Learn about Atheists and Agnostics: Dan Barker: Journey from Evangelical Preacher to Freedom from Religion

Dan Barker, a former preacher, is a current co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving separation of church and state and reporting and fighting first amendment violations. His rise to prominence as a champion of non-theist rights, however is an unexpected and surprising one.

Barker is the author of several books and two of these ("Losing Faith in Faith" and "Godless" deal with his journey of deconversion from evangelical preacher to outspoken atheist. "Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists", published in 2008 is his most recent book and is outlined here.

After a foreword by Dr. Richard Dawkins and an introduction by himself discussing his first public appearance as an atheist, Dan Barker begins his story when he was "called" to the ministry at the age of 15 years. He describes himself as a "spirit-filled" evangelical when, as a teenager, he gave his first sermon in Mexico as part of a youth group. He had no doubt at the time that the excited, elated feeling that he got in church was confirmation of his relationship with god and jesus. As time went on, Barker became a preacher at churches in California. He also was quite acclaimed as a Christian songwriter and musician.

Barker describes a long process that led him away from his faith, rather than one epiphany. He was a fundamentalist, taking the words of the bible literally, as the inerrant word of God.

He remembers the first time he spoke to a preacher about people who didn't take the bible as literal history. This man told Barker about members of his congregation who thought that Adam and Eve were not actual people but were a metaphor or representation of the beginning of humanity and human sin. Barker, at the time, was surprised that this was acceptable to this priest, or that he was willing to allow this "type" of people in his congregation -- those "liberal" types interpreting the bible any way they wanted. How could the bible have any actual meaning if everyone is free to interpret it any way they see fit? This was blasphemous to him. At first. He began to meet more and more people who had more open and less restrictive faith. He found them to be perfectly nice and moral people. Thus began his questioning.

He's careful to point out that he wasn't questioning God at this point, just the rigid interpretation to which he had been subjected. He felt he was "growing" or "maturing" in his faith and thought it was a good thing. Over time, though, those questions turned into doubts as he started to realize that there was a lot more to the world than the dogma he was raised with. So many people believed that they had the path to "truth", just as strongly as he and other fundamentalist Christians did. As he explains, he finally was able to separate his rational brain from his emotional brain and objectively look at what he had been believing. He had no choice but to admit that it didn't make sense. To keep believing would be to deceive himself, a lie.

Reading this book, you can actually feel how painful it must have been for him to extract himself from the only life he ever knew, his family, wife and friends.

The first section of Part II will be familiar to atheists and Christians alike. Barker first reviews the reasons that Christians assume are responsible for atheists' rejection of God. Accusing atheists of being angry, being blinded by science, feeling superior to God, being resentful of Christians - not "true" Christians mind you - who have done them wrong and various other ad hominem (attacking the character of someone and using that to dismiss their claims) arguments that we have all heard before are listed.

He points out again that despite the claims of believers, atheism just means the lack of theism, godlessness. There is nothing else in that label. Nothing. Atheists may have other traits in common -- or not -- but saying someone is an atheist just means they don't have a belief in any God. It's not even the assertion that there is no God, although many atheists may feel that it's unlikely. Atheism just means "without God" or "without religion".

Definitions of Agnostic and Atheist:

Just for clarity: Agnosticism relays the position that "I don't have knowledge that God exists". Atheism says "I don't have a belief that God exists". Note that one can be both agnostic and atheist. And by definition many people of faith are indeed, agnostic, as they can claim no true knowledge of God's existence. Faith is not knowledge, although many swear they are interchangeable.

The rest of this Part of the book goes on to discuss the various apologists' arguments, including the Kalam Cosmological argument, and Barker, having been a preacher and bible scholar is able to answer these arguments and give very good reasons why they are not valid.

Once you start looking objectively without the blinders of faith, at the Bible and religion in general, some issues become glaringly obvious. That's the topic of discussion of Part 3 of "Godless".

Barker shines a spotlight on the notion that the Bible is a good guide for morality, and the book, its God and its folk heros all fail the interrogation. Upholding laws like "don't work on the sabbath" by stonings, slaughter, fear and oppression are the order of the day in God's law. And we are reminded that despite the argument that the New Testament is God's new covenant, Jesus states clearly that he had come to uphold the law.

Barker goes on to discuss the many, many biblical contradictions including those that deal with murder, stealing, the path to salvation, slavery, the birth, crucifixion and geneology of Jesus, human sacrifice and God's omnipotence. Each is presented with the scriptures in question and are quite an interesting collection.

Another section reviews the preceding and parallel Gods that have similarities to the Judeo-Christian God and to Jesus. Attis, Prometheus and Mithra are discussed.

Part 4 brings us back to Dan Barker's current life with his second wife Annie Laurie Gaylor. She was a founding member and is co-president with Barker of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. He lays out here what the Foundation does and why it is so important to enforce the principle of separation of church and state.

"You believe in a book that has sticks turning into snakes, and you say we are the ones that need help?"

Read "Godless" to understand how someone who once preached from the bible became an outspoken critic of the same book.