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

by Dan Barker

When Christians or Jews say that “God is good” aren’t they judging God? Don’t they think his character merits praise and adoration? Or, are they simply giving blind obedience to whatever happens to be omnipotent?

“And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the Sabbath day. And they that found him brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation. And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him. And the Lord said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp. And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the Lord commanded Moses.” (Numbers 15:32-36)

What if an ayatollah were to command the execution of a person who picked up sticks on an Islamic holy day because it offended Allah? What would we think of such bloodthirsty, immoral arrogance?

All of us, believers and nonbelievers alike, whatever our reasoning, have to agree that the bible can be downright brutal. Apologize, theologize, demythologize, liberalize and rationalize all you want—those barbaric scriptures are still being sold in bookstores. Many courts use the bible as the standard of truth telling and U.S. presidents place their hand upon it during inauguration—a practice, incidentally, not mandated by the Constitution. But any version of a “holy book” that contains barbaric decrees cannot be entirely palatable to the modern world.

Those who can look at the bible objectively, who are not handicapped with the requirement that it be worshiped or respected, notice that there are problems with using it as a guide for behavior:

1. The bible argues from authority, not from reason, claiming that “might makes right.”

2. The bible nowhere states that every human being possesses an inherent right to be treated with respect and fairness—human...

3. The biblical role models, especially Yahweh, Elohim and Jesus, are very poor moral examples, often ignoring their own good teachings (what few there are) and ruthl...

4. Many moral precepts of the bible are just plain ba...

5. On closer inspection, the few “positive” teachings are uninspired, unoriginal, inadequate and irrelevant. (See below.) ...

MIGHT MAKES RIGHT

has nothing to do with “good” or “right.”

People who believe they are living under the thumb of such a vain and petty lord are not guided by ethics; they are guided by fear. The bible turns out to be not a moral code, but a whip.

Exactly how bad would the bible have to get before it is discarded? Do Christians ever dare ask this question?

Sunday after Sunday, that the bible is a “Good Book.” They are taught that thinking for yourself is at least woefully inadequate, if not completely evil. Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” II Corinthians 10:5 says, “[bring] into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” This is a circular argument, of course. Don’t question the bible. Why? Because the bible says so.

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.”

HUMANS HAVE NO INTRINSIC RIGHT TO FAIRNESS OR RESPECT

The bible nowhere states that every human being possesses an inherent right to be treated with respect or fairness. Generally, everything flows from God to humans, not the other way around. A true moral guide should have some principles. If humans are supposed to treat other humans in certain ways, or to avoid treating humans in other ways, then there should be some examination of the general value of human life and of human rights. Yet this is not to be found anywhere in the bible.

We all know about the way Christians and other religionists have treated outsiders: Native Americans, Jews, American blacks and South-African natives, and scores of pagan peoples around the world who had the misfortune of being born and raised outside of the “true” faith. We all know about the Crusades in the name of Jesus, the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholic-Protestant bloodshed in Northern Ireland and the militant Christian factions in the Middle East.

Paul advised Christians: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness?” (II Corinthians 6:14) The intrinsic intolerance of Christianity cannot be candy-coated.

If the bible contains any seeds of respect or fairness toward other humans, it is sadly absent from a reading of the text or from the institutions produced by it.

Bertrand Russell said, “Men tend to have the beliefs that suit their passions. Cruel men believe in a cruel God and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly God, and they would be kindly in any case.”

BIBLE CHARACTERS ARE POOR ROLE MODELS

WHAT ABOUT JESUS?

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?

But probably the worst of all of Jesus’ ideas is the teaching of hell. He did not invent the concept of eternal punishment, but the promotion of the Christian doctrine of hell originated with Jesus. In the Old Testament, hell is just death or the grave. With Jesus, hell became a place of everlasting torment. In Mark 9:43, Jesus said that hell is “the fire that never shall be quenched.” In Matthew 13:41-42, Jesus gives us a graphic (and almost gleeful) description of the place he created: “The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” Hitler’s gas ovens were horrendous and the suffering was unspeakable, but they did not burn forever. The murdered victims of the Holocaust suffer no more, but the victims of God’s anger will scream forever and ever.

MANY MORAL PRECEPTS OF THE BIBLE ARE UNACCEPTABLE

Jesus said, “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” (John 15:6) All through history, the church has interpreted this verse literally, using it to execute heretics with fire and other forms of capital punishment. Somebody tell Bruno, Servetus and other victims of the Catholic Inquisition and Protestant Reformation that the bible is a morally superior book.

The master/slave relationship has become so ingrained in the Jewish/Christian/Muslim world that independent thinkers are considered heretical, evil rebels. Prophets, popes and ayatollahs have capitalized on this dichotomy of abasement in order to manipulate gullible followers. And even if they hadn’t—even if the church had had a blameless history—why is there merit in submission?

WHAT ABOUT THE GOOD TEACHINGS OF THE BIBLE?

If we freethinkers were mature and sophisticated enough to study the scriptures as they should be studied (higher criticism, context, metaphor, cultural elements, and so on), then we would have fewer problems understanding them. But this is nothing more than saying, “If you held my point of view, then you would hold my point of view.” Everyone thinks his or her interpretation of the bible is the correct one. I agree that taking the bible at face value is simplistic; however, liberal scholars should admit that skepticism regarding scriptural integrity is greater among liberal experts. They cannot deny that there is a storm of disagreement among scholars, theologians and ordinary believers about the “true” meaning of the text.

If a god is trying to get his message across to the masses of humanity, why did he do it in such a way that the only people qualified to grasp its true significance are those with doctorates in biblical studies? And then, how do we know which authorities to believe? What the bible means in plain English is what most people read. If it embarrasses itself in plain English, then it fails to make its point.

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 TEN COMMANDMENTS

The first four commandments have nothing at all to do with ethics or moral behavior:

In the United States, we are free to worship many gods, one god or no gods at all. Elohim does not appear in any of the governing documents on which our country was founded.

Second Commandment: “Thou shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

Actually, the Catholic Church tried to get around this injunction by deleting the second commandment altogether! Some of the granite markers of the Ten Commandments that have been put on public property actually (humorously) omit this one and cut the last commandment into two prohibitions against coveting in order to round it out to ten.

Third Commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”

This would be like prohibiting criticism of the president or other public officials. It is undemocrati...

Fourth Commandment: “Remember the ...

According to the biblical application of this law (as we already saw in Numbers 15), millions of America...

Fifth Commandment: “Honor thy father and thy mother:

Wouldn’t a moral principle suggest that you should not do anything to hurt your parents, that you should not take advantage of them, and that you should treat them with the basic respect deserved by all human beings?

How do you “honor” a father who commits incest?

Sixth Commandment: “Thou shalt not kill” is the first genuine moral statement in the Decalogue because it deals with the issue of real harm in the real world, although it is unqualified.

Does this mean that capital punishment is wrong? What about self defense? What about war? What about euthanasia requested by the terminally ill?

Seventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is also a good idea, though it is not against the law. And if it were, it hardly merits the death penalty: “And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” (Leviticus 20:10)

Why don’t the Ten Commandments mention rape? What about incest? How about the more useful “Thou shalt not beat thy wife?”

Eighth Commandment: “Thou shalt not steal” is generally good advice and makes good law.