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

by Dan Barker

We all want peace, but how do we get it? Was the bomb at Hiroshima peaceful because it ended the war? Are nuclear warheads “blessed?” The United States is currently “at peace” with the Native Americans; however, was United Sta...

Besides, Jesus contradicted his own advice by warning, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came ...

(8) “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”

Are we supposed to say, “Yay! Someone called me an idiot! Hooray! I got another death threat!”?

Since they give little behavioral advice, stressing inner attitudes of being, they sometimes are called the “be-attitudes” by preachers. (Not the “do-attitudes.”) They are fluff. Offering skimpy moral guidance, they turn out to be mere platitudes to keep the poor and disenfranchised content to stay in their place. They are not good guides for behavior.

TURN THE OTHER CHEEK

Here is how Jesus phrased it in the Sermon on the Mount: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Matthew 5:38-39)

If someone breaks into my house and threatens our family, should I stand idle and let it happen? If a woman is raped, should she love her enemy and invite him back to her home? Do Christian members of the National Rifle Association think they should let go of their guns?

A more sensible rule would say, “If someone smites thee on thy right cheek, then get away from that person! Defend yourself to avoid further harm. Ask for help, file charges, or try to stop the abuse from happening to someone else. Let the person know that this kind of behavior is unacceptable. Never invite abuse.”

HUMANISM OFFERS MORALITY

Who decides how the bible is interpreted? Millions of devout, bible-believing Christians and Jews who study scripture carefully cannot agree on many important moral issues. They come down on different sides of the debate about capital punishment, abortion, physician-assisted suicide, death with dignity, ordination of women, women’s rights, gay rights, birth control, war and many other issues. What good does it do to have a divine code of ethics if no one knows what it is?

If morality means anything, it means that we are accountable to others. Christians believe that we are accountable not to people, but to God.

Since bible believers are accountable to God and not to humanity, they can ask for forgiveness from God for any crimes they commit against humanity. In other words, they can act with impunity. And they often do.

If I commit a crime, Jesus can die a million deaths and still not change the fact that the guilt lies with me.

To sing “Jesus died for my sin” is to admit that wrongful actions have nothing at all to do with consequences against flesh-and-blood sentient creatures who hurt.

Humanists are accountable to real, natural, breathing human beings (and other sentient animals), and to enforceable human laws, not to an unprovable, pie-in-the-sky deity. This makes humanism superior as a guide for moral behavior.

Chapter Eleven

Murder, He Wrote

If Moses had not existed would it have never occurred to us that murder is immoral? Without “The Law” would we all be wandering around like little gods, stealing, raping and spilling blood whenever our vanity was offended?

“By the way, I want you to know that I am not murdering you. I am lawfully killing you in God’s name.”

Chapter Twelve

For Goodness Sake

Behavioral dilemmas involve a conflict of values, and in real life this means they are always situational. You can’t simply follow a blind code. You have to compare the relative merits of the consequences of different actions, and the only way to do that is to exercise reason.

Although a few extreme ethical dilemmas might arise in one’s lifetime, basic day-to-day morality is a simple matter of kindness, respect and reason.

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.

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.

Morality is in the mind—and reason is in the mind. No matter where you look for morality, it all comes down to the mind.

The human mind can know sorrow, grief, regret and embarrassment, while the mind of a perfect deity cannot. Can a god shed a tear, smell a flower or hug a child? Does a god perspire after a day of hard work under a burning sun, or shiver while trudging through a blizzard? Which mind is in a better position to make judgments about human actions and feelings? Which mind has more credibility? Which has more experience in the real world? Which mind has more of a right?

The short life of Jesus can hardly compare with the suffering of brave heretics who have been persecuted for criticizing Christianity, or with the agony of the “witches” who were burned, drowned and hanged by bible believers (quoting Exodus 22:18: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”). Nor can the one day of suffering Jesus supposedly endured compare with the Holocaust, the genocide of Native Americans or the pain of those who were tortured during the Inquisition. His supposed contribution to the world hardly compares with the hard work, sacrifice and discipline of intelligent individuals who have dedicated their lives to science and medicine. Just because Jesus was considered a Higher Power does not make his alleged suffering any higher than yours or mine.

For simplicity, I am using “morality” and “ethics” synonymously in this book, though they are technically not the same. My understanding is that ethics is the study of behavioral values, while morality is a set of values a particular culture chooses. Ethics deals with principles while morality deals with rules. Simplistically stated, ethics asks what is actually good or bad, while morality states what is good or bad. The two words often overlap. For example, if you walk down the middle of the street naked by a schoolyard many cultures will call you immoral, though there is nothing inherently unethical about such an act. Killing a person for no reason other than pleasure is both unethical and immoral. Insulting a prophet may be immoral to a particular group of religious people, but it is not unethical outside of that framework.

For me, the phrase “moral relativism” refers to the differences between cultural mores, while “ethical relativism” refers to the same act being right or wrong depending on the situation.

Moral relativism means that the same action in the same context can be right in one culture and wrong in another. Ethical relativism (to me) means that the same action can be right in one context and wrong in another.

Most atheists think moral values are real, but that does not mean they are “objective.” They can’t be. A value is not a “thing”—it is a function of a mind (which is itself a function). To be objective is to exist independently of a mind. So, an “objective value” is an oxymoron: the existence in the mind of something that is independent of the mind.

To be moral, atheists have access to the simple tools of reason and kindness. There is no cosmic code book directing our actions.

The way to be moral is to first learn what causes harm and how to avoid it. This means investigating nature—especially human nature: who we are, what we need, where we live, how we function and why we behave the way we do.

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.” • Retribution: “Justice will prevail in the afterlife.” • Magic: “Pray for help.” • Holy war: “Kill for God.” • Forgiveness: “I won’t be held responsible for my mistakes.” • Glory: “Suffering with Christ is an honor.”

Many believers, including Christians who are ordered to “bring into captivity every thought unto the obedience of Christ,” have an underlying distrust of human reasoning. Yearning for absolutes, they perceive relativism—the recognition that actions must be judged in context—as something dangerous when it is the only way we can be truly moral.

Theists are afraid people will think for themselves; atheists are afraid they won’t.

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. In this theistic universe, morality is severed from reality and reduced to flattering the Sovereign.

“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.” The creationist Hitler shared a thirst for blood with the bombastic biblical God in whose “image” he thought he was created.

“God is a Spirit,” Jesus supposedly said, but what is that? The word “spirit” has never been defined, except in terms that tell us what it is not: immaterial, intangible, noncorporeal, supernatural. No one has ever described what a spirit is. “To talk of immaterial existences,” Jefferson wrote, “is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say, they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise.” (To John Adams, August 1820.) This does not mean Jefferson was an atheist. He conceived of God as a material being, or as nature itself, which is consistent with Deism.

Instead of speculating about an unknown “creator,” we can actually look at our origins. Evolution shows how complexity arises from simplicity. Creationism can’t do that. Creationism tries to explain complexity with more complexity, which only replaces one mystery with another mystery. If functional complexity requires a designer, then how do you account for the functional complexity of the mind of the designer?

We are not above nature. We are not just a part of nature. We are nature. We are natural creatures in a natural environment. Through the startlingly sloppy, painfully unpredictable, part-random, part-determined process of natural selection, life has become what it is: imperfect yet doggedly hanging on.

What right does an immaterial existence—a ghost in the sky—have to tell us natural creatures what is valuable?

Science has given us much. What has theology ever provided? Theology has given us hell.

Humanists think we should do good for goodness’ sake, not for the selfish prospect of reaping individual rewards or avoiding punishment. Any ideology that makes its point by threatening violence is morally bankrupt. (Hitler’s horrible ovens, at least, were relatively quick. The torment Jesus promised is a “fire that shall never be quenched.”) Anyone who believes in hell is at heart not moral at all.

If the only way you can be forced to be kind to others is by the threat of hell, that shows how little you think of yourself. If the only way you can be motivated to be kind to others is by the promise of heaven, that shows how little you think of others.

Chapter Thirteen

Bible Contradictions