Richard Carrier Quotes

However, though belief on faith alone may be comforting, it is wholly arbitrary and thus does nothing to ensure that you are more correct than anyone else. So it cannot properly be described as knowledge, but rather as a mere wish, a desire that something be true or false, or else it is a naive trust in guesswork or hearsay. ~ Richard Carrier

That someone would want another human being to suffer, or would even tolerate the idea, for committing no crime at all but being reasonable, is truly frightening. A religion that breeds such people is a genuine plague upon the earth. ~ Richard Carrier

Colonization of the world, more often than not by robbery and warfare, spread Christianity into the Americas and other corners of the earth, just as Islam was spread throughout Asia and Africa. lt is not a coincidence that the two most widespread religions in the world today are the most warlike and intolerant religions in history. Before the rise of Christianity, religious tolerance, including a large degree of religious freedom, was not only custom but in many ways law under the Roman and Persian empires. They conquered for greed and power, rarely for any declared religious reasons, and actually sought to integrate foreign religions into their civilization, rather than seeking to destroy them. People were generally not killed because they practiced a different religion. Indeed, the Christians were persecuted for denying that the popular gods existed - not for following a different religion. In other words, Christians were persecuted for being intolerant. ~ Richard Carrier

Christians always write to me threatening me with Hell. Strange how they think this vindicates them and their religion. Threats are the hallmark of a wicked creed. ~ Richard Carrier

To demarcate [words in way that changes the meaning] is simply to speak a different language than everyone else. And I do not accept semantic games like that. [ ... ] We need to use words as they are actually used and understood. We can correct errors and inconsistencies and make distinctions. But we can't try to foist an alien language on people. ~ Richard Carrier

Such people are trapped in their own hall of mirrors, and for them there is no escape. They can never know whether they are wrong, even when they are. No evidence, no logic, no reason will ever get through to them. ~ Richard Carrier

God needs blood to fix the universe, but only his own blood had enough magical power to do it, so he gave himself a body and then killed it. ~ Richard Carrier

It is probably true that almost all atheists stand for the values of reason and freethought. I will attempt to put these values in more substantial terms. There is the belief that inquiry and doubt are essential checks against deception, self deception, and error. There is the belief that logic and the scientific method is the only way the world can arrive at an agreement on the truth about anything. ~ Richard Carrier

Chemists all agree on the fundamental facts of chemistry. ~ Richard Carrier

If God wants something from me, he would tell me. He wouldn't leave someone else to do this, as if an infinite being were short on time. And he would certainly not leave fallible, sinful humans to deliver an endless plethora of confused and contradictory messages. God would deliver the message himself, directly, to each and every one of us, and with such clarity as the most brilliant being in the universe could accomplish. We would all hear him out and shout "Eureka!" So obvious and well-demonstrated would his message be. It would be spoken to each of us in exactly those terms we would understand. And we would all agree on what that message was. ~ Richard Carrier

You must test your own religious claims and texts by the same standards you apply to other religions. If your religion's claims and texts fair no better, then your religion is just as false as theirs is. ~ Richard Carrier

The Christian religion is so manifestly contrary to the facts, belief in it can only be held with the most delusional gerrymandering imaginable. ~ Richard Carrier

Richard [Carrier] takes the extremist position that Jesus of Nazareth never even existed, that there was no such person in history. This is a position that is so extreme that to call it marginal would be an understatement; it doesn't even appear on the map of contemporary New Testament scholarship. ~ William Lane Craig

Let me finish my beer." (Stark)
"Of course. The end of the world can wait.(Kasabian) ~ Richard Kadrey

Therefore psychologically we must keep all the theories in our heads, and every theoretical physicist who is any good knows six or seven different theoretical representations for exactly the same physics. ~ Richard P. Feynman

Thou can'st not joke an enemy into a friend,
but thou may'st a friend into an enemy. ~ Benjamin Franklin

I'm rarely in a situation where, if you have a good idea, it's not embraced. That's stupid. And I don't work with stupid people. ~ Richard Gere

Each memory was brought to life before me and within me. I could not avoid them. Neither could I rationalize, explain away. I could only re-experience with total cognizance, unprotected by pretense. Self delusion was impossible, truth exposed in this blinding light. Nothing as I thought it had been. Nothing as I hoped it had been. Only as it had been. ~ Richard Matheson

If you do not see yourselves and all things as living, moving, and having their being in God, you see nothing, whatever you may think you see. ~ Richard Baxter

Better too much form than too little. ~ Richard Whately

She didn't want to eat, but I insisted. She had already ~ Richard Paul Evans

William Faulkner, Muriel Spark, Richard Yates, William Styron, James Salter, Alice Munro. They're very different writers, and I admire them for different reasons. The common thread, I guess, is that they remind me what's possible, why I wanted to write fiction in the first place. ~ Jennifer Haigh

Much of the Christian religion has largely become "holding on" instead of letting go. But God, it seems to me, does the holding on (to us!), and we must learn the letting go (of everything else). ~ Richard Rohr

You can meet lots of actors who are in their own world and do their own thing, and they have no idea what's going on and they don't know anyone's name around them. ~ Richard Madden

We need to review the process for the election of Speaker. We've got to reform Question Time, which is really a waste of time. There are so many things that we need to do to reform our Parliament and I think it's bigger than that. It's all about the sort of leadership that people are getting at the moment. They're fed up with this sorta day-to-day bickering, not putting the national interest ahead of these narrow partisan interests. ~ Richard Di Natale

Astronomy ... is of all others the science which seems to present to us the most striking instance of waste in nature. ~ Richard A. Proctor

Unfortunately, however much we may deplore something, it does not stop being true. ~ Richard Dawkins

A man may be a false prophet and yet speak the truth. ~ Richard Sibbes

Through private investment capitalism kept raising the productivity of labor to new heights. Parents were able to earn enough so their offspring did not have to join the work force at an early age. This produced something unique in history: Childhood, a time when the young could experience the innocence of play and opportunity of schooling before entering the world of work. ~ Richard Ebeling

The one image that's been causing a lot of discussion is one image that I shot of a man falling head-first from the building, before the buildings fell down. He was trapped in the fire, and decided to jump and take his own life, rather than being burned. ~ Richard Drew

We like investments where the risk is time, not price. ~ Richard Chandler

If you own a toll road, you don't care how many passengers are in each car or what kind of car it is. You just want as many cars to move down the road as possible, and you make damn certain they pay their tolls, okay? ~ Richard Kinder

If I'm going to continue to be any kind of spiritual teacher, I've got to go deeper myself. And so for me, [I am] preserving long periods of solitude, silence, prayer, journaling, study, writing. I don't turn on music or the TV unless I really need to. ~ Richard Rohr

When I was in Africa, this voice came to me and said, Richard, what do you see? I said, I see all types of people. The voice said, But do you see any niggers? I said, No. It said, Do you know why? 'Cause there aren't any. ~ Richard Pryor

You'd have to live in a cave not to know about the Carrier Dome. It put Syracuse on the map. ~ Dick Vitale

Simply put, we have to take charge and take responsibility and support what's in the marketplace. Because, quiet as it's kept, the powers that be are cognizant of what our spending dollar means. And it is kept a little quiet, and we have to become aware of what we mean in the marketplace and take advantage of it. ~ Richard Roundtree

Every life can be learned from, as either a flame of hope or a cautionary flare. ~ Richard Paul Evans

Yes, pain, disappointment, frustration, and anguish can be temporary scenes played out on the stage of life. Behind them can be a background of peace and the positive assurance that a loving Father will keep His promises. ~ Richard G. Scott

Many myths and religions have some kind of threat of retribution from their god or gods, and their doctrines warn of the dangers of doing various forbidden things. Why? Because memes involving danger are the ones we pay attention to! As oral traditions developed, our brains were set up to amplify the dangers and give them greater significance than the rest. ~ Richard Brodie

I went to Zimbabwe. I know how white people feel in America now; relaxed! Cause when I heard the police car I knew they weren't coming after me! ~ Richard Pryor

People really, really hate their religion being criticized. It's as though you've said they had an ugly face; they seem to identify personally with it. ~ Richard Dawkins

Tell them to send everything that can fly. ~ Richard M. Nixon

I don't care about what is good and what is evil, I care about what is true. ~ Richard Dawkins

If there is something that appears to lie beyond the natural world as it is now imperfectly understood, we hope eventually to understand it and embrace it within the natural. As ever when we unweave a rainbow, it will not become less wonderful. ~ Richard Dawkins

I am part of all that I have met. ~ Richard Flanagan

Well mine is not gimmicky - it is the 6 food groups that God made, and exercising every day. Trying to think positively. ~ Richard Simmons

As political theorist Michael Parenti points out, historians often overlook Fascism's economic agenda
the partnership between Big Capital and Big Government
in their analysis of its authoritarian social program. Indeed, according to Bertram Gross in his startlingly prescient Friendly Fascism (1980), it is possible to achieve fascist goals within an ostensibly democratic society. ~ Richard Heinberg

The tourists had money and we needed it; they only asked in return to be lied to and deceived and told that single most important thing, that they were safe, that their sense of security - national, individual, spiritual - wasn't a bad joke being played on them by a bored and capricious destiny. To be told that there was no connection between then and now, that they didn't need to wear a black armband or have a bad conscience about their power and their wealth and everybody else's lack of it; to feel rotten that no-one could or would explain why the wealth of a few seemed so curiously dependent on the misery of the many. We kindly pretended that it was about buying and selling chairs, about them asking questions about price and heritage, and us replying in like manner.

But it wasn't about price and heritage, it wasn't about that at all.

The tourists had insistent, unspoken questions and we just had to answer as best we could, with forged furniture. They were really asking, 'Are we safe?' and we were really replying, 'No, but a barricade of useless goods may help block the view.' And because hubris is not just an ancient Greek word but a human sense so deep-seated we might better regard it as an unerring instinct, they were also wanting to know, 'If it is our fault, then will we suffer?' and we were really replying, 'Yes, and slowly, but a fake chair may make us both feel better about it. ~ Richard Flanagan

I happen to love science ... Scientists are all slightly mad. There is truth in the stereotype of the mad scientist. They are mad with curiosity. ~ Richard Preston

One does not devote one's life in art to shock an audience. ~ Richard Foreman

You can read about it all you want, but there is no substitute for just doing it. ~ Richard Morris

Fincher was the kind of Southerner who will try to address you through a web of deep and antic southernness, and who assumes every body in earshot knows all about his parents and history and wants to hear an update about them at every opportunity. He looks young, but still manages to act 65. ~ Richard Ford