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…
We now come to my third post about Dan Barker’s book godless, in which I will discuss chapter 6 which is entitled, “Refuting God.” In it, Barker covers sixteen typical arguments for the existence of God and attempts to refute them all. They all can be categorized the following way: (1) Arguments 1-4 and 14-15…
The second section of Dan Barker’s book godless is entitled, “Why I am an Atheist.” It concludes the following chapters: Chapter 5: Why I am an Atheist; Chapter 6: Refuting God; Chapter 7: Omni-Aqueous; Chapter 8: Cosmological Kalamity; and Chapter 9: Dear Theologian. In this present post, we are going to take a look at…
One of the most illuminating, albeit frustrating, intellectual exercises one can do is to read something by someone with whom you completely disagree, and then write about what they claim and why you disagree with them. It sharpens the intellect to force yourself to not only articulate an opposing view, but to then articulate precisely…