Dan Barker's life is an amazing testimony to the power of reason and science over the delusion of believing in Christianity. As an influential Christian evangelist and song writer he shares in this book why he could no longer remain a Christian, and why he became an atheist. It is a powerful and profound story that almost brought tears to my eyes, having experienced a similar change of mind as a former minister and apologist for the Christian faith.
If a skeptic wants to get into the mind of a Pentecostal Christian then she needs to read Barker's story. Dan tells of how everything that happened had a "spiritual significance" for him, even to the point of following so-called divine hunches while driving, to turn right, and then left, wondering if these hunches were actually voices from God. Dan tells of a time when he followed them and found himself at a dead end in the middle of a cornfield! He concluded God had merely tested him to see if he'd be faithful! Isn't that the hoot!
If a Christian wants to say people like Dan and I leave the faith because we just didn't want to believe, then she needs to read Barker's story. Dan tells us that this process "was like tearing my whole frame of reality to pieces, ripping to shreds the fabric of meaning and hope, betraying the values of existence...It was like spitting on my mother, or like throwing one of my children out a window. It was sacrilege." Right that.
As he became an atheist he went through an "awful period of hypocrisy." Especially moving was when Dan, who had recently become a closet atheist, was asked to preach in a service where an openly atheist person named Harry was in attendance. Dan shares how he wanted to say, "Harry! You are right, I'm sorry. There is no God, and this is mumbojumbo nonsense." That was his last sermon. This story highlighted for me how hard it is to leave that which we had invested so much of our lives in. It can be very painful to leave what you've believed so fervently and preached with such intensity for many years. You feel lost. It's a real struggle. You don't really want to leave. But leave it he did.
Dan has some interesting and creative arguments as well, when it comes to the Kalam argument for the existence of God, and the resurrection of Jesus, two kingpins of William Lane Craig's apologetic. He critiques the coherence of the concept of the theistic God too. In one chapter we find a letter written by God to theologians where he asks them to explain where he came from, how he decides what is right and wrong, and even who he is.
Many skeptics merely list some Bible contradictions, as if that's all they need to do to debunk the Christian faith, and Dan lists plenty of them. But he also goes into some depth in a separate chapter on one of them, to show he could do that with the others he merely listed. He focused on the discrepancy between Acts 9:7 and Acts 22:9, with regard to whether the people with Paul on the Damascus road heard the so-called heavenly voice, or not. Dan made his case.
I don't think he made his case that Jesus was not a historical person though, and I think such an argument will put Christians off. Only skeptics who do not accept the Christian faith will consider it, and it indeed is a worthy question. Also, I think there are several other issues Dan could've dealt with that he didn't, like the coherence of the concept of a triune God, the incarnation, the atonement, the devil, and the resurrection of the body.
While I myself am quite familiar with the arguments in the book, I especially liked his personal story from being an evangelist to one of America's leading atheists. He is a great writer, a creative writer, and it shows in this book. In it he talks about his subsequent debates (64 of them so far!), the debate tactics he's used, as well as some of the court cases he's been involved in on behalf of the separation of church and state. He also shares a personal painful story of when his pregnant wife, Annie Laurie, had an eclamptic seizure (look it up) and survived, giving birth via c-section to their daughter Sabrina. At no time during this traumatic experienced did either of them pray to god for help. "We didn't even consider it," he wrote.
While Barker says that "atheism has no hierarchy, no clergy and no chosen people more `holy' than anyone else," he is surely to be considered the reigning bishop of those former Christians and ministers who have "lost faith in faith." This is his new church, and he's still preaching today. Instead of being "brothers in Christ" we are now "brothers in reason." I greatly appreciate my older brother.
When you add to his book my comprehensive approach to debunking Christianity in which I spend over half of my book defending an anti-supernatual bias before examining the biblical evidence in the last half of it, I consider us to be brothers in a tag team wrestling match made in hell against believers.
The question for Christian believers is why God let Dan slip out of his hands if he knew in advance he would lead others "astray" from the fold like he has so effectively done. He's now preaching a new message, a powerful message, that God does not exist and that we can do better without such a belief.
Preach on brother! Preach on!
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I'm the author of "Why I Became an Atheist," and the edited books, "The Christian Delusion" and "The End of Christianity."
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