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A review by kevin_shepherd
Godless by Dan Barker
5.0
“Dan knows deeply what it is like to be a wingnut, a faith-head, a fully paid-up nut job, an all singing, all glossolaling religious fruit bat . . . The socially unacceptable habit of thinking led him directly to realize that his entire life so far had been a time-wasting delusion.” -Richard Dawkins, 2008
I purchased Godless roughly six years ago and for six years it sat on my bookshelf gathering dust. The subtitle, How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists, intrigued me enough to buy the book but not quite enough to actually read the book. Being an ex-southern baptist myself I knew firsthand that the bar for becoming an “evangelical preacher” was set pretty low. Barker may have finally reasoned his way out of the quagmire of superfluous dogma, but that was no guarantee that he could hold the attention of an enlightened, secular audience. My expectations, at least in the beginning, were not high.
“I have decided that the evidences for Christianity are not solid evidences. The bible is an unreliable document, and it is a very uninspiring document. My heart cannot accept what my mind rejects.” -Dan Barker, 1984
Godless is essentially two separate books. The first is an autobiography. Mr Barker recounts his “calling” to become a minister (at age 15) and his subsequent adventures and misadventures in Jesus Land. Somewhere around age 30 the unanswered questions started to arise—Dan calls it his “intellectual itch” that needed scratching—and by the time he was 34 he had admitted to himself that he was a secular, freethinking atheist.
“I did not lose my faith—I gave it up purposely.”
After the intensely personal autobiography comes the second book of Godless, the philosophical treatise on the fallacies and flaws of religious belief—specifically (but not exclusively) Christian belief.
There is an exaltation of reason and a debasement of superstition here quite unlike anything I’ve encountered before. Whereas thinkers like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are adept at dismantling theology from the outside-in, Barker does it from the inside-out. It is a perspective that emanates from familiarity and it speaks to the courage of an individual who chose honesty over hypocrisy even when he had everything to lose.
All 5 stars.
I purchased Godless roughly six years ago and for six years it sat on my bookshelf gathering dust. The subtitle, How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists, intrigued me enough to buy the book but not quite enough to actually read the book. Being an ex-southern baptist myself I knew firsthand that the bar for becoming an “evangelical preacher” was set pretty low. Barker may have finally reasoned his way out of the quagmire of superfluous dogma, but that was no guarantee that he could hold the attention of an enlightened, secular audience. My expectations, at least in the beginning, were not high.
“I have decided that the evidences for Christianity are not solid evidences. The bible is an unreliable document, and it is a very uninspiring document. My heart cannot accept what my mind rejects.” -Dan Barker, 1984
Godless is essentially two separate books. The first is an autobiography. Mr Barker recounts his “calling” to become a minister (at age 15) and his subsequent adventures and misadventures in Jesus Land. Somewhere around age 30 the unanswered questions started to arise—Dan calls it his “intellectual itch” that needed scratching—and by the time he was 34 he had admitted to himself that he was a secular, freethinking atheist.
“I did not lose my faith—I gave it up purposely.”
After the intensely personal autobiography comes the second book of Godless, the philosophical treatise on the fallacies and flaws of religious belief—specifically (but not exclusively) Christian belief.
There is an exaltation of reason and a debasement of superstition here quite unlike anything I’ve encountered before. Whereas thinkers like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are adept at dismantling theology from the outside-in, Barker does it from the inside-out. It is a perspective that emanates from familiarity and it speaks to the courage of an individual who chose honesty over hypocrisy even when he had everything to lose.
All 5 stars.