121 Quotes by Dan Barker

Mere Morality can be summarized as: using instinct, law, and reason as guides, try to act with the intention of minimizing harm.

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.

Solving a real problem was much more meaningful than saving fictional souls from a fictional hell.

Mithra’s birth was witnessed by shepherds and by Magi who brought gifts to his sacred birth-cave of the Rock. Mithra performed the usual assortment of miracles: raising the dead, healing the sick, making the blind see and the lame walk, casting out devils.

The preachers have got it completely backward. If life is eternal, then life is cheap. Value does not come from surplus; it comes from rarity. Prices rise as supply drops. The reality that our lives are brief is what makes them precious. The fact that they will end makes them more meaningful. “Ultimate purpose” is no purpose at all: it is the surrender of purpose. It is the pretense that faith equals meaning.

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.

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.

If the Prodigal Son’s a parable, and if Adam and Eve are metaphors, then maybe God is just figure of speech.

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.