{"id":2402,"date":"2009-08-02T17:14:59","date_gmt":"2009-08-03T01:14:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=2402"},"modified":"2009-08-02T17:14:59","modified_gmt":"2009-08-03T01:14:59","slug":"mark-twain-on-gods-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/mark-twain-on-gods-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Twain on God’s love"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently read Mark Twain\u2019s brilliantly acid Letters from the Earth<\/em>, written in 1909, a year before his death. \u00a0I highly recommend it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Satan visits the earth and sends back dispatches to his fellow archangels about humans\u2019 conception of God, Genesis, the Fall, and Heaven.\u00a0 Satan\u2019s account of the Flood is particularly instructive.\u00a0 The challenging logistics of fitting all those life forms into the Ark have not heretofore been adequately analyzed, nor was it widely known that Noah was sent back to pick up some flies in order to ensure that man\u2019s subjection to typhoid fever and other filth-born tribulations would remain total:<\/p>\n

\u00a0
\nNoah and his family were saved, yes, but they were not comfortable, for they were full of microbes.\u00a0 Full to the eyebrows; fat with them, obese with them; distended like balloons.\u00a0 It was a disagreeable condition, but it could not be helped, because enough microbes had to be saved to supply the future races of men with desolating diseases, and there were but eight persons on board to serve as hotels for them.\u00a0 The microbes were by far the most important part of the Ark\u2019s cargo, and the part the Creator was most anxious about and most infatuated with. . . . If [God] had had a motto, it would have read, \u2018Let no innocent person escape.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Science would eventually make a few inroads against disease, however, which God then promptly got credit for:<\/p>\n

If science exterminates a disease . . . all the pulpits break into grateful advertising-raptures and call attention to how good he is!\u00a0 Yes, he <\/em>has done it.\u00a0 Perhaps he has waited a thousand years before doing it.\u00a0 This is nothing; the pulpit says he was thinking about it all the time.
\n\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently read Mark Twain\u2019s brilliantly acid Letters from the Earth, written in 1909, a year before his death. \u00a0I highly recommend it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Satan visits the earth and sends back dispatches to his fellow archangels about humans\u2019 conception of God, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2402"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2407,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2402\/revisions\/2407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}