We now come Part 4 in my series on Dan Barker’s book godless. In this post, I am going to cover his next three chapters: Chapter 7: Omni-Aqueous, Chapter 8: Cosmological Kalamity, and Chapter 9: Dear Theologian. Overall, I found these three chapters to be somewhat pedantic, with Barker choosing to engage in theoretical mind games and gymnastics.
Chapter 7: Omni-Aqueous
In chapter 7, Barker engages in a lengthy, and rather dizzying, discussion in which he tries to argue that God cannot be omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent all at the same time. The fundamental problem with the whole thing, though, is that Barker begins with systematic theological categories (i.e. omniscience, omnibenevolence, omnipotence), and then simply plays around with them in abstract terms as if they were part of a “giant God puzzle.” And then, since he can’t figure out how to make them fit together nicely in a neat and precise mathematical formula, Barker concludes, “You see? God doesn’t exist. These things don’t fit together.”
The result is a number of statements like these:
“The problem is God himself. In order for God to know everything, he has to know not only about all the unknown galaxies and extrasolar planetary systems and where all the undiscovered diamond mines and my missing socks were located, he also has to know everything about himself.” (123)
“The Christian God cannot be both omniscient and omnibenevolent. If God were omniscient, then he knew when he created Adam that Adam would sin. He knew human beings would suffer. Regardless of whether or not the existence of evil can be theologically explicated, an all-knowing Creator deliberately places humans in its path. This is a least criminal negligence, if not malice.” (124)
“At the moment of creation, an omniscient deity would have been picturing the suffering and damnation of most of his creation. This is mean-spirited.” (124)
“To admit that God uses power is to concede that God has problems, needs and physical challenges. Why drown the human race with a flood? Why not just make them disappear? Why make the earth split open to swallow the followers of Korah? Why not just whisper to Moses to expel them from the tribe?” (126)
“Since God has the desire and the power to eliminate evil, why doesn’t he? If God is truly all-knowing and all-powerful, then he is not omnibenevolent when he does not stop unnecessary harm.” (126)
“Omnipotence contradicts omniscience. To be omniscient means that all future facts are known to the person who is all-knowing. This means that the set of knowable facts is fixed and unchangeable. If facts cannot be changed, then this limits the power of God. If God knows what will happen tomorrow, then he is impotent to change it. If he changes it anyway, then he was not omniscient.” (127)
“Freewill, if it exists, requires that you not know the future. However, if you are omniscient, you already know all of your future choices and you are not free to change what you know in advance. You cannot make decisions.” (127)
The problem with all of these statements is that Barker seems to be approaching the question of God like it was a math problem or a scientific proposal. He then either interjects his own personal sense of morality into abstract questions regarding evil to condemn this “math problem god” as immoral, or he just throws out rather ridiculous snarky comments (i.e. “Where are my socks?). There is no sense trying to answer the conundrums and questions he poses because the fundamental way he is going about it is wrong.
Chapter 8: Cosmological Kalamity
Chapter 8, for me at least, what the most uninteresting chapter in the entire book. Essentially, Barker addresses the traditional cosmological argument (made famous by Thomas Aquinas) that since everything in the universe has a cause, there must be a “first cause” and an “unmoved mover” behind it all—i.e. God. The problem with Barker’s problem with the traditional cosmological argument of Aquinas is that he simply doesn’t get it right, and thus misunderstands it. You can read more about Aquinas’ arguments in this post: Thomas Aquinas’ “Five Proofs” for the Existence of God.
Since Barker gets Aquinas’ argument wrong from the start, it goes without saying that his own “rebuttal” to Aquinas’ argument (that he gets wrong) is going to end up wandering out in the weeds. And indeed, it does. The gist of Barker’s argument ends up being something like this: science observes the natural world; God isn’t part of the natural world—therefore, there is no evidence of God.
If you want to see what confirmation bias of the worldview of philosophical materialism looks like, chapter 8 is for you. If you want to actually learn anything about Aquinas’ argument, though, you can skip it.
Chapter 9: Dear Theologian
The final chapter in the second section of Barker’s book is entitled, “Dear Theologian.” It basically is Barker’s snarky attempt at comedy—as if God is writing a letter to a Christian theologian and asking him questions like the following (my passing comments will be in bold):
“Where did I come from? If you need a designer, then why don’t I? Perhaps you created me.” (148)
You clearly don’t understand Aquinas’ argument.
“If your purpose is to please me, what is my purpose? If I exist for my own pleasure, then this is selfish. I have read your writings on the meaning of life and they make sense in a theological context of human religious goals, even if they don’t have much practicality in the real world.” (148)
Simplistic. It strikes me as essentially saying, “I got no use for all yer high-fallooting learnin’!”
“You think I am lonely up here and that I created humans to satisfy my longing for a relationship with something that is not myself. Of course, this will never work because it is impossible for me to create something that is not part of myself…” (150)
“You can’t have a love relationship with someone who is not your equal. If you humans don’t have a guaranteed eternal soul, like me, then you are worthless as companions.” (150)
That is theology according to Barker. It certainly does not reflect actual biblical teaching.
“If I created hell, then I don’t like myself.” (151)
Simplistic and childish…and rather ignorant of what the Bible even says about hell.
“I know some of you Protestant theologians think that I give rewards not for good deeds, but simply for believing in my son, Jesus, who paid the punishment for your bad deeds. Well, Jesus spent only about 36 hours of an eternal life sentence in hell and is now back up here in ultimate coziness with me. Talk about a wrist-slap! He was not paroled for good behavior—he was simply released. (He had connections.) If my righteous judgment demanded absolute satisfaction, then Jesus should have paid the price in full…don’t you think?” (152)
Completely ignorant of the New Testament teaching regarding Christ’s sacrificial death. The New Testament writers were using the language of the Temple sacrificial system to explain the significance of Christ’s death. It had nothing to do with the length of time on the cross! And yes, snarky comments to boot.
“Help me out here. How am I supposed to choose what is moral? Since I can’t consult any authority, the thing to do, it appears, is to pick randomly.” (153)
As will become blindingly obvious in the upcoming posts, Barker is completely obsessed with “moral rules.”
“If perfection means something all by itself, apart from me, then I am constrained to follow its path. If I am perfect, then there are certain things I cannot do. If I am not free to feel envy, lust or malice, for example, then I am not omnipotent. I cannot be more powerful than you if you can feel and do things I cannot.” (154)
Ehhh…sophomoric word games.
Conclusion
As you can see, I was wholly unimpressed with these chapters. Hence, the short post. Hence, most of it containing quotes from the book. Sometimes, it is best to just let a writer speak for himself and get out of the way. In the next few posts, though, I’m going to camp out in Chapter 10: The Bible and Morality (I told you that you were going to see how obsessed with “moral rules” he is). His own version of the Gish Gallop (i.e. the Barker Bolt) is on full display—he covers a lot of things in the Bible, and gets just about everything wrong.
