Dan Barker Quotes

I’m proud to be an atheist – it helps me stand for so much more and fall for so much less.

Love is not obedience, conformity, or submission. It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment, or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being.

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.

You keep accusing me of blasphemy all of the time, but I cannot be convicted of a victimless crime.

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.

Most Christians are afraid that people will think for themselves; most atheists are afraid that they won’t.

Atheists are suffering from bad PR. What if Sesame Street had an atheist character?

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.

There is joy in rationality, happiness in clarity of mind. Freethought is thrilling and fulfilling – absolutely essential to mental health and happiness.

Please clean up after your dogma.

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.

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?