Hardly a quote for atheism. It is like saying chess is a bad game after watching a match between bad chess players. Being Christian isn't supposed to be about fear and rewards -- its about the true happiness derived from a relationship with God. Bad Christianity uses fear and rewards as a primary motivator not true Christianity.
Abraham Lincoln's upbringing was difficult at best and religion was left out of the mix. The forces of religion around him were strong and one could argue perhaps too strong from the following quote:
"..because I belonged to no church -- was suspected of being a Deist. ... Those influences levied a tax of a considerable per cent upon my strength throughout the religious controversy."
(man I love his writing style).... So that being said, he may have said something different than the following if raised in the current climate:
"That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular. I do not think I could, myself, be brought to support a man for office whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion. Leaving the higher matter of eternal consequences between him and his Maker, I still do not think any man has the right thus to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, of the community in which he may live "
But, he did write that and he did believe in God (truth in Scriptures). And if you look through his writings and readings, he owned a Bible. Just because he didn't practice religion, didn't read the Bible and wasn't a preacher, doesn't mean he didn't believe in God. And of course, even Bible readers can't give assent to everything because, you need to understand something to give assent to it and yes, there is a lot in the Bible and only the bravest of scholars have gone through it and understood it all (e.g. I can't give assent to A LOT of what's in revalation because I haven't taken the time to read what's been written about it).
But there is more.... another quote from Abraham Lincoln:
"To read in the Bible, as the word of God himself, that ``In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,[''] and to preach there-from that, ``In the sweat of other mans faces shalt thou eat bread,'' to my mind can scarcely be reconciled with honest sincerity."
"... , and the power of God displayed in the conversion of the nation." (and many more like this)
BUT... the biggest revalation to me is that it appears Abraham Lincoln never said that. See for yourself and search the database at The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
The fact that an athiest is happier than a believer....
Or, probably more appropriate -- in my days I've seen a lot more angry drunks than happy ones:
The fact that an athiest is angrier than a believer is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken mans is angrier than a sober one".
Drunken people are obnoxious (happy or angry), believers that have truly found God are not. To draw an anology between drunks and believers is simply a mean spirited comment -- a clever one but nothing more than that. Drawing a simlar one between athiests and drunks accomplishes nothing either.
But we need to be clear, Bernard Shaw was a great thinker and he was definitley anti Christian. But there certainly have been greater thinkers that were Christian. More digging could reveal why he was so anti Christian.