Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists

by Dan Barker

In Luke 12:47,48, Jesus said: “And that servant [Greek doulos = slave] which knew his Lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes.” Jesus encouraged the beating of slaves! Is this an example of moral superiority? Some Christians will argue that this is just a parable based on the culture of the day, and that Jesus did not mean it to be taken literally. But an examination of the context proves otherwise. Jesus had just given a parable about servants a few verses earlier, and Peter had asked for an elaboration (12:41).

Why did Jesus, the unrivaled moral example, never once speak out against slavery? Why did the loving, wise Son of God forget to mention that human bondage is a brutal institution? Why did he incorporate it into his teachings, as if it were the most natural thing in the world? I’ll tell you why: because he supported it. The Old Testament endorses and encourages slavery, and Jesus, being equal to God, supposedly wrote the old laws, so he had to support slavery. This is not to concede that a man named Jesus actually uttered these words in history. It merely demonstrates that the Gospels were written by human beings who were locked into their culture. Not only did they refuse to denounce slavery, they could not conceive that there was anything wrong with it.

His violence was tempered with irrationality. “Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered. And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away.” (Matthew 21:18-19, repeated in Mark 11:13-14, which adds that it was not even fig season.) Is it kind or rational to destroy a plant that happens to be out of season when you are hungry? Is such behavior indicative of mental health?

In Matthew 10:34 Jesus said, “I came not to send peace, but a sword.”

Anyone who thinks it is moral for someone like me—a person who has used reason and kindness to come to conclusions—to be eternally punished for my views hasn’t the faintest concept of morality. Any system of thought or any religion that contains such a threat of physical violence is morally bankrupt. For this reason alone, Jesus deserves to be denounced as a tyrant.

Exodus 22:18 says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” This one verse was responsible for the murder of thousands, perhaps millions, of women who were believed to be witches. Anyone who thinks this is a good moral teaching should become a fascist.

The loftiest biblical principles are obedience, submission and faith, rather than reason, intelligence and human values. Worshippers become humble servants of a dictator, expected to kneel before this king, lord, master, god—giving adoring praise and taking orders. According to the bible, we all eventually will be forced to bow before Jesus: “every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” (Romans 14:11) The master/slave relationship has become so ingrained in the Jewish/Christian/Muslim world that independent thinkers are considered heretical, evil rebels.

We freethinkers actually do know what the bible says. Mark Twain said: “It’s not the parts of the bible I don’t understand that bother me; it’s the parts I do understand.”

The Golden Rule is not unique to Jesus, nor did it start with Christianity. In Hinduism (Brahmanism), around 300 B.C.E.: “This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you.” (Mahabharata, 5, 1517. The Vedic period of Hinduism goes back to 1500 B.C.E.) In Buddhism we read: “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.” (Udana-Varga, 5, 18) In Confucianism, which started around 500 B.C.E.: “Surely it is the maxim of loving-kindness: Do not unto others that you would not have them do unto you.” (Analects, 15, 23) In Taoism we have, “Regard your neighbor’s gain as your own gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.”

Some Christians feel that “love your enemy” is so unnatural, so nonintuitive, so shockingly different, that it elevates Jesus to a whole new level of compassion. But I think it is actually less moral than our natural human instincts. There are some enemies who ought not to be loved. Some enemies should be hated. If love is just a blanket imperative that ignores the qualities of its object, then it becomes meaningless.

The most common claim offered in defense of this contradiction is that Exodus 20:13 really says, “Thou shalt not murder.” To murder is to kill unlawfully, maliciously or premeditatedly. If the Commandments forbid only “murder,” then it can be argued that other forms of killing are allowed, or even encouraged. God can ordain capital punishment, or command a holocaust of heathens without breaking his own law. Of course, it is a useless tautology to define murder as an “unlawful” killing in this context. Since the Ten Commandments supposedly are the law, they would be merely saying, “It is unlawful to kill unlawfully.” This type of circular thinking excuses anyone who kills “in the name of the Lord, the source of law.” It is not only illogical, but also immoral, to claim that there is a law above the law that can justify unnecessary bloodshed.

Once I shed the religio-psychological frame of mind, I learned that the Christian “struggle” with morality is overblown. I learned that relativism is all we’ve got. Human values are not absolutes—they are relative to human needs. The humanistic answer to morality, if the question is properly understood, is that the basis for values lies in nature. Since we are a part of nature, and since there is nothing “beyond” nature, it is necessary to assign value to actions in the context of nature itself. Most of us do this daily since we are born and raised in nature; as a matter of fact, we do it without much thought or distress. One simplified example of how nature provides the basis for value: the human body requires water for survival. Since most humans want to survive, withholding water can be considered immoral. There is nothing cosmically “good” about water or cosmically “evil” about the lack of it. It is all relative to natural human needs.

Morality implies avoiding or minimizing harm. This is by definition. No matter how elaborate the philosophical arguments become, moral decisions in the daily world still boil down to assessing the value of things like water and arsenic—natural things—and their effects on other natural things, such as our bodies. “Value” is a concept of relative worth. And since concepts, as far as we know, exist only in brains, which are material things, it is meaningless, even dangerous, to talk of cosmic moral absolutes. The assessment of value requires the use of reason. In other words, morality comes from within humanity. If intelligent life had not appeared on this planet, morality would not exist. Morality is in the mind—and reason is in the mind.

Why should I treat my neighbor nicely? Because we are all connected. We are part of the same species, genetically linked. Since I value myself and my species, and the other species to which we are related, I recognize that when someone is hurting, my natural family is suffering. By nature, those of us who are mentally healthy recoil from pain and wish to see it ended.

Atheists can perhaps express compassion more easily than believers can because we are not confused by: • Fatalism: “Whatever happens is God’s will.” • Pessimism: “We deserve to suffer.” • Salvation: “Death is not the end.”

Nowhere in Scripture will you find an acknowledgment that each individual has an “inalienable right” to be treated with fairness and respect, or that “We, the People” are capable of governing ourselves. There is no democracy in the “word of God.” In the bible, humans are “worms” and “sinners” deserving damnation and “slaves” who should humbly submit to all kings, heavenly and earthly.

The God of Scripture slaughtered entire groups of people that offended his vanity. “Happy shall be he that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones,” he advised (Psalm 137:9), threatening those with the wrong religion that “their women with child shall be ripped up.” (Hosea 13:16) He also sent bears to attack 42 children who teased a prophet (II Kings 2:23-24), punished innocent offspring to the fourth generation (Exodus 20:5), discriminated against the handicapped (Leviticus 21:18-23) and promised that fathers and sons would eat each other (Ezekiel 5:10), among other actions that we would find repugnant in a human being.

Hitler allowed Darwinism to be twisted for a political purpose, framing evolution in a “social” way not intended by Darwin himself. But it wasn’t Darwinism that gave the theistic Hitler his basis for morality: “I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord’s work.” (Mein Kampf) Hitler credited Jesus as his inspiration. In a 1926 Nazi Christmas celebration, he boasted, “Christ was the greatest early fighter in the battle against the world enemy, the Jews… The work that Christ started but could not finish, I—Adolf Hitler—will conclude.”

Science has given us much. What has theology ever provided? Theology has given us hell. The threat of damnation is designed to be an incentive to right action, but this is a phony morality. Humanists think we should do good for goodness’ sake, not for the selfish prospect of reaping individual rewards or avoiding punishment.

Bush told the faith-based groups that there was a pile of government money and here is how you can get it. We think this is unconstitutional. Our secular government should not be promoting or funding religion. We are not opposed to the freedom of private, tax-exempt religious groups to do their ministry. They are welcome to advertise, to appeal to supporters, to raise funds and to attempt to earn the respect that will attract donations toward their mission—but they should do it with private funding, not with the tax dollars that belong to all of us. They should figure out how to raise money with no special handholding by the government. That is what the separation of church and state should mean. None of us should be compelled to support someone else’s religion.

In a sense, the inner experience of music is truly transcendent and can bring us all together in the especially human “universal language.” Religion divides; art unites.

If salvation is the freedom from sin, then we atheists already have it. If salvation is deliverance from oppression and disease in the real world, then there is work to do. In this ongoing effort to make our planet a better place—to have true peace on earth—we atheists and humanists are happy to work shoulder-to-shoulder with the truly good religious people who also strive for a future with less violence and more understanding.