Dan Barker's "Godless" is marvelous

There's atheists, and then there's Atheists! Dan Barker is one of the latter, an activist, in-your-face, eloquent promoter of "Who knows?" over "I have faith that..."

I've mentioned Barker's book, "Godless," in quite a few previous posts. (To find them, scroll down and use the Great Genuine God Google search box in the right column of this blog; type in "Dan Barker.")

Barker speaks of what he knows when he writes about religiosity, because he used to be an ardent evangelical Christian preacher. Eventually he saw the light and became an atheist agnostic.

If that sounds funny, Barker explains:

People are invariably surprised to hear me say I am both an atheist and an agnostic, as if this somehow weakens my certainty. I usually reply with a question like, "Well, are you a Republican or an American?" The two words serve different concepts and are not mutually exclusive.

Agnosticism addresses knowledge; atheism addresses belief. The agnostic says, "I don't have a knowledge that God exists." The atheist says, "I don't have a belief that God exists." You can say both things at the same time. Some agnostics are atheistic and some are theistic.

...Agnosticism is the refusal to take as a fact any statement for which there is insufficient evidence... Basic atheism is not a belief. There is a difference between not believing there is a god and believing there is no god -- one is the absence of belief and the other is the presence of belief.

Here's some selections from Dan Barker's final chapter which I liked.

On the increased value of human life when you don't believe

We atheists believe in life before death. Before we were born, there was a very long time, perhaps an eternity, when we did not exist, and it did not bother us one bit. The same will be true after we are dead. What matters is that we are alive now. These living, breathing, hurting, singing, laughing bodies are worth something, for their own sake.

...If life is eternal, then life is cheap. If we waste any moment of our precious lives on the hope of an afterlife, we rob ourselves of real joy and value in the here and now. Our lives are all we have, and we should enjoy them to the fullest, minute by fragile minute.

On the purpose of life

"If there is no hope of eternal life, then what is the purpose of life?" is a question we atheists often hear. My response is that there is indeed no purpose of life. There is purpose in life. If there were a purpose of life, then that would cheapen life. It would make us tools or slaves of someone else's purpose.

Like a hammer that hangs on the garage wall waiting for someone to build something, if we humans were designed for a purpose then we would be subservient in the universe. Our value would not be in ourselves. It would exist in our submission to the will of the toolmaker. That is slavery to a master, or infant dependency on a father figure. Besides, if there is a god, what is the purpose of his life? If he doesn't need a purpose, why do we?

...There is no purpose of life. Life is its own reward. But as long as there are problems to solve, there will be purpose in life. When there is hunger to lessen, illness to cure, pain to minimize, inequality to eradicate, oppression to resist, knowledge to gain and beauty to create, there is meaning in life.

A college student once asked Carl Sagan: "What meaning is left, if everything I've been taught since I was a child turns out to be untrue?" Carl looked at him and said, "Do something meaningful."

On the reality of spiritual experiences

"But my personal religious experience of knowing and loving God is so special," believers will often say, "that I feel sorry for you atheists who have nothing like that." Oh, really? I play jazz piano.

...Suppose I were to say, "Oh, you poor non-jazz musicians; you don't know what you are missing. I can't describe it to you, and even if you listen to us you are not going to understand what is happening in our minds. It's very real and you'll just have to take our word for it."

You would understand that I am talking about something that is happening to me, not to you, and the fact that you lack my inner experience is no threat to your own self-worth or worldview. What if I were to say that the only way you can have true meaning in your life is if you practice piano for four hours a day for 20 years and learn to play jazz, like I did? You would think I was joking, or seriously deluded.

I do not deny that spiritual experiences are real. They happen all over the world, in most religions. I deny that they point to anything outside of the mind. I had many religious experiences, and I can still have them if I want. As an atheist I can still speak in tongues and "feel the presence of God."

...I know some atheists who pooh-pooh religious experiences, thinking they are all made up, purely psychological tricks of an unsophisticated mind. But they are wrong. Religious experiences are very real. I had them as a believer, and I can duplicate them as a nonbeliever.

Most of us have had convincing dreams. Suppose you had a horrible nightmare that a bogeyman was crawling in your bedroom window. You sit up screaming, waking up the rest of the house. Your hands are sweating and your heart is pounding and your breath is shallow. No one would deny that you just had a very real experience. That nightmare was a powerful moment, with physical consequences. Based on your behavior alone, we would conclude that something happened to you. 

But there is no bogeyman crawling through the window. Once you realize it is a dream, you can relax and go back to sleep. That's how it is with me. I have realized that these religious experiences that I had, and can still duplicate if I should desire, are all in the mind. Of course, why would I want a phony religious experience -- especially the nightmare of hell? -- when I can have something more beautiful playing the piano?

Comments

[George]

I dont think this guy knows if he;s coming or going.

"I know some atheists who pooh-pooh religious experiences, thinking they are all made up, purely psychological tricks of an unsophisticated mind"

I believe quite the opposite, so he is not speaking for me as an atheist or agnostic. I believe in all probability that religious experiences are psychological tricks of an immensely sophisticated mind, not an unsophisticated one, and that under the right circumstances, anyone can have them. i certainly don't believe that ppl who have such experiences are dumb.

This aspect of mind, to be tricked or fooled or percieve erroneously, is inherent to every human mind. Not only does mind have an imaginative aspect which allows us to think abstract thoughts but also to create unreal scenarios which make for great stories of fiction. Countless experiments have shown visual processing errors of mind, of missing things or seeing only one aspect of a drawing.

These tricks or errors in perception are inherent to every human mind.

Instead what atheists suggest is to be vigilent of the complex mind's susceptability to illusion. One way of doing so is by exercosing another aspect of mind, lucid rationale thought. So if you think you have just seen God in your porridge, think about how likely that is.

Gotta be weary of an evangelist turned activist atheist, sounds like he needs his own talk show rather than anything else. how can an atheist talk in tongues? nonsense.

[Blogger Brian]

George, I'll agree with you that Barker could have made his point a bit more clearly. But he has an excellent understanding of how believers believe, both from his own experience and an obvious extensive reading of scientific and psychological literature.

He's participated in many debates with religious believers, so Barker knows the arguments used in defense of the reality of "spiritual experiences." What he's getting at here, I think, is this:

Some people consider that spiritual experiences don't seem genuinely real to the people having them. They supposedly have to talk themselves into the experiences, so to speak, by keeping in mind certain concepts or dogmas: "Jesus loves me; Jesus is with me."

But like you say, the human mind is more sophisticated than that. Unconscious processes are operating continually which "preprocess" our experiences of both outside reality and our inside world.

I'm not surprised that Barker knows how to turn on his speaking in tongues experience, given that he used to do this so often as a true believer. This shows that this experience isn't only a matter of belief, since he no longer believes that a divinity is speaking through him.

Rather, I took Barker's comment to mean that when the mind/brain is put in a certain state, it responds in a certain way. Most of us (me, certainly) have had the experience of talking to a dead loved one that creates a very real emotion, almost as if they were still with us.

I know that my mother is dead. I don't believe that she is still alive. Yet my eyes can begin to fill with tears if I say certain things inside my head and get myself in a particular state of mind. I understand why you end with your "nonsense," but in my experience it isn't really nonsense but a reflection of how the complex human mind can conflate imagination and reality.

[Catherine]

Brian, I agree, humans are wonderfully complex. I disagree that the human mind conflates imagination with reality when it comes to all the 'co-incidents' that have happened throughout my life, or the long distance healing that actually works almost immediately on the person who hasn't got a clue that it is actually happening, and so if I go up to the front of the house as a non-believer while everyone is talking in tongues, I will not be in the least suprised if I talk in tongues too without effort or imagination. Pre-cognition is also a fact that many of us have experienced.

[George]

Brian,

I empathise alot with that post, particularly the last paragraph, but if we are to understand anything about this life, does it do us any good to get caught up in our emotions when we are seeking the truth?

Emotions are what make us human, and we will never rid ourselves of them, nor do i think we should do so, as some traditions would seem to suggest that we step away from desires and attachments, would mean we not only give up the suffereing but also the unexpected joys that occur.

I say rather than distancing ourselves from these emotions, recognise them for what they are, but also that its rational thought which offers the most lucid moments of clarity and truth.

I probably should not have used the word 'nonsense', but i get irritates at these guys who turn from one end of the spectrum to the other. i mean Barker goes from a raving happy clappy evangelist speaking in tongues to an activist atheist.

not sure this guy has the first inkling as to what considered rational lucid balanced skeptical enquiry is all about.

[Catherine]

George, he was doing his research as an evangelist. He involved himself and could see the results in himself and got his own reactions as he studied and experienced. He did a U turn which shows he was honest and did not care for his reputation built up as a preacher.