Dan Barker
Dan Barker
Daniel Edwin "Dan" Barkeris an American atheist activist who served as a Christian preacher and musician for 19 years but left Christianity in 1984. Barker, along with his wife Annie Laurie Gaylor, is the current co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. He has written numerous articles for Freethought Today, an American freethought newspaper. He is the author of several books including Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist...
believe differences atheism
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.
religion atheism admitting
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.
divorce years atheism
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.
prayer law atheism
Prayer never changes the laws of nature.
prayer atheism answers
If the answers to prayer are merely what God wills all along, then why pray?
son atheism speech
If the Prodigal Son's a parable, and if Adam and Eve are metaphors, then maybe God is just figure of speech.
opposites safety atheism
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.
atheist doubt atheism
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.
atheist two people
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.
religion needs respectable
Freethought is respectable. Freethought is crucial. Freethought needs to be publicized.
running religious common-threads
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?
atheist taken intelligence
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.
brother blood forever
We were blood brothers, pals forever. He was my very best friend. Nobody else could see him. I now know he was just pretend.
dogma clean please
Please clean up after your dogma.