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

Dan Barker

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Dan Barker
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: June 25
Musician
Pianist
Songwriter
Writer
Santa Monica
California
Publicized
Respectable
Crucial
Religion
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More quotes by Dan Barker

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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
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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?
Dan Barker
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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.
Dan Barker
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Truth does not demand belief.
Dan Barker
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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
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Theology is a subject without an object
Dan Barker
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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
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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.
Dan Barker
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Prayer never changes the laws of nature.
Dan Barker
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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.
Dan Barker
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You believe in a book that has sticks turning into snakes, and you say we are the ones that need help?
Dan Barker
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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.
Dan Barker
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Please clean up after your dogma.
Dan Barker
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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
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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!
Dan Barker
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If the Prodigal Son's a parable, and if Adam and Eve are metaphors, then maybe God is just figure of speech.
Dan Barker
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Insanity is believing your hallucinations are real. Religion is believing that other peoples' hallucinations are real.
Dan Barker
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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.
Dan Barker
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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.
Dan Barker
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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.
Dan Barker