Dan Barker Quotes

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.

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

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.

Theology is a subject without an object

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.

Freethought is respectable. Freethought is crucial. Freethought needs to be publicized.

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.

Only sinners need saviors.

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?

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.

How happy can you be when you think every action and thought is being monitored by a judgmental ghost ?

There is not a single contemporary historical mention of Jesus, not by Romans or by Jews, not by believers or by unbelievers, during his entire lifetime. This does not disprove his existence, but it certainly casts great doubt on the historicity of a man who was supposedly widely known to have made a great impact on the world. Someone should have noticed.