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

by Dan Barker

A strong clue that a person is arguing from a position of weakness is when they attack character rather than arguments and facts.

The only times the opponent’s character is relevant in a debate are when the specific topic is morality, when it is fair to examine possible hypocrisy, or when eye-witness evidence is being offered and a history of dishonesty might weaken credibility.

When Peter (if the story is true) told his friends that he saw the resurrected Jesus, the fact that he had recently lied by denying that he knew Jesus lowers the credibility of his testimony.

Love is not self-denial. Love is not blood and suffering. Love is not murdering your son to appease your own vanity. Love is not hatred or wrath, consigning billions of people to eternal torture because they have offended your fragile ego or disobeyed your rules. Love is not obedience, conformity or submission. It is a counterfeit love that is contingent upon authority, punishment or reward. True love is respect and admiration, compassion and kindness, freely given by a healthy, unafraid human being.

The word “atheist” is not a label; it is merely a description.

I am an atheist because there is no reason to believe.

If they want me to believe, too, they have to convince me, not just themselves.

The fact that most adults believe in God is no more reason for me or anyone else to believe than the fact that most children believe in Santa. The possibility that the belief in God is useful is no reason to believe, either. Many claim that their behavior is improved by their belief in God, but so is the behavior of millions of children during the middle weeks of December.

Even so, I can still claim that if there are adequate natural explanations that account for all the facts, then there is no driving need to search for supernatural explanations.

(This is usually referred to as Occam’s Razor, the principle that suggests we should normally accept the explanation that requires the fewest assumptions.)

For example, maybe Santa is an ambassador from a distant planetary outpost populated with red-and-white creatures who monitor the activities of specially chosen short people (elves and children?), seeking “conducive” humans as psychic vehicles for messages to holy reindeer that levitate when children dream during the winter solstice, with most adults being too hardened to believe.

I may insist something is evidence, but that does not make it so. There must be a connection and it must be clear.

We can only start where we both agree, and proceed from there.

accept. It is unreasonable and unfair for them simply to fold their arms and demand that I disprove their allegations.

nature. We should start with the nonexistence of God and then the believer should argue for God’s existence, not demand that atheists argue against it. The burden of proof in any argument is on the shoulders of the one who makes the affirmative claim, not the one who doubts it.

Christians may be loyal and dishonest, but they still may be correct. Atheists might be rational and honest, but they might be wrong.

One question I often ask of religionists is, “I will happily change my mind if I am proved wrong. Will you?” Most of them proudly say, “No way!”

They demand that we be “qualified” before making a final decision. But is this a fair request? There are millions of unqualified Christians who have only the slightest familiarity with the bible, yet their decision to believe is considered praiseworthy.

Most believers are addicted through repetition to the idea that their bible is the greatest, most important, most inspired book in the world, and therefore the miracle accounts must be true—really good people can make themselves believe them.

The issue is not so much what we think, but how we think.

When ministers who are untrained in science make cosmological pronouncements that contradict science, why are they granted more credibility than professional physicists, mathematicians or biologists?

Many atheists know far more about the bible than most Christians.

I was a victim myself.

Agnosticism is the refusal to take as a fact any statement for which there is insufficient evidence.

they will not claim as a fact something for which data is lacking or something which data contradicts.

It is merely the lack of theism.

Basic atheism is not a belief. There is a difference between not believing there is a god and believing there is no god—one

contradiction in terms) is a by-product of the drive to discover a better system of ethical principles (not code of rules) for my species and me.

Of course, most of these religious hospitals receive public money, and they all charge the same high rates so there is very little “charity” offered.

But this is a huge cop out.

In other words, faith is the evidence of non-evidence.

it is a rational expectation based on experience and knowledge of electricity. If the light fails to turn on, my worldview is not shattered. I expect that the light will sometimes fail due to a burnt-out bulb, blown circuit or other natural cause.

The point is that although I do often express sentiments with near absolute confidence, I am open to the possibility that I might be wrong,

But scientific confidence is not faith—it is a tentative acceptance of the truth of a hypothesis that has been repeatedly tested, and it is subject to being overturned in the light of new evidence.

If theists can say “God exists” with less than 100 percent certainty, they should let me say, even if I admit less than 100 percent uncertainty, that “God does not exist.”

The burden of proof is always on the shoulders of the

affirmative, not the negative—innocent until proven guilty.

Many of these arguments are reduced to a “god of the gaps” strategy.

The gaps are actually what drive science—if

a designer of such a machine must be more complex than the machine itself.

If it doesn’t, then the argument is dishonest.

Living organisms are the result of the mindless, uncaring reality of natural selection that builds complexity in extremely tiny increments over vast periods of time by keeping survival advantages through the blunt process of weeding out failures, which are denied the opportunity to reproduce by being eaten, starved, frozen, killed in competition or accidents, or beat to mating opportunities, or not being chosen as a mate, and so on.

it tries to explain complexity with more complexity, and so explains nothing.

That argument for God is based on ignorance, not facts.

God belief is just answering a mystery with a mystery, and therefore answers nothing.

So, if the constants could have been different, what is the ratio between the range of possible values and the range of life-allowing values? Until these numbers are known, there is no way to assign a probability.

life as we know it is not the only type of life that might arise in a universe.

Until we know how many kinds of life are possible, there is no way to produce two numbers to divide.

Third, how many chances are there? If there is only one shot at a universe, a single opportunity to “tune” the constants, then the odds indeed seem high against life forming. But if there are many opportunities, such as many Big Bangs occurring, then that raises the numerator in the fraction, upping the odds for life.

In fact, some think the numerator is much larger than the denominator, meaning it would be a true miracle if life never appeared anywhere in the cosmos.