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204 of 217 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Barker is Still Preaching Today!, September 28, 2008
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 forthcoming edited book, "The Christian Delusion."
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94 of 102 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent, except for one possible flaw., September 22, 2008
This is a very good book. I had not been a big Dan Barker fan, but I am now. He did the extraordinary in fully responding to something I had heard from nearly every Christian I've met in the past ten or so years: "You were never really a Christian." I thought my bono fides were pretty good, having a radical conversion experience at 17, scrubbing my plans to become a marine biologist to go into the ministry, obtaining a biblical studies degree from a respected evangelical college, working in churches and for Billy Graham...but Barker has me over a barrel. I can say with Barker that I loved my Christian experience, and that I am an atheist not because of anger, disappointment, bitterness, or temptation, but just because we found that Christian claims are mistaken. They are not true. It is a painful realization that Barker quite rightly likens to a divorce, but we have to find ways to live with ourselves, and living with a lie can only work so long.
The part of the book that presents various arguments against theism is good. I've read pretty widely in atheist literature, so there was nothing really new for me there, but Barker does have a very pleasing writing style, so what I mostly got out of that section are ideas for better expressing myself on, for example, the problem of evil or Pascal's Wager.
But there's something that just about ruins the book, I think, and that's the Richard Dawkins foreword. First I must state clearly that I have enormous respect and affection for Dawkins, go to his website every day, have read nearly all of his books and articles, and count myself a huge fan. But with Dawkins, when it comes to religion you know what you're going to get, and the offering here is typically unsympathetic, coldly rational, and comically insulting. In other words, some of the very things that make his things written for atheists so compelling, fresh, and entertaining.
But in the context of the first words a reader is going to see in a book that might otherwise have made an IDEAL gift for a person questioning her faith, the tone and attitude are toxic. Again, don't misunderstand--I agree with everything that Dawkins wrote. But if an inquisitive mind is a fly, and the rest of the book is honey, the reader has to somehow buzz through a mist of vinegar to get to it. I realize that Dawkins has--deservedly--incredible cache among atheists. But this was a book with promise to reach well beyond the choir that's always singing to itself, and let some fresh air and sunshine into the lives of benighted fundamentalists. I am concerned that with Dawkins's contribution, this is less likely.
On the other hand, I could be completely, utterly mistaken. Some person with a growing set of questions might come to that foreword and think, "Yes! Finally! Someone is saying the sort of thing that I've been starting to think for some time now, and not just pitter-pattering around it but jumping in with both feet, making a statement, taking a stand. I like that very much and am now much more receptive to the rest of what the book has to say."
But I don't think that's the smart money bet.
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91 of 104 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Jaw-Dropping Book, August 28, 2008
This is a masterful book that powerfully refutes the bible using logic and reason. Powerfully written, this book should stand in the way in many of those Christian missionaries who preach the bible as an infallible book at face value.
What is also great about this book is that it uses intelligence and common sense as opposed to emotions.
This book serves as a big wake-up call to many Christians who never seriously questioned their faiths.
Dan Barker has the apparent talent in writing with an entertaining, lucid, live, and humorous way. He also has gathered a wealth of knowledge on the subjects of preaching, the bible, and Christianity and became an enthusiastic Evangelical Christian at an early age. Insomuch he became an Evangelical preacher as well as a Christian songwriter for many years. It wasn't until a later age where Dan approached his Christian beliefs by reason and thought, and thus cost him his faith altogether. It's worthy here to note that Dan is part of the "Prometheus society" which requires an extremely high IQ entrance.
With depth and clarity this book sheds light on the ignored side of Christianity that many people who adhere to this faith seem to have no real knowledge about. In this thought provoking book, you'll end up realizing that there is no real reason to believe that Christianity is greater than say, Buddhism.
Dan tells his amazing story in a very interesting and an easy to read way. He explains the various conflicts in Christian doctrines, the fallacies in Christian reasoning ( e.g. resurrection, atonement, ... etc), and the various inconsistencies and contradictions in the Bible, as well as the morality behind many of its teachings. This book is a powerful evidence that many of the Christian Preachers today preach at face value.
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