David G. McAfee Quotes

Most Christians believe that Jesus IS God, that Jesus is the same jealous and angry God that abhorred homosexuals and condemned them as "an abomination." He is the same deity that gave instructions on how to beat slaves and the same divine Creator that suggested the stoning of non-believers and disobedient children. You have to accept the good along with the bad ... after all, he came not to abolish the Hebrew laws, but to fulfill them (Matthew 5:17).

The modern teachings of Christianity often preach of a peaceful, merciful, and loving God/Creator. Culturally, this concept of a God of peace is well liked and accepted amongst clergymen and the Christian community alike; however, some scriptural evidence gives us a contradictory and seemingly destructive version of our Creator.

According to your holy book, every single Buddhist, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, follower of various minor traditions or sects, those who do not affiliate themselves with a religious tradition and the approximately 2.74 billion humans who have never had the 'privilege' of hearing the word of your Messiah will be sentenced to eternal damnation in a lake of fire - regardless of moral standings or positive worldly accomplishments. If this sounds like a fair proposition to you, then I bite my tongue - but I honestly believe that the majority of Christians do not agree with these doctrinal assertions, and instead categorize themselves as 'Christians' out of cultural familiarity or perhaps out of complete ignorance in regards to the topic.

Did the Abrahamic God know that, by "divinely inspiring" the book of Genesis and other tales in the Bible, that He would cause millions to impede scientific understandings of our origins and push for myth to be taught in schools? Shouldn't he have left out the bit about humans being made from dust and ribs, knowing that fact?

Atheism is not synonymous with anti-theism and not all atheists are 'active.' There are many non-believers who aren't activists, who don't oppose religion at all, or who are simply not all are interested in discussing belief or lack thereof.

Because of Jesus' supposed predestination, God would have had to choose the people who would kill and betray his son, choose the method by which he would be killed (crucifixion), and the time at which the event would occur. Those guilty of killing Jesus would therefore be simply carrying out God's wishes without the free will to have chosen a path for themselves.

If one religion were 'true,' we would expect to see, even if only once in all of recorded history, a religious missionary that had stumbled upon a culture that shared the same revelations - brought forth by the same deity.

It's perfectly understandable, in my opinion, to find good things in the teachings of Jesus Christ or any other figure, mythical or otherwise. But to base your life on the teachings of Jesus as they are portrayed in the Bible and claim that you are not religious is disingenuous.

We are all born free from all religious affiliations and only come to believe in such things after being introduced to it ― so, atheism is the default position. Although some children are not indoctrinated with a specific religion before the age of reason, there are many more who are.

It's not a religion, it's a relationship!'
Without the religion, without the archaic and flawed holy texts, there wouldn't be anything for you to manufacture a 'relationship' with. Without the wars and forced conversions key to the religion's spread across the globe, it may have died out long ago like so many others have. If that were the case, you wouldn't know the characters of Jesus or God or Muhammad or any of the tales and myths associated with a particular faith. Religions concern themselves with preserving and worshiping these myths as realities, without regard to substantial evidence to the contrary.

For those who want to pray for me to "find God," please don't waste your prayers. If you really think God is listening to you, then please use those precious moments to ask God to care for the sick and dying, and leave me out of it. I'm happy without my faith and with living my life in the here and now. Besides, thousands before you have prayed for me to find God and it hasn't worked yet. Why would God value your request over theirs?

You don't want atheism shoved down your throat? OK. We will stock knocking on doors spreading our 'Truth,' and having tax-exempt organizations dedicated to atheism that have influential political action committees. We will also stop printing 'In atheism we trust' on all US currency and saying, 'One nation, under atheism" in the pledge of allegiance. We will also stop insisting that everyone who disagrees with us will be sentence to eternal damnation… Wait…

A question for Christians who accept evolution: When did we gain a "soul"? Did Homo habilis have a soul? Homo ergaster? Did God only spontaneously add a soul when we evolved into Homo sapiens?

If there's a god, it knows exactly what it would take to convince me and has refused to provide it. In fact, it has gone to great lengths to hide any evidence of its existence. That doesn't seem like a deity that wants to be worshiped to me.

If in some radical miracle, the Abrahamic God revealed his existence to the world, I'd accept the belief in the deity - but I still wouldn't worship it. The jealous and angry God that justified the killings of millions, sent plagues upon first borns, and abhorred homosexuals would not be worthy of my worship.

Religious people claim that it's just the fundamentalists of each religion that cause problems. But there's got to be something wrong with the religion itself if those who strictly adhere to its most fundamental principles are violent bigots and sexists.

I became suspicious as I noticed things like the time lapses in the writing, contradicting books, questionable authenticity of the authorship of certain books, and the different forms the bible had taken over the years as the church continued to disagree over which books were inspired. I also noticed things in the bible I had somehow missed before. When I chose to read the bible without the filter that it was the infallible word of God, I started seeing some terribly atrocious things that God was responsible for: genocide, killing of women and children, killing non-believers, killing homosexuals, etc. When I considered these things combined with the idea of eternal torment for people who merely didn't share my faith, it no longer logically fit with the idea of a loving and compassionate God. Through

If you are religious, you believe that your religion is the 'right' one - and, in many cases, all others will be sent to hell. Similarly, a nationalist believes his or her nation is better or more advanced - and a racist believes that an inherent difference between each race make his or her ethnicity superior. All of these ideologies spawn the hate, philosophical disagreements, and prejudices that have been the catalysts for various atrocious acts throughout history.

Believers often forget that most atheists used to be religious, that many non-believers used to think they had a personal relationship with their God and they used to 'feel' the power of prayer. They've since learned that it was all a farce, that their feelings were internal emotions and not some external force.

Explaining the unknown should be left to science, questions of good and bad behavior can be answered by ethics, and inspiration is often found in the arts. There's no longer a need for the social construct of religion.

Without cultural indoctrination, all of us would be atheists. Or, more specifically, while many may dream up their own gods as did our ancestors, they would certainly not be 'Christian' or 'Jewish' or 'Muslim' or any other established religion. That's because, without the texts and churches and familial instruction, there are no independent evidences that any specific religion is true. Outside of the Bible, how would one hear of Jesus? The same goes for every established religion.

Would a just God sentence a morally good individual to hell for never having heard of him? And for that matter, would a just God expel a morally good individual to hell who has heard of Jesus, but simply finds no evidentiary reason to believe? According to any reasonable interpretation of Christianity's key doctrines, the answer is a simple and firm 'Yes.' This is because, according to Christian dogma, it is impossible to be 'moral' without Jesus Christ; I disagree with this on a fundamental level.

One of the misconceptions about atheism is that it somehow means someone denies the possibility of a deity. In all actuality, it simply means you don't believe it to be the case - a point that should not be hard to understand with the complete lack of physical evidence that points to the existence of such a being or beings. Even if you're 51 percent sure that there is no magical man in the sky, you are an atheist; and admitting that is the first half of the battle.

Christians believe, as is reported in the New Testament scriptures, that Jesus of Nazareth healed 10 men with leprosy. It sounds like an astounding feat, but compare that to Jacinto Convit who saved thousands of lives when he developed the vaccine that protects us from it. In 1988, Convit was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Medicine for his anti-leprosy vaccine. So, while the promise of Jesus' healing power is a centerpiece of the Christian myth, the demigod's results leave something to be desired when compared to the rigor of man's scientific inquiry.

I don't claim to know an over-arching 'Meaning of Life,' but I do operate under the understanding that life should not be lived under the pretense that it is simply a test propagated by an invisible, intangible, Creator-God. And it should not be spent identifying with religious traditions and organized groups that, historically, have been at the root of a tremendous amount of oppression and violence.

Some believers treat their religion as if it's some sort of lottery. It's only a small contribution and, if they "win," they get an amazing reward. But with so many of these religious lotteries over time, no way to ever discern a winner, and nobody being held accountable for the process, it's more like a long con where believers are wasting all their dollars – or, in this case, their days.