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

by Dan Barker

I was forced to admit that the bible is not a reliable source of truth: it is unscientific, irrational, contradictory, absurd, unhistorical, uninspiring and morally unsatisfying.

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 participants without whom there could be no preaching. We were all playing along with the illusionary meaningfulness of it all.

You can’t believe if you don’t have the freedom not to believe.

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

The claim that I am an atheist because I don’t understand “love” is particularly ironic. I do understand what love is, and that is one of the reasons I can never again be a Christian. 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.

If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are admitting that the assertion can’t be taken on its own merits. If something is true, we don’t invoke faith.

Truth does not ask to be believed. It asks to be tested. Scientists do not join hands every Saturday or Sunday and sing, “Yes, gravity is real! I know gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!” If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about the concept.

it did not take long to discover that there is no great mystery to morality. 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.

Without the Ten Commandments, would it never have dawned on the human race that there is a problem with killing? Prohibitions against homicide and theft existed millennia before the Israelite story of Moses coming down from Sinai.