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

by Dan Barker

Besides being childish, the morality-as-authority argument is dangerous. People who do not question authority become easy prey to dictators. Cult leaders can manipulate followers who give them blind obedience. Many of the 900 followers of the Rev. Jim Jones drank the poisonous punch, aware of what was happening, because they were convinced that he was next to God. The Catholic and Lutheran Nazis wore “God is with us” on their belts, convinced that Hitler was doing the work of Jesus in exterminating the Jews, as he claimed in one of his speeches. Certain Christian fanatics, such as the Christian Scientists, Pentecostals and other fundamentalists, allow their children to die of treatable illnesses because their church tells them that circumventing God’s natural plan is a sin, or that Jesus will heal “all manner of diseases.”