Dan Barker Quotes
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I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never say anything positive: You are an intelligent human being. Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind. You are not inherently evil—you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential to help make this a world of morality, peace and joy. Trust yourself.
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As humanists, we urge today, as in the past that humans not look beyond themselves for salvation. We alone are responsible for our own destiny and the best we can do is muster our intelligence, courage, and compassion to realize our highest aspirations.
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I took about a year to fully adjust. Like there's a death at the family or a divorce, you don't just snap your fingers and it's over.
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Either in or out of time, the decision of a personal agency to commit an action happens antecedent to the action itself. Even if the deciding and the acting happened simultaneously, it would still not be true that the acting was antecedent to the deciding. Imagine God saying, "Oh, look! I just created a universe. Now I'd better decide to do it.
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Prayer never changes the laws of nature.
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Not thinking critically, I assumed that the successful prayers were proof that God answers prayer while the failures were proof that there was something wrong with me.
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If the answers to prayer are merely what God wills all along, then why pray?
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The longer I have been an atheist, the more amazed I am that I ever believed Christian notions.
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Only sinners need saviors.
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There is no evidence for a god, no coherent definition of a god, no good argument for a god, good positive arguments against a god, no agreement among believers about the nature or moral principles of a god, and no need for a god. We can live happy, moral, productive lives without such belief, and we can do it better.
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In any open question, we should argue from what we do know to what we do not know. We do know that fervent legends and stubborn myths arise easily and naturally. We do not know that dead people rise from the grave.