The God Who Wasn't There (2005)

Richard Carrier: Self - Historian

Quotes 

• [During the final credits] 

  Narrator : All right, let me give you a scenario.

  Richard Carrier : Okay.

  Narrator : You're dead. Uh, I hope of old age.

  Richard Carrier : Right.

  Narrator : I'm not talking about the Holy Jesus Lamb versus the beefsteak war. Let's just say, this is, this time, it's old age.

  Richard Carrier : [laughing]  Right, sure, sure.

  Narrator : And you find yourself in Hell, and you're being roasted on a pit, and every hour, on the hour, you have to suck Satan's greasy cock or whatever they make you do down there. I hear it's really bad.

  Richard Carrier : [laughs]  Yeah, right.

  Narrator : Don't you wish you would have believed? It would have been so easy, just to believe.

  Richard Carrier : Well, no, because it wouldn't really be any better. If I had to sit in Heaven forever, knowing that there are these people - millions and millions, probably billions of people - suffering these eternal horrible torments, and there was nothing I could ever do for them... that, to me, would be Hell.

• Narrator : So, obviously the United States is going to become a theocracy...

  Richard Carrier : [laughs]  Hopefully not.

  Narrator : ...you and I are going to be slaughtered; is this going to happen in ten years or twenty years? How long's it going to take before we get killed?

• Richard Carrier : [re theologian Benjamin Wiker]  The whole thrust of his argument is that atheists are responsible for all the evils of the world, atheists have taken over government and are conspiring to oppose religion, we have to get rid of these guys. And he slanders atheists with all these ridiculous claims about how immoral they are, and so forth, just as, you know, Hitler did against the Jews.

  Narrator : [deadpan]  I hardly ever eat babies. And when I do, they're babies nobody wants.

  Richard Carrier : Or have sex with babies. Or have sex with chickens! That's one of the things that, this guy has this, Benjamin Wiker has this obsession that he thinks, if atheism gets its way, everybody will be buggering sheep.

• Narrator : Let me propose something. Religion does no harm at all. Discuss.

  Richard Carrier : [laughs]  Well, of course, you know, evidence of history and even contemporary events refutes that.

  Narrator : Whatever.

  Richard Carrier : Even if we set aside, you know, the obvious - war, conflict, violence that has always plagued society and has gotten particularly worse under the Judeo-Christian religions - um, even if we set that aside, we have ordinary, everyday things that are going wrong. Uh, the sort of dehumanization and mistreatment of homosexuals, for example, is a prominent example, and it's getting worse in this country, actually. It was getting better for a while, but now there's this backlash, and that's, that's bad. That's bad for humanity; and in a religion that encourages that or even allows that, it's wrong.