David Fitzgerald > Quotes

“If Jesus had been an actual historical figure we have a thorny paradox. Either this Jesus was a remarkable individual who said and did a host of amazing, revolutionary things – but no one outside his fringe cult noticed for over a century. Or he didn’t – and yet shortly after his death, tiny communities of worshipers that cannot agree about the most basic facts of his life spring up, scattered all across the empire. The truth is inescapable: there simply could never have been a historical Jesus.”
― David Fitzgerald

“A truth is not hard to kill, and a lie well told is immortal.” - Mark Twain”
― David Fitzgerald, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All

“But unlike the apologists who struggle to make historical sense of Mark’s scenario, we really don’t need to waste much speculation trying to solve these difficulties – since there’s a bigger problem with the entire set-up. Perhaps the single biggest historical difficulty with the customary releasing of a prisoner at Passover (Mark 15:6) … is that we have no corroborating evidence whatsoever that this “custom” ever existed. Neither the Jews, the Romans nor Pilate himself ever had a custom of freeing prisoners on Passover (or any other day), not that an occupational governor would ever have offered to release a convicted murderer and anti-Roman insurrectionist even if that were the case. Christians have spent years scouring Roman and Jewish records in search of supporting evidence to justify the historical veracity of this so-called Privilegium Paschale, to no avail (see Nailed, pp. 97-99).”
― David Fitzgerald, Jesus: Mything in Action, Vol. I

“Ultimately, Christianity succeeded in seizing the Roman Empire, and thus the western world, not because of the beauty of its teachings or the spiritual truths it fostered, but thanks to the most worldly of motives: power and money.”
― David Fitzgerald, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All

“When people succumb to that temptation of ignoring challenges to their faith, they are in the end demonstrating that they are more committed to the feeling of having a lock on truth than they are to truth itself.”[41]”
― David Fitzgerald, Jesus: Mything in Action, Vol. I

“there are no contemporary accounts of Christ from any source, in or outside the Bible.”
― David Fitzgerald, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All

“In fact, the very question of who stole from whom, Christianity or the Mystery Faiths, misses the most essential point: Christianity is a Mystery Faith.”
― David Fitzgerald, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All

“Christianity winding up on top was anything but inevitable. Its eventual emergence after a slow, painful crawl for three hundred long years was thanks to the collapse of Rome. During the centuries that Roman civilization enjoyed prosperity and security, Christianity had little to offer. As long as the Pax Romana held, followers of Jesus would never be anything more than just one more foreign cult among many. Chances are, Christianity would have been doomed to languish in obscurity, perhaps even slip quietly into extinction. Instead, Christianity owes its success to a century of bad fortune for the ancient Mediterranean.”
― David Fitzgerald, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All

“In fact, only in the third century does material evidence of a Christian presence anywhere in the Empire begin to match that of even minor pagan cults.”14”
― David Fitzgerald, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All

“Laura has seriously hurt the polygamists. In return, they’ve threatened her life, and that of her family. When her sister escaped her own polygamous husband, she was kidnapped while working a paper route. The men took her back to her husband and threatened to kill her in blood atonement. The police looked the other way, saying, “You can’t be abducted in your own home.”
― David Fitzgerald, The Mormons

“The fact that an educated Roman governor and Consul (the highest possible office in the entire Roman Empire, short of actually being the Emperor) knows so little about Christianity that he has to conduct interrogations to get the basics proves that it was still a little known fringe movement at this time. What’s more, Trajan’s reply mentions no trial precedents or decrees against Christians, highlighting the fact that no trial records existed in Roman archives for famous Christians like Jesus, Peter or Paul. If there had been, Pliny would not had to go into detail describing the trials he conducted.”
― David Fitzgerald, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All

“Utah ranks number one in incidents of depression and suicides, nationwide. One study reported: “In Utah, 14 percent of adults and adolescents reported experiencing severe psychological distress, and 10 percent said they’d had a major depressive episode in the past year. Bad mental health days come three times a month for those living in Utah.”i Incidentally, Utah leads the nation in fraud (see “God is Not a Good Investment Advisor,” chapter 8) and pornography consumptionii”
― David Fitzgerald, The Mormons

“As it turned out, warning Christians that burying their heads in the sand would only marginalize them further was completely intolerable to those Christians with their heads buried the deepest.”
― David Fitzgerald, Jesus: Mything in Action, Vol. I

“Physical Evidence Finally, perhaps it’s not unreasonable to think that there could have been writings, physical evidence or actual relics of Jesus preserved, rather then the scores of frauds that did not start appearing until three hundred years later.”
― David Fitzgerald, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All

“But we don’t have to rule out miracles a priori, or even make demands such as “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” We can simply observe that extraordinary events tend to have extraordinary reactions – or indeed, any reaction.”
― David Fitzgerald, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All

“On October 14, Joseph gathered his troops in the northwestern Mormon settlement of Far West, and gave a rousing speech, including these fateful lines: “If the people will let us alone, we will preach the gospel in peace. But if they come on us to molest us, we will establish our religion by the sword. We will trample down our enemies and make it one gore of blood from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. I will be to this generation a second Mohammed, whose motto in treating for peace was ‘the Alcoran or the Sword.’ So shall it eventually be with us—‘Joseph Smith or the Sword!”
― David Fitzgerald, The Mormons

“the boundaries between spiritual dedication and self-advancement are not always clear.”
― David Fitzgerald, PLAYING GOD: An Evolutionary History of World Religion: Vol. 1 The Evolution of God & The Gods of Monotheism

“Eleusinian Mysteries (and probably accompanied his young lover”
― David Fitzgerald, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All

“So this is the state of the Gospels: four contradictory, convoluted and reworked writings set down decades after the supposed events by unknown author or authors falsely being passed off as eyewitnesses, and all primarily derived from a single source, which as we’ll see, appears to be entirely literary fiction.”
― David Fitzgerald, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All

“legendary accretion”
― David Fitzgerald, Jesus: Mything in Action, Vol. I

“Peter (according to John) attacks the posse with a sword and even cuts off a man’s ear; why isn’t he arrested? (Mark 14:47; John 18:10) In fact, if Jesus’ teachings were so dangerous, why didn’t all the disciples get rounded up as well? The evangelists all give different versions of the story of Judas Iscariot, and yet his “betrayal” makes no sense in any of them. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.   The”
― David Fitzgerald, Jesus: Mything in Action, Vol. I

“After all, as Voltaire noted, often the art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.”
― David Fitzgerald, PLAYING GOD: An Evolutionary History of World Religion: Vol. 1 The Evolution of God & The Gods of Monotheism

“skeptics are often accused of unfairly rejecting the miracles in the Gospels out of hand due to their so-called “Naturalist” or “Materialist” bias. Of course, the same ones who make this objection have no qualms about freely employing their own “naturalistic bias” to dismiss the miracles of other religions...”
― David Fitzgerald, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All

“Nailed”
― David Fitzgerald, Jesus: Mything in Action, Vol. I

“In May of 1861, Brigham and his entourage stopped at Mountain Meadows and stopped at the rock cairn that had been built there by U.S. soldiers as a monument to the victims. Atop the peak of the cairn stood a heavy wooden cross engraved with “Vengeance is mine: I will repay, saith the Lord.” Young regarded it for a moment, then read the inscription aloud with a slight change: “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord: I have repaid.” He gave a Danite signal by raising his right arm, fist to the sky. His men understood. A horseman lassoed the cross and pulled it down, dragging it until it splintered to pieces. The others set to work and five minutes later not a single stone was left of the memorial.”
― David Fitzgerald, The Mormons

“In the Kingston group, the men do little or nothing to support their families. Women and children are worked for as many as sixty hours a week for near-minimum wage in the Kingston businesses. Instead of receiving paychecks, their wages are deposited in a Kingston bank account (rent, debts and a mandatory 10% tithe are automatically deducted) and they are paid in scrip that can only be spent in Kingston-owned stores. clix They are also made to understand that if the church requires their money, they will pull it from their bank accounts. They are deprived of having any real experience with money. “We were told to sacrifice everything for the kingdom,” said one former member, “to the point that if we found a penny in the street we were to turn it in.” clx And each year, members must sign a form reaffirming their loyalty to the group and firm belief in the religion, and that when they die, everything they own will go to the church.”
― David Fitzgerald, The Mormons