All posts by David Madison

Victor Stenger – Quotes

Knockout Quote No 263, Stenger, If the conflict between science and religion were just a matter of intellectual debate
Knockout Quote No 230, Stenger, An authoritarian society that brutally suppressed the slightest traces of freethinking
Knockout Quote No 481, Stenger, Jesus must be continually dying on the cross, every nanosecond or so
Knockout Quote No 392, Stenger, So far we see no proof that the feelings correspond to anything outside their heads

Richard Carrier – Quotes

Knockout Quote No 316, Carrier, If Jesus was a god and really wanted to save the world
Knockout Quote No 513, Carrier, The Archimedes codex
Knockout Quote No 494, Carrier, No, the character of Jesus in the Gospels was not the wisest and kindest of beings
Knockout Quote No 492, Carrier, The Catholic Church Is an International Rape Factory
Knockout Quote No 344, Carrier, It was the heavenly Jesus that was sold to the masses, not some dead carpenter from Galilee
Knockout Quote No 342, Carrier, There is no evidence that a crucified god was an obstacle to converting
Knockout Quote No 341, Carrier, Among pagans, murdered gods who came back from the dead were wildly popular
Knockout Quote No 324, Carrier, There just wasn’t any evidence Jesus really rose from the dead
Knockout Quote No 321, Carrier, The actual evidence that Jesus rose from the dead consisted of unconfirmable hearsay
Knockout Quote No 314, Carrier, All attempts to argue that Christianity’s origins and success were supernaturally special only
Knockout Quote No 312, Carrier, Right from the start Jesus simply looks a lot more like a mythical man than a historical one
Knockout Quote No 302, Carrier, Attempts to distinguish ‘magic’ from ‘religion’ are apologetic anachronisms
Knockout Quote No 300, Carrier, New Testament Embarrassments, The Parables of Jesus, Not invented yet
Knockout Quote No 290, Carrier, Luke’s methods are demonstrably non historical
Knockout Quote No 277, Carrier, Matthew then added a ridiculous Nativity Narrative
Knockout Quote No 274, Carrier, The ceaseless incomprehension of the disciples is wholly unrealistic
Knockout Quote No 276, Carrier, They would have killed Jesus on the spot
Knockout Quote No 254, Carrier, The evidence for Jesus is among the most compromised bodies of evidence
Knockout Quote No 215, Carrier, The dying-and-rising son of god originated over a 1000 years before Christianity
Knockout Quote No 205, Carrier, And anyone willing to tell the one lie will be just as willing to tell the other
Knockout Quote No 189, Carrier, Thracian deity Zalmoxis was believed to have died and risen from the dead
Knockout Quote No 184, Carrier, The apostle Paul includes hallucinated trips to heaven
Knockout Quote No 36, Carrier, A rash of messianism in Palestine
Knockout Quote No 182, Carrier, Indeed the Christians took it to a level of veritable lunacy
Knockout Quote No 173, Carrier, The gospel writers are mythographers; novelists; propagandists
Knockout Quote No 164, Carrier, Some scholars have argued there was no Jesus Christ
Knockout Quote No 162, Carrier, Romulus ascends to heaven to rule from on high, Just like Jesus
Knockout Quote No 139, Carrier, Could simply turn his bullets into popcorn
Knockout Quote No 120, Carrier, Almost the entire universe is lethal to life
Knockout Quote No 110, Carrier, The Universe has been mixing chemicals for billions of years
Knockout Quote No 107, Carrier, If God wants something from me, he would tell me
Knockout Quote No 104, Carrier, Christianity is a bizarre cult, superstition
Knockout Quote No 50, Carrier, The Book of Revelation is a veritable acid trip

Bad Christian Theology – Quotes

CCKQ No 431, Madison, God must have wanted more angels
CCCQ No 483, When Jesus comes back, almost all of humanity will be killed off
CCCQ No 483, When Jesus comes back, almost all of humanity will be killed off
Knockout Quote No 257, Clark, I found only shabby theological explanations and contrived excuses for God
Knockout Quote No 227, Winell & Tarico, Thus, believers not only get hurt, they get stuck
Knockout Quote No 288, Tarico, Why has the main current of Christianity produced a steady diet of misogyny for 2000 years?
Knockout Quote No 303, Nelson-Pallmeyer, The Bible can inform our religious experience, but it is often wrong about God
Knockout QuoteNo 271, Parsons, Christianity would never have amounted to much without a doctrine of hell
Knockout Quote No 410, koseighty, If you start with the necessity of a human sacrifice to enable an omnipotent god to forgive his creation
Knockout Quote No 485, Tobin, A first-century, xenophobic, ignorant Galilean peasant who thought the world was going to end
Knockout Quote No 483, When Jesus comes back, almost all of humanity will be killed off
Knockout Quote No 521, Harris, I hate to break it to you here at Notre Dame
Knockout Quote No 478, Sanchez, There is little question that the Holocaust had its origins in the centuries-long hostility

John Compere – Quotes

Knockout Quote No 460, Compere, The myth of Paul Bunyan makes a good story, as does the story of Jesus
Knockout Quote No 447, Compere ,Why this all-powerful God decided to make up the rule that some living creature had to be killed
Knockout Quote No 500, Compere, And that an eternal torment awaits those who can’t buy this dangerous human delusion
Knockout Quote No 459, Compere, Enshrining a book as “holy” is simply a ridiculous thing to do

David Eller – Quotes

Knockout Quote No 51, Eller, Human morality would be better off without the religion additions
Knockout Quote No 491, Eller, Christian love has explained and supported often white-hot hatred
Knockout Quote No 304, Eller, Even more inclined to show his face is Jesus, whose likeness is as likely to appear on a wall
Knockout Quote No 298, Eller, Religions can be as divisive as integrative, can get entire groups killed off
Knockout Quote No 293, Eller, Christian often reinterpret threatening facts as tests of faith by their god
Knockout Quote No 280, Eller, Whether or not any god is omnipresent, religion is, or strives to be
Knockout Quote No 270, Eller, All evidence powerfully suggests that the human brain and mind is a highly imperfect device
Knockout Quote No 247, Eller, Now Christianity is truly a world religion—or a loose association of religious species
Knockout Quote No 245, Eller, The Christian embrace of war would reach its climax in the Crusades
Knockout Quote No 244, Eller, An end-of-the-world movement gathered around William Miller in the 1830s
Knockout Quote No 221, Eller, That which is no longer taken for granted is often not taken at all
Knockout Quote No 212, Eller, There is no such thing as a single, unified, global Christianity

CCCQ No 211, Eller, Like the practice of naming people after religious mythology

Knockout Quote No 206, Eller, The first Christians to be executed over theology

Valerie Tarico – Quotes

Knockout Quote No 98, Tarico, The Jesus story follows a sacred template
Knockout Quote No 488, Tarico, So few humans are embarrassed to assign to divinity the attributes of a male alpha primate
Knockout Quote No 322, Tarico, Forms of Christianity the emphasize right belief have built-in safeguards
Knockout Quote No 313, Tarico, Abstract theologies are a fairly recent invention in the history of human religion
Knockout Quote No 310, Tarico, Certainty is a confession of ignorance about our ability to be profoundly mistaken
Knockout Quote No 309, Tarico, We are capable of feeling so certain about our false beliefs that we are willing to kill for them
Knockout Quote No 308, Tarico, Athletes huddle in prayer before a game, just in case those random bounces aren’t random
Knockout Quote No 305, Tarico, Worship practices, music and religious architecture have been optimized over time
Knockout Quote No 288, Tarico, Why has the main current of Christianity produced a steady diet of misogyny for 2000 years?
Knockout Quote No 222, Tarico, Righteous confidence, unchecked by humble self-examination, is dangerous
Knockout Quote No 196, Tarico, Modern Christian soldiers react to perceived threats against their faith
Knockout Quote No 186, Tarico, When praying, most believers don’t look puffed up
Knockout Quote No 185, Tarico, If that’s not a bit presumptuous—arrogant even—I don’t know what is
Knockout Quote No 105, Tarico, not a very impressive claim for an omnipotent deity

Hector Avalos – Quotes

Knockout Quotes No 22, Avalos, I suspect that 99 percent of the Bible would not be missed
Knockout Quote No 476, Avalos, Jesus himself says that the Jews are liars fathered by the devil
Knockout Quote No 160, Avalos, the eternal duration of the violence are infinitely greater
Knockout Quote No 159, Avalos, A man who was egotistical, delusional or economically inept
Knockout Quote No 157, Avalos, Jesus demands that followers transfer allegiance from their families
Knockout Quote No 156, Avalos, If Jesus was a human being, he must have had flaws
Knockout Quote No 155, Avalos, All faith claims are equal in their unverifiability

David Chumney – Quotes

Knockout Quote No 363, Chumney, The Gospels as a whole comprise not memories
Knockout Quote No 441, Chumney, Many of Mark’s stories about Jesus likely owe their existence not to genuine recollections
Knockout Quote No 365, Chumney,the mythical character encountered in the gospels
Knockout Quote No 364, Chumney,It is very likely a product of the church’s imagination

David Fitzgerald – Quotes

Knockout Quote No 372, Fitzgerald, Christ is not the solid rock, but shifting sand
Knockout Quote No 372, Fitzgerald, Christ is not the solid rock, but shifting sand
Knockout Quote No 362, Fitzgerald, If you ever get hit by this particular cloud of apologetic squid ink
Knockout Quote No 360, Fitzgerald, It seems the real sin of Judas is not treachery, petty theft or demon possession
Knockout Quote No 359, Fitzgerald, The New Testament sags under the weight of forgeries
Knockout Quote No 358, Fitzgerald, Nowhere do the four gospels ever claim to be the work of eyewitnesses
Knockout Quote No 354, Fitzgerald, The field of Jesus Studies has failed to verify any single fact of Jesus’ life
Knockout Quote No 350, Fitzgerald, Like the pagan miracle workers, Jesus cast out demons and healed the blind, deaf, and mute
Knockout Quote No 349, Fitzgerald, The profile of Jesus in the New Testament is composed of stock motifs
Knockout Quote No 347, Fitzgerald, Jesus Studies is in crisis—because Christianity is in crisis
Knockout Quote No 338, Fitzgerald, The methods that have been devised and employed to tease out hints of the “Real Jesus”
Knockout Quote No 335, Fitzgerald, It’s no skin off my atheist nose if it turns out there WAS a Jesus after all
Knockout Quote No 334, Fitzgerald, How is anyone supposed to take the Gospels at face value?
Knockout Quote No 331, Fitzgerald, It’s no coincidence that the Christians who study the Bible the hardest
Knockout Quote No 330, Fitzgerald, Christianity had a good, long run But it is not too big to fail
Knockout Quote No 273, Fitzgerald,The fool has said in his heart, there is no god “Exactly! The wise man says it out loud
Knockout Quote No 345, Fitzgerald, Like a sweatshop of Rumplestiltskins desperate to spin insistence into ironclad certitude
CCKQ No 371, David Fitzgerald, Saying Jesus invented Christianity is like saying Mickey Mouse invented Disneyland