Gunawan Halim

“To sum up: 1) There is no external historical confirmation for the Jesus story outside of the New Testament. 2) The New Testament accounts are internally contradictory. 3) There are many other plausible explanations for the origin of the myth that do not require us to distort or destroy the natural worldview. 4) The miracle reports make the story highly suspect.”
― Dan Barker, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists

“Why is there no governmental oversight of how public money is spent by these organizations and churches? Probably because there is an assumption that if it is religious, it must be good.”
― Dan Barker, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists

“I think the greatest problem with religious systems such as Christianity is their pessimistic view of human nature. If you teach a generation of children that they are sinful creatures by nature, that left on their own they are morally corrupt, deserving of eternal torment in hell, that they are not to be trusted to think their own (selfish, evil) thoughts, all of this can become—has become—a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whole segments of the population grow up with a negative self-image, thinking they really are rotten, in need of a savior or father figure. They are told they are bad, so they act like it. Their religion exaggerates and demonizes normal human feelings, turning them into cosmic struggles with evil, creating devils to be fought instead of problems to be solved.”
― Dan Barker

“with hundreds of millions of good people believing that the illiterate Muhammad miraculously wrote the Koran.”
― Dan Barker, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists