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A review by rodhilton
Godless by Dan Barker
3.0
Godless has the potential to be more interesting book than a lot of the other "New Atheist" books, because it's written by someone who was once very religious and lost his faith. Beyond that, the author, Dan Barker, actually used to be an evangelical preacher.
While Barker's unique perspective informs a great deal of the more interesting aspects of the book, Godless is still deeply flawed. The main problem with it is that it lacks focus - Barker seemed to decide he was only going to write one book, so he put two or three books worth of material in a single book. To make matters worse, it's not particularly well-organized, and the book comes off as something of a mess - a random collection of thoughts.
Each individual chapter is extremely well-written, but where those chapters connect to each other and where the book is going remains largely a mystery while reading. There also seems to be a great deal of padding - the book could have been shortened without losing any of the content. Ultimately, the book is in need of a good editor.
There are a lot of interesting thoughts and arguments in the book. Lots of points I'd never before considered, lots of angles about religion and The Bible that were new to me, so it wasn't just a retread of the same old anti-apologetics. Because of this, I'd say the book is very much worth a read, but expect to do a lot of skimming - I often wound up skipping entire sections after getting the gist of what they were about.
While Barker's unique perspective informs a great deal of the more interesting aspects of the book, Godless is still deeply flawed. The main problem with it is that it lacks focus - Barker seemed to decide he was only going to write one book, so he put two or three books worth of material in a single book. To make matters worse, it's not particularly well-organized, and the book comes off as something of a mess - a random collection of thoughts.
Each individual chapter is extremely well-written, but where those chapters connect to each other and where the book is going remains largely a mystery while reading. There also seems to be a great deal of padding - the book could have been shortened without losing any of the content. Ultimately, the book is in need of a good editor.
There are a lot of interesting thoughts and arguments in the book. Lots of points I'd never before considered, lots of angles about religion and The Bible that were new to me, so it wasn't just a retread of the same old anti-apologetics. Because of this, I'd say the book is very much worth a read, but expect to do a lot of skimming - I often wound up skipping entire sections after getting the gist of what they were about.