seem to see he questions whether there’s a God. “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”Many believe that Mark Twain did believe in a God but not the typical God the humans imagine and probably believed that God wasn’t interested in humans faith.
Quote from his Daughter :
“Sometimes he believed death ended everything, but most of the time he felt sure of a life beyond.”