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

by Dan Barker

he had something to say to me as one of his close friends and servants.

Millions of people still needed to be saved, and the time was short.

If you have never done it, it is hard to understand what is happening when people speak in tongues.

While some of my friends may have been sneaking out behind the proverbial barn to experiment with this or that, I was having a love affair with Jesus. I didn’t think I was “crazy”—I was quite functional and could snap out of it at any moment, like taking off headphones—but I did feel that what I had was special, above the world.

I indeed felt that I was talking with God and that Jesus was my Lord and friend.

or what I thought and sincerely believed was the Spirit giving witness to my heart and mind.

That motto has stayed with me to this day, a very useful bit of obvious advice.

Carl was the first person to hear it all the way through, and ever since that quiet morning with just the two of us at the piano, he and I have been close friends.

Some friendships are truly transcendent.

If I was looking for a parking space and a car pulled out of a space right near where I wanted to be, then I would say, “Thank you, Jesus, for giving me a place to park.”

If I had to park six blocks away, I would say, “Thank you, Jesus, for teaching me patience.”

I viewed all income as an undeserved gif...

Nothing in my life was accidental.

If what I felt was phony, why would a good God allow me to be so deceived?

had been “born again” and believed it and announced it. I had been “filled with the spirit” and lived it. I had dedicated myself to a life of ministry. I was a “doer of the Word, not a hearer only.”

I had lived by faith, putting my life, health and future on the line—how many “true believers” have done that?

“We have a couple of members of our church who do not believe Adam and Eve were historical people.”

Adam and Eve was a Hebrew parable created by the ancient Israelites to explain the origin of the sinful human race, and the moral lesson is what is important,

not the physical existence of two protohumans, with or without navels.

When you are raised to believe that every word in the bible is God-inspired and inerrant, you can’t lightly moderate your views on scripture.

I was about 30 years old when I started to have these early questions about Christianity.

Not doubts, just q...

that I had been ignoring a part of myself that was beginning to ask for attention.

I had been reading the Christian writers (Francis Schaeffer, Josh McDowell, C. S. Lewis, etc.) and really had not read much of anything else besides the bible for years.

So, not with any real purpose in mind, I began to scratch this intellectual itch.

This triggered what later became a ravenous appetite to learn, and produced a slow but steady migration across the theological spectrum that took about four or five years.

I was not aiming for doubt or atheism.

My sermons began to have less hell and more love.

I talked less about the afterlife and more about living this life.

I was still a strong, committed believer, but preaching less evangelism and...

I think it was at this point that I made the leap, not to atheism, but to the commitment to follow reason and evidence wherever they might lead, even if it meant taking me away from my cherished beliefs.

Maybe I should put myself under the microscope.

(In fact, I can still reproduce those feelings today, just as strong.)

The article laid bare the dishonesty of the “equal time for creationism in the science class” argument by asking how many Christians would welcome a chapter about evolution inserted between Genesis and Exodus. I became more and more embarrassed at what I used to believe, and more attracted to rational thought.

I found myself asking heretical questions.

I tried to ignore these facts because they did not integrate with my religious worldview.

During those years of migration, I went through an intense inner conflict.

I would cry out to God for answers, and none would come. Like the lonely heart who keeps waiting for the phone to ring, I kept trusting that God would someday come through. He never did.

The only proposed answer was faith,

apologist arguments became more and more absurd.

But don’t imagine that this was an easy process. It was like tearing my whole frame of reality to pieces, ripping to shreds the fabric of meaning and hope, betraying the values of existence.

Finally, at the far end of my theological migration, I was forced to admit that there is no basis for believing that a god exists, except faith, and faith was not satisfactory to me.

I gave it up purposely.

The motivation that drove me into the ministry—to know and speak the truth—is the...

Millions of good people live happy, productive, moral lives without believing in a god.

Nobody else knew this for about four or five lonely months.

I came to it all on my own, and that’s how it should be.

It makes my conclusions my very own, valued because of the precious process of being forged and proved in my own mind.

It was at that moment that I experienced the startling reality that I was alone.

fact, the little child in me still sometimes wishes to regain the comforts and