Dan Barker - Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists

I bought Godless a few weeks ago after it was recommended to me on Amazon, and I have mixed feelings about it. I really enjoyed the beginning and end where Barker talked about his own life, but I didn't care for the arguments in the middle terribly much. Partially this was because he is repeating the same arguments that I have read in so many other books lately, and partially because I did not find his style of argument nearly as interesting as Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, or Russell.

By far the most interesting part of Godless is Barker's retrospective look on his life as an evangelical preacher. It was fascinating to see the inner workings of so-called faith healings as well as how Barker's belief that the world would soon end coloured his worldview. His tiny shifts in opinion from being a fundamentalist to a liberal Christian to an atheist were also very interesting, particularly as he talked about how he didn't really realize that he was changing.

As I said, his arguments were not as interesting to me as those made in other books, but he did make two very compelling points. First was his look at how if god exists and justifies his orders to humans then he is appealing to a force or ethic outside of himself and is therefore not the source of morality, but that if he does not justify his orders then he is no more than a petty tyrant. The second compelling point was his look at how the Jesus story fits the pattern of other legends. For one thing, it has many of the same elements that older mythologies had (messiah figure born of a virgin, death and resurrection of the messiah figure, etc). Second, the growth of the miraculous elements in the story as time went by follows the typical pattern of legend growth. The earliest accounts of Jesus' life (written by Paul) have no miracles, the next (the Gospel of Mark) has a few, all the way until the most recent (John) which has many. Finally, for those who claim that the growth of Christianity occurred far too fast for it to have been based on a legend Barker points out a variety of quick-spreading legends that have influenced many including the Millerites (now Seventh Day Adventists) and the Mormons.

In general I enjoyed Godless, but I wish that Barker had devoted more time and detail to his life within Christianity and his path to leaving it rather than on his arguments against the existence of God.