Dan Barker Quotes
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Scientists do not join hands every Sunday and sing "Yes gravity is real! I know gravity is real! I will have faith! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!" If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about the concept.
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For my money, I'll bet on reason and humanistic kindness. Even if I am wrong I will have enjoyed my life, the existence of which is under little dispute.
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I have an Easter challenge for Christians. My challenge is simply this: tell me what happened on Easter. I am not asking for proof. My straightforward request is merely that Christians tell me exactly what happened on the day that their most important doctrine was born.
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The 9/11 terrorist attack was a faith-based initiative.
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Please clean up after your dogma.
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Asking, ‘If there is no God, what is the purpose of life?’ is like asking, ‘If there is no master, whose slave will I be?’ If your purpose of life is to submit as a slave, then your meaning comes from flattering the ego of a person whom you should detest.
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Without "The Law of Moses" would we all be wandering around like little gods, stealing, raping, and spilling blood whenever our vanity was offended?
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People are invariably surprised to hear me say I am both an atheist and an agnostic, as if this somehow weakens my certainty. I usually reply with a question like, “Well, are you a Republican or an American?” The two words serve different concepts and are not mutually exclusive. Agnosticism addresses knowledge; atheism addresses belief. The agnostic says, “I don't have a knowledge that God exists.” The atheist says, “I don't have a belief that God exists.” You can say both things at the same time. Some agnostics are atheistic and some are theistic.
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Freethought is respectable. Freethought is crucial. Freethought needs to be publicized.
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You keep accusing me of blasphemy all of the time, but I cannot be convicted of a victimless crime.
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I am an atheist because there is no evidence for the existence of God. That should be all that needs to be said about it: no evidence, no belief.
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You can cite a hundred references to show that the biblical God is a bloodthirsty tyrant, but if they can dig up two or three verses that say "God is love" they will claim that you are taking things out of context!
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Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, 'Yes, gravity is real! I will have faith!'
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One of the primary questions in a state-church arrangement is, 'which controls which?' . . . In Norway, for example, the liberal labor government has regularly angered Church officials by making controversial ministerial appointments against the wishes of the clergy. . . . These and other actions have strained the church-state relationship almost to the breaking point. As a result, some of the bishops have advocated disestablishment.
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It's not easy to change world views. Faith has its own momentum and belief is comfortable. To restructure reality is traumatic and scary. That is why many intelligent people continue to believe: unbelief is an unknown.
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Basic atheism is not a belief. It is the lack of belief. There is a difference between believing there is no god and not believing there is a god - both are atheistic, though popular usage has ignored the latter.
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Theology is a subject without an object
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How happy can you be when you think every action and thought is being monitored by a judgmental ghost ?
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If faith is a valid tool of knowledge, then anything can be true 'by faith,' and therefore nothing is true. If the only reason you can accept a claim is by faith, then you are admitting that the claim does not stand on its own merits.
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Freethinkers reject faith as a valid tool of knowledge. Faith is the opposite of reason because reason imposes very strict limits on what can be true, and faith has no limits at all. A Great Escape into faith is no retreat to safety. It is nothing less than surrender.
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All you have to do is walk into any children's hospital and you know there is no God. Prayer doesn't make any difference. Those people pray for their beloved children to live and they die.
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The very concept of sin comes from the Bible. Christianity offers to solve a problem of its own making! Would you be thankful to a person who cut you with a knife in order to sell you a bandage?
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Most Christians are afraid that people will think for themselves; most atheists are afraid that they won’t.
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Insanity is believing your hallucinations are real. Religion is believing that other peoples' hallucinations are real.