Top 58 Dan Barker Quotes
#1. Prayer never changes the laws of nature.
Dan Barker
#2. We were blood brothers, pals forever. He was my very best friend. Nobody else could see him. I now know he was just pretend.
Dan Barker
#3. It is a fact of history and of current events that human beings exaggerate, misinterpret, or wrongly remember events. They have also fabricated pious fraud. Most believers in a religion understand this when examining the claims of other religions.
Dan Barker
#4. 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.
Dan Barker
#5. The longer I have been an atheist, the more amazed I am that I ever believed Christian notions.
Dan Barker
#6. You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?
Dan Barker
#7. How happy can you be when you think every action and thought is being monitored by a judgmental ghost?
Dan Barker
#8. 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.
Dan Barker
#9. It is true that "atheism" is a negative word, but so is "nonfiction." They are double negatives. Both words tell you that what you are getting is real, not pretend. Those of
Dan Barker
#11. 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.
Dan Barker
#12. You keep accusing me of blasphemy all of the time, But I cannot be convicted of a victimless crime.
Dan Barker
#13. People are always asking, "What's the purpose of life?" That's easy. Relieve suffering. Create beauty. Make gardens.
Dan Barker
#14. There is joy in rationality, happiness in clarity of mind. Freethought is thrilling and fulfilling - absolutely essential to mental health and happiness.
Dan Barker
#15. Some theists, observing that all 'effects' need a cause, assert that God is a cause but not an effect. But no one has ever observed an uncaused cause and simply inventing one merely assumes what the argument wishes to prove.
Dan Barker
#16. I threw out all the bath water, and there was no baby there.
Dan Barker
#17. 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.
Dan Barker
#18. If the Prodigal Son's a parable, and if Adam and Eve are metaphors, then maybe God is just figure of speech.
Dan Barker
#19. 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.
Dan Barker
#20. 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.
Dan Barker
#21. To think that the ruler of the universe will run to my assistance and bend the laws of nature for me is the height of arrogance. That implies that everyone else (such as the opposing football team, driver, student, parent) is de-selected, unfavored by God, and that I am special,above it all.
Dan Barker
#22. 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.
Dan Barker
#23. 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 who should detest.
Dan Barker
#24. Look at the posture of prayer. It is the posture of slavery, of bowing before your master. We are a proudly rebellious country. We kicked out the master. Now here comes the government telling us to humbly bow again.
Dan Barker
#26. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.
Dan Barker
#27. Truth does not demand belief. Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, 'Yes, gravity is real! I will have faith!'
Dan Barker
#28. 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.
Dan Barker
#29. Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits. It is intellectual bankruptcy.
Dan Barker
#30. Atheists are suffering from bad PR. What if Sesame Street had an atheist character?
Dan Barker
#31. Mere Morality can be summarized as: using instinct, law, and reason as guides, try to act with the intention of minimizing harm.
Dan Barker
#32. 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.
Dan Barker
#33. Freethought is respectable. Freethought is crucial. Freethought needs to be publicized.
Dan Barker
#34. There are many gods which Christians reject. I just believe in one less god then they do. The reasons that you might give for your atheism toward the Roman gods are likely the same reasons I would give for not believing in Jesus.
Dan Barker
#35. The atheists I know, virtually all of whom are happy and mentally healthy, might more properly be called anti-nihilists. We are mainly optimists who love our lives and find them to be full of meaning and purpose.
Dan Barker
#36. 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!
Dan Barker
#37. But purpose is personal. It can't be right or wrong. It can't be true or false. It can't not be about you. It's how you decide to live your own life. If someone else tells you how to live, you are not free. If you don't choose your own purpose, you are a slave.
Dan Barker
#38. Faith is not the result of fuzy thinking. It is the cause of it.
Dan Barker
#39. It turns out that the word atheism means much less than I had thought. It is merely the lack of theism.
Dan Barker
#40. The 9/11 terrorist attack was a faith-based initiative.
Dan Barker
#41. Most Christians are afraid that people will think for themselves; most atheists are afraid that they won't.
Dan Barker
#42. The trouble is that neutrality is confused with hostility. We're not disrupting churches, or interrupting people's prayers. We're not fighting religion.
Dan Barker
#43. 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?
Dan Barker
#44. You believe in a book that has sticks turning into snakes, and you say we are the ones that need help?
Dan Barker
#45. 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.
Dan Barker
#46. If the answers to prayer are merely what God wills all along, then why pray?
Dan Barker
#47. Insanity is believing your hallucinations are real. Religion is believing that other peoples' hallucinations are real.
Dan Barker
#49. Solving a real problem was much more meaningful than saving fictional souls from a fictional hell.
Dan Barker
#50. Without "The Law of Moses" would we all be wandering around like little gods, stealing, raping, and spilling blood whenever our vanity was offended?
Dan Barker
#51. 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.
Dan Barker
#52. 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.
Dan Barker
#53. Religion + Good Works = Good Works
Solve for Religion.
Dan Barker
#54. Perhaps the funniest example is that of the Rev. Milton Barfoot, who said to Dan's brother, in apparently honest bafflement, "But, isn't Dan afraid of hell?" No, Reverend, Dan doesn't believe in hell anymore, that's one of the things about being an atheist, you see.
Dan Barker
#55. 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.
Dan Barker
#56. I'm proud to be an atheist - it helps me stand for so much more and fall for so much less.
Dan Barker
#57. Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits.
Dan Barker
#58. Even if it is true that all cultures share a common morality, why does this prove a supreme intelligence? After all, don't we humanists sometimes claim that there is a common thread of humanistic values running through history across cultural and religious lines?
Dan Barker
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