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by
Dan Barker
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January 12, 2019 - August 15, 2020
My parents, after years of mostly fundamentalist Christianity, had gotten involved with the Charismatic Movement because they were attracted to the “living Gospel,” where the presence of God seemed more real, immediate and powerful than in traditional worship services.
I didn’t think I was fulfilling my Dad’s dreams—I was certain that God was calling me, personally—but looking back on it, I’m sure there must have been some influence from my parents.
most of the “miracles” were pretty boring. The excitement was in our minds. I saw people walk up to the side of the stage in search of a healing, before being told by an usher to sit in a wheelchair to be rolled up to Kathryn. When
never witnessed any organic healings, restored body parts or levitations.
He had read some articles about ESP and other psychic phenomena, and was deciding that a strictly materialistic view of life was unrealistic and unsatisfying. “Dan, you seem so confident and happy. Tell me what you believe.”
was exciting to hear myself, a high school student,
Most people are uncertain and susceptible, vulnerable to someone else’s confidence and certainty. If you want to be a preacher, then “just do it.” Do it with confidence and style. It works. (Just like anyone in sales will tell you.)
After a few years of working in local churches, directing choirs with admirable dedication and hopeful musicianship, counseling people with problems that I hadn’t the faintest idea how to approach (except with bible verses and prayer), and working on sermons that I fancied were insightful but bounced off the listeners like rain off an umbrella, I found myself getting restless to hit the road again.
The next time you talk with an extreme fundamentalist, beware. If you use gray talk—relativistic, situational, provisional, tentative—that will translate to black.
As I visited different congregations that represented many varieties of faith, it slowly dawned on me that there is no single Christianity—there are thousands of Christianities. (There may be as many Christianities as there are Christians.)
I remember the way I was thinking then: every Christian has a particular hierarchy of doctrines and practices, and most Christians arrange their hierarchy in roughly the same manner. The existence of God is at the top, the deity of Jesus just below that, and so on down to the bottom of the list, where you find issues like whether women should wear jewelry or makeup in church. What distinguishes many brands of Christianity is where they draw their line between what is essential and what is not.
After all, followers of other religions report mystical and spiritual trances, so maybe I should not trust my own subjective emotions. Maybe I should put myself under the microscope. If
Where did we get the idea that words on a page speak truth? Shouldn’t truth be the result of investigation and analysis?
figured the only way to truly grasp a subject was to look at it from all sides.
The only proposed answer was faith, and I gradually grew to dislike the smell of that word. I finally realized that faith is a cop-out, a defeat—an admission that the truths of religion are unknowable through evidence and reason. It is only indemonstrable assertions that require the suspension of reason, and weak ideas that require faith.
I could finally see clearly that there was no evidence for a god, no coherent definition of a god, no good argument for the existence of a god, no agreement among believers as to the nature or moral principles of “God,” and no good answers to the positive arguments against the existence of a god, such as the problem of evil. And beyond all that, there is no need for a god. Millions of good people live happy, productive, moral lives without believing in a god.
“Reverend Barker, your sermon was so meaningful. I want you to know that I felt the spirit of God on your ministry tonight!” And I thought, “You did? What does that tell us about the game we are playing?” Of course, I would have said (as many do) that it doesn’t matter who speaks the word of God, and that even though I was a nonbeliever, the message is the same. But this woman told me that she “felt the spirit” on my ministry. I realized that the whole sermon /worship setup is a huge drama that we are all acting out, not just the person in the pulpit, but the audience as self-selected
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Yet I feel I can demonstrate an alternate, rational basis for those values outside of a system of faith and authority.
But doesn’t this make it a status symbol? “My crown has more jewels than yours!”
“Yes,” they finally answered, but not without a great deal of discomfort. Perhaps it was not the best lunch topic or the most diplomatic way to treat friends, but I wanted to make the brutality of Christianity real to them. I knew it would be hard for them to imagine their God punishing someone like me. I later heard that they were perturbed with me for having coerced them to say I was going to hell. It forced them to acknowledge that, as much as we wanted to be friends, their religion considers me the enemy.
I’ll tell you, this is a great way to test your friendships. Imagine doing this yourself. If you are an atheist, try telling your friends that you have become a born-again preacher. If you are a lifelong Republican, announce that you have switched parties. How many of your “friends” would stay your friends? Some undoubtedly would, because your friendship is a true horizontal peer relationship of unconditional admiration and enjoyment of each other’s person.
Dave Gustaveson’s challenge to “cry out to God” was nothing less than intellectual dishonesty. One of my friends asked me simply to “pretend that Jesus is real and he will make himself real to you.” Had either of them ever “cried out to Buddha” or “pretended that Allah is real” as an acid test of their existence? These people were asking me to lie to myself.
Hmm
The same Wisconsin Magazine article quotes my father, Norman, discussing how he dealt with his son’s change of views: “I tried to straighten him out. It worked the other way around.” After Dad stopped believing in God, he was amazed at how quickly his Christian friends turned on him. “I used to think it was a tough thing to be a Christian in this big, bad world. You want to see something interesting, try not being one.” He reports, “I’m much happier now. To be free from superstition and fear and guilt and the sin complex, to be able to think freely and objectively, is a tremendous relief.”
decent, caring people in spite of their faith. They raised me with good principles. One thing they taught me by example is that you should never be ashamed to speak what you think is the truth. That lesson has stayed with me my entire life.
Calvin, he came to his defense! Well, how could
“…What if I were to be so silly as to say to you that ‘I know in my heart of hearts—I have a personal experience—that atheism is real, and I know there is no way you’re going to talk me out of it.’ What would you say to my attitude?” “Oh, I would say—and I don’t mean this in a negative way—but I would say basically you’re a person who is close-minded, in the sense that they’re not open to the other options. (Audience laughter, applause.) However, I am close-minded. You can’t prove to me that my brother doesn’t exist, because I know him personally and I walk with him.”
Falsifiability cuts both ways, of course. I am often asked what would cause me to change my mind. “What would you accept as proof that there is a God?” I can think of dozens of examples. If you were to tell me that God predicted to you that next March 14 at 2:27 a.m. a meteorite composed of 82 percent iron, 13 percent nickel and 3 percent iridium, approaching from the southwest and hitting the Earth at an angle of 82 degrees, would strike your house (not mine, of course), penetrating the building, punching a hole through your Navajo rug upstairs and the arm of the couch downstairs, ending up
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On falsifiability
scholars, I counter with a list of my own.” I held up a list of 75 highly qualified bible scholars, most of them believing Christians with at least one Ph.D. in biblical languages and related subjects, and showing the universities and institutions where they teach. Each of the scholars is convinced that the resurrection of Jesus is legend or myth.
Interesting
(That’s right—they were wrestling with the important question of whether new converts should be bodily mutilated.)
nature, there must be a lawgiver. I pointed out that this
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.
Any impartial investigator will agree that we should start with what we do know, and then proceed from there.
The burden of proof in any argument is on the shoulders of the one who makes the affirmative claim, not the one who doubts
Very well stated
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 concur that the arguments for God are ultimately unconvincing unless you are predisposed to believe. It all comes down to faith, they say. Faith would be unnecessary, they remind
us, if God’s existence were proved to be a blunt fact of reality. There would be no way to separate the (good) believers from the (bad) unbelievers. Since faith is a virtue, proof of God’s existence would deny us the opportunity to impress God with our character.
faith is valid, then anything goes. Muslims believe in Allah by faith, so they must be right.
This is the opposite of religious faith. The light does not turn on because of my expectation. Rather, my expectation is based on experience. If lights were to begin failing most of the time, I would have to adjust my expectations.
In general, atheists claim that god is unproved, not disproved. In any argument, the burden of proof is on the one making the claim.
The burden of proof is always on the shoulders of the affirmative, not the negative—innocent until proven guilty.
However, if functional complexity requires a designer, then the mind of the designer, being even more functionally complex than its creation, also requires a designer.
But in addition to religion, we also possess nearly universal urges toward sexism and racism, and although these attitudes may have been useful to some of our tribal ancestors in a brutal evolutionary way, no one would think we are obligated to maintain the truth of such beliefs in the light of modern science and morality.
There is no “universal moral urge” and not all ethical systems agree. Polygamy, human sacrifice, infanticide, cannibalism (Eucharist), wife beating, self-mutilation, foot binding, preemptive war, torture of prisoners, circumcision, female genital mutilation, racism, sexism, punitive amputation, castration and incest are perfectly “moral” in certain cultures. Is god confused?
with the definition of omniscience. Some, such as Greg Boyd, claim that God has a “limited omniscience,” that he knows everything that is knowable but that not everything is knowable, not even to God.
