In my previous post, I looked at Dan Barker’s comments in chapter 12 of his book, godless, in which he discusses his view regarding the issue of what the basis of morality is. My critique focused on his Fundamentalist caricature of the Bible as some sort of universal, external moral code dictated from on high,…
As we make our way through Dan Barker’s book, godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists, we now come to his chapter 12: “For Goodness Sake.” The focus of this chapter is specifically the issue of morality and the question, “What is the basis for morality?” Truth be told, it is…
Ever since 1973 and the SCOTUS ruling on Roe v. Wade, abortion has been one of the most controversial issues in American society. Although focus on abortion tends to wax and wane in the news cycle, over the past few weeks, it has been in the national spotlight once again. The thing that stands out…
As I was looking through some of my older posts, I realized I’ve done quite a few series on various books and topics. And so, I thought it might be helpful if I occasionally made a post that had links to everything in one series. So, if you like C.S. Lewis and his book “Mere…
Welcome to Part 8 of my extended book analysis of Dan Barker’s book, godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists. Try to follow this: this particular post (Part 8) is the 4th post on the 10th chapter in Barker’s book, which is the first chapter in the 3rd part of his…
The last part of chapter 10 in Dan Barker’s book, godless—How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists, Barker attempts to make the case (primarily by looking at the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes) that the Bible is a bad and immoral rule book for life. The more I read his work, the…
Welcome to Part 6 of my extended book analysis of Dan Barker’s godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists. We are currently wading through chapter 10 of his book, in which he is engaging in (my newly coined phrase) “the Barker Bolt” and jumping from decontextualized Bible verse to decontextualized Bible…
We now come to Part 3 of Dan Barker’s book godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists. Part 3 is entitled, “What’s Wrong with Christianity?” and, quite obviously, is about what Barker feels is wrong with Christianity. In Part 3, which covers chapters 10-16, he focuses on what he feels are…
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…
This evening I engaged in an online debate with the far right, ultra-fundamentalist young earth creationist Kent Hovind. It was quite a trip. I’m not sure how well it went over, but I thought I’ll share the link if anyone might be interested to see what it is like trying to arguing the genre of…