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A review by banandrew
Godless by Dan Barker
1.0
Awful. Complete drivel. Do not read. I have no idea why this is so popular.
For being the president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Dan Barker is an incredibly poor writer. I hope, for everyone's sake, he is a better orator.
This book chronicles, as the title implies, the transition of an evangelical minister from fundamentalist Christianity to outspoken atheism. As he tells it in this book, the story went like this:
1) Was raised fundamentalist Christian. Father was a pastor. Did mission trips in high school, became a pastor very young, went around preaching and evangelizing and never questioning anything.
2) Learned that some Christians thought parts of the bible were figurative. Used this as inspiration to learn about what other people might think that is different than what he spent thirty years thinking. Turns out there are a lot of other things besides fundamentalist Christianity.
3) (Two pages after #2) Is now a devout atheist.
4) Writes letters to all of his friends, family, pastors he has known, and is mildly surprised to get a negative reaction!
Unfortunately, this seems to lead Barker to the notion that most people are Christians because they just haven't bothered to think about the possibility that it's not true, and that they would move on to beome atheists if someone would just tell them.
Barker spends a chapter writing about the public debates he holds with prominent Christians or other pastors, and is more than happy to tear apart their arguments by taking concepts to illogical extremes and by pointing and laughing at (admittedly, ridiculous) statements they make. He makes a point about falsifiability, claiming that his atheism is falsifiable but laughing at theists for not accepting alternative evidence:
At one point, Barker tries to argue that the concept of omniscience is self-inconsistent, since knowing everything includes the fact that you know everything, which includes the fact that you know the fact that you know everything, [...]. He describes this as infinite recursion, explaining: "An omniscient being blows the stack. It cannot function." (If he's going to bring computers into it, he might discover that this problem is easily solved with self-pointers.)
He then goes on to argue that the concept of god as outside time is senseless: "There is no way to be 'outside' of time, as if there were an edge or border to it. [...] Time is a dimension, not a thing." Barker would do well to pick up Edwin Abbott's "Flatland", for a very simple explanation of how one can exist outside of space and time.
His explanations for "Why I Am an Atheist" and his critiques of the Bible are pretty entirely paraphrased from Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason". Go read those instead.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for criticizing fundamentalist Christianity. But if you're going to do that, do it correctly and professionally---don't stoop to logical fallacies and making fun of what they say.
For being the president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Dan Barker is an incredibly poor writer. I hope, for everyone's sake, he is a better orator.
This book chronicles, as the title implies, the transition of an evangelical minister from fundamentalist Christianity to outspoken atheism. As he tells it in this book, the story went like this:
1) Was raised fundamentalist Christian. Father was a pastor. Did mission trips in high school, became a pastor very young, went around preaching and evangelizing and never questioning anything.
2) Learned that some Christians thought parts of the bible were figurative. Used this as inspiration to learn about what other people might think that is different than what he spent thirty years thinking. Turns out there are a lot of other things besides fundamentalist Christianity.
3) (Two pages after #2) Is now a devout atheist.
4) Writes letters to all of his friends, family, pastors he has known, and is mildly surprised to get a negative reaction!
Unfortunately, this seems to lead Barker to the notion that most people are Christians because they just haven't bothered to think about the possibility that it's not true, and that they would move on to beome atheists if someone would just tell them.
Barker spends a chapter writing about the public debates he holds with prominent Christians or other pastors, and is more than happy to tear apart their arguments by taking concepts to illogical extremes and by pointing and laughing at (admittedly, ridiculous) statements they make. He makes a point about falsifiability, claiming that his atheism is falsifiable but laughing at theists for not accepting alternative evidence:
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 17.4 inches below the basement floor and weighing 13.5 ounces, and if that happened as predicted, I would take that as serious evidence that atheism is falsified. If Jesus would materialize in front of a debate audience, captured on videotape, and if he were to tell us exactly where to dig in Israel to find the ark of the covenant containing the original stone tablets given to Moses—well, you get the idea. Atheism is exquisitely vulnerable to disproof. Theism is not.
At one point, Barker tries to argue that the concept of omniscience is self-inconsistent, since knowing everything includes the fact that you know everything, which includes the fact that you know the fact that you know everything, [...]. He describes this as infinite recursion, explaining: "An omniscient being blows the stack. It cannot function." (If he's going to bring computers into it, he might discover that this problem is easily solved with self-pointers.)
He then goes on to argue that the concept of god as outside time is senseless: "There is no way to be 'outside' of time, as if there were an edge or border to it. [...] Time is a dimension, not a thing." Barker would do well to pick up Edwin Abbott's "Flatland", for a very simple explanation of how one can exist outside of space and time.
His explanations for "Why I Am an Atheist" and his critiques of the Bible are pretty entirely paraphrased from Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason". Go read those instead.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for criticizing fundamentalist Christianity. But if you're going to do that, do it correctly and professionally---don't stoop to logical fallacies and making fun of what they say.