The Good Atheist

Dan Barker

• Publisher: Ulysses Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781569758823
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Atheism

A guide to meaningful life choices for living an ethical life without theology or religious faith. How Does an Atheist Respond to the Question, What Is the Purpose of Life? For a Christian, it is faith that gives their life purpose. In his best-selling book The Purpose Driven™ Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?, Rick Warren says, "You must begin with God. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose." But as a non-believer, your purpose resides in yourself; it is yours alone to discover and develop. It's about choosing to live your own life for your own reasons. No one can dictate your purpose. You decide. This book will help you understand and appreciate why freely choosing to help and cooperate with others is the true path to finding purpose. Life does not need purpose: Purpose needs life. To punctuate this point, The Good Atheist includes inspiring biographies of humanity's true heroes—men and women who did not waste their lives as slaves to a God, but rather found purpose in enhancing life on this Earth for all of us.

PART 1

Life-Driven Purpose

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AROUND THE SAME TIME I severed my ties with Christianity, a new face appeared on the evangelical scene. Rick Warren, a young Baptist minister by training, conducted the first service of Saddleback Church in a middle school gymnasium in Laguna Hills, California. Two hundred people attended.

I didn’t pay much attention to Pastor Warren or his church at the time. I probably never heard his name mentioned. Did the world really need another ultra-conservative preacher to rail against such societal evils as abortion, gay rights, and the perils of atheism? I, for one, certainly did not.

I first took notice of Rick Warren a decade or so later. Saddleback Church had expanded into larger quarters—specifically, a large plastic tent with seating for 2,300 people at a time. Soon after, Warren rocketed into national prominence with the publication of his book, The Purpose Driven™ Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? It quickly became one of the best-selling books of the 20th century. Somehow, I didn’t get around to reading it.

But Warren’s profile kept getting higher. His church grew to become one of the largest in the United States. His hulking, goateed, twinkle-eyed, Texas-drawled presence started popping up everywhere—the Harvard School of Government, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the United Nations, to name a few. US News and World Report listed him among “America’s 25 Top Leaders”; Newsweek ranked him as one of the “15 People Who Made America Great”; and Time magazine dubbed him one of the “15 World Leaders Who Mattered Most in 2004” and, the following year, one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.” When he was selected to moderate the 2008 presidential candidates’ televised debate on religion and then to deliver the invocation at President Obama’s inauguration, I decided it was high time I found out what this guy was about.

So I finally read his book—and I was appalled.

Never mind that it is filled with misleading quotes out of context and tortured interpretations of verses picked and chosen from no fewer than 15 different translations of the bible. Never mind that it completely overlooks a few matters such as the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension—central events in the New Testament, at least back in my Christian days. As I read on, it slowly dawned on me that The Purpose Driven™ Life is all about promoting slavery.

“It’s not about you,” Warren confidently informs us. You have no say in your own purpose. Falling under the spell of the bible and the myth of a supernatural creator, Rick Warren claims to know that a god scripted your role before you were born. “His purpose for your life predates your conception,” Warren says. “He planned it before you existed, without your input! You may choose your career, your spouse, your hobbies, and many other parts of your life, but you don’t get to choose your purpose.” And what exactly is the purpose of life, according to Warren’s book? It is to worship God, find fellowship with Christians, become like Christ, serve others, and evangelize. That’s it! You were born so that you can go to church and convince others to join you.

“If you want to know why you were placed on this planet,” Warren assures us, “you must begin with God. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose.”

It follows that those of us who do not hold Warren’s beliefs lead empty lives: “Without God, life has no purpose, and without purpose, life has no meaning. Without meaning, life has no significance or hope.” Apparently, Rev. Warren hasn’t met many atheists. He seems forgetful or unaware of the fact that hundreds of millions of good people on this planet do not “begin with God,” do not believe in a god, yet live happy, moral, hopeful, loving, meaningful, productive, purpose-filled lives. Has Warren ever talked with any of us good atheists? We don’t think we are the ones with the problem. We know we are alive. We think it is sad that so many Christians pretend to have no purpose of their own, that they must bow as servants before someone else’s plan for their lives, especially before a mythical slave master!

If you need a purpose-driven life, you are an actor in someone else’s play. You are following a script, and it’s not even a good one. If your life only has meaning while it is being directed in someone else’s movie, you have no life of your own. You have been subjugated, cheated, and robbed. We atheists think you deserve better. You should emancipate yourself and reclaim your rightful property.

A Slave by Any Other Name

Like Rick Warren, when I was a Christian I used to preach that being a member of the “Army of God” or the “body of Christ” is more than a weekend sport. Jesus was the Lord, the King, the Coach, the Director not just of a movie or a team, but of your entire life. Christ was the Master, and we were the slaves. Look at the opening verses of these New Testament books:

“Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God.” (Romans 1:1)

“Paul, a slave of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ.”

(Titus 1:1)

“James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

(James 1:1)

“Jude, the slave of Jesus Christ.” (Jude 1:1)

“Simon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ.”

(II Peter 1:1)

If you look up these verses in most English-language bibles, you may see “servant” or “bondservant” instead of “slave.” These euphemisms for the unambiguous Greek word doulos, which simply means “slave,” have been in use since the bible was first translated into English, at a time when British society had many “servants” but few “slaves.” In the Roman Empire, on the other hand, virtually all servants were slaves, though not all slaves were servants. Modern historians estimate that over 25 percent of the population of Rome, 30 to 40 percent of Italians, more than 50 percent of Gauls, and 75 to 90 percent of residents in some other parts of the empire were slaves, so the word doulos held no ambiguity for the people of Jesus’ time.

The submission to someone who owns and controls your life is subjugation. Many modern translators, living in an enlightened world shaped by abolitionists, find it hard to imagine that their “Good Book” would actually endorse what we now know is abhorrent, so they substitute “servant” for “slave” to make the bible more palatable, if not more honest.

The early Christians were proud to be slaves! “If I was trying to please men,” Paul wrote, “I would not be a slave of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10) And it’s not just the apostles. All Christians are required to “bring every thought into captivity unto the obedience of Christ.” (II Corinthians 10:5) I don’t know about you, but to me “captivity” does not sound like freedom—that verse sounds like a celebration of brainwashing and mind control. “If any man will come after me,” Jesus said, “let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” That’s slave talk.

In a 2007 sermon called “Slaves for Christ,” evangelical preacher John MacArthur said:

We are, as believers, slaves of Christ ... You do have a personal relationship to Jesus Christ: you are His slave ... When you give somebody the gospel, you are saying to them, “I would like to invite you to become a slave of Jesus Christ, to give up your independence, give up your freedom, submit yourself to an alien will, abandon all your rights, be owned by, controlled by the Lord.” ... We are slaves, happily so, gladly so.

According to Paul, we were sold at a slave auction: “For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (I Corinthians 6:20) Temporary voluntary service to others is meritorious and can even provide some purpose in life if it is part of a plan of your choosing, but to be a slave and brag about it is sad. Worse, to want someone to be your slave is despicable.

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If It’s Friday, This Must Be Servitude

To comprehend the implications of slavery and servitude in Britain soon after the bible was translated into English and made widely available to lay readers, take another look at one of the first novels published in the English language, Daniel Defoe’s immensely popular Robinson Crusoe (completed in 1720, about a century after the King James Bible, in which the word “servant” was substituted for “slave,” became England’s official bible). Defoe had plenty to say about slavery and Christianity in the British colonial era.

As a child, I was fascinated with the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, an English merchant who managed to survive after being shipwrecked on a deserted island, utilizing the available resources and his own ingenuity. My eyes widened as I imagined that lone bare footprint in the sand. It was high adventure, featuring two men from different cultures who become “buddies” and overcome difficulties together.

I recently decided to re-read Defoe’s novel—the entire unabridged “adult” version—and discovered that it wasn’t like that at all. This time I was shocked by what jumped out at me. In my youth, I hadn’t realized that Crusoe was a slave trader himself, and apparently a missionary to the heathen as well.

Early in the novel, Crusoe is captured by Moorish pirates, who enslave him for two years. He finally escapes with the help of another slave, an Arab teenager named Xury. The two are rescued by a Portuguese ship bound for Brazil. There Crusoe buys a tract of land to turn into a plantation. How does he, a recently freed slave, get the money to pay for his land? Well, by selling Xury to the Portuguese captain as a slave! The irony is apparently lost on Crusoe, who sees no contradiction between the exploitation of a brown-skinned heathen Muslim and the natural rights of a white-skinned Christian Englishman created by God “in His own image,” as Genesis 1:27 says, even though they served together as slaves on the same boat.

Crusoe does not simply accept slavery—he has a thirst for it. He later sets sail back across the Atlantic to bring slaves from Africa to work on his plantation, but a storm wrecks the ship on an island off the South American coast, and all the crew and passengers except him drown.

Over years of solitude, Crusoe learns that warlike Indians sometimes land on “his” island to hold cannibalistic rituals on the beach, during which they sacrifice other indigenous people they have captured. Hellbent on his original purpose of getting a slave of his own, Crusoe plots to “save” one of the victims. Watching carefully from a distance, he sees one of the prisoners bolt and run past him, then steps in and kills the two pursuers. The escapee, in gratitude and fear, kneels down to swear allegiance to his savior.

And then he kneeled down again, kissed the ground, and laid his head upon the ground, and taking me by the foot, set my foot upon his head: this, it seems was in token of swearing to be my slave for ever . . . I made him know that his name should be Friday, which was the day I saved his life ... I likewise taught him to say Master, and then let him know that was to be my name.

After 28 years, Crusoe is rescued, and Friday goes with him to travel the world as his servant (though there is no indication that he gets paid for his services). Crusoe discovers that the Portuguese sea captain from his youth has banked the profits from the Brazilian plantation and made him (though perhaps not Friday) a rich man. Returning from Portugal to England, the pair are attacked by wolves in the snow. Crusoe escapes, but Friday is devoured, having laid down his life for his master one last time.

Throughout their lives together, the Indian and the white man apparently never call each other by their real names, nor does either of them find anything unnatural about Friday’s sacrificing his entire life by submitting to his “savior” as a slave. The implication is that slaves are voluntary participants in their own bondage. One would think that Crusoe, having saved a person’s life, would be happy to know that he was free to resume his own life, perhaps to be reunited with his own people. Why should Friday throw away his future, forsaking his family and his own dreams, to spend all his time in the service of a hermit? To both men, “salvation”—specifically saving Friday’s life—meant something far different than it would to us today. The whole scheme served to glorify Crusoe, not to truly save Friday. Crusoe’s arrogance and greed are satisfied at the expense of denigrating Friday.

It may throw some light on Robinson Crusoe’s world view to notice that one of the first things he does with his new slave is to convert him to Christianity. The story of “Master and Friday” comes across as a not-so-benign metaphor for “God and his doulos.” Crusoe is deeply religious and thinks civilization requires adherence to the teachings of Jesus. Some scholars speculate that Defoe’s choice of the name “Crusoe” was inspired by the word “cross,” from the same Latin root word as “crusade” and “crucifixion.” Historically, look what has happened when the purpose-driven Christians, bringing “glory to God,” have come into contact with non-Christians, especially with “savages” and “infidels.” Crusades, invasions, colonizations, exploitations, holy wars, and forced conversions—it happened in Africa and Hawaii, and to my family’s native American ancestors, and everywhere else the “good news of the Gospel” was spread.

Of course, Robinson Crusoe’s racial and religious attitudes likely were not shared by author Defoe, whose principal occupation was that of satirist and pamphleteer. Robinson Crusoe may have been a veiled satire. Defoe wrote and published more than 800 tracts, many of them veiled but no less scathing attacks on the government and the church. He had plenty of time to contemplate matters of freedom and isolation while serving several prison terms for his seditious pamphlets, as well as for nonpayment of debts. He also lived for years as a “Sunday gentleman”—a fugitive who only appeared in public on Sundays, when the law would not allow arrest warrants to be served. Whether he actually went to church is less clear, though.

When it came to religion, Defoe professed to be a Dissenter, part of a sect that opposed the established church institutions of the time. Some Rational Dissenter groups of Defoe’s era evolved into the tolerant Quakers and liberal Unitarians of today.

Whether Defoe intended his novel as satirical or serious, the attitudes embodied by Robinson Crusoe present a disturbing view of the relationship between servitude and Christianity that persists to this day.

The Lord Taketh Away

Before we leave the colonial Caribbean, we might wonder what became of Friday’s family. Near the end of the novel, Friday’s father shows up, having paddled a canoe from his home on a larger island nearby that was occupied by Spaniards. Some scholars contend that the fictional island on which Crusoe and Friday were stranded was inspired by the real island of Tobago, near the larger island of Trinidad.

Author V. S. Naipaul was born in the town of Chaguanas, Trinidad. In his acceptance speech for the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature, Naipaul said:

One day in the British Museum I read a letter from the King of Spain to the governor of Trinidad. It was dated October 12, 1625. “I asked you,” the king wrote, “to give me some information about a certain nation of Indians called Chaguanes, who you say number above one thousand, and are of such bad disposition that it was they who led the English when they captured the town. Their crime hasn’t been punished because forces were not available for this purpose and because the Indians acknowledge no master save their own will. You have decided to give them a punishment. Follow the rules I have given you; and let me know how you get on.”

This is a chilling letter. We don’t know exactly how the Catholic Spanish governor managed to “get on” with the recalcitrant indigenous people, but we do know that they were wiped off the planet. Today, Chaguanas is the largest and fastest-growing town on Trinidad. But something is missing. There is no trace of the Chaguanes people or their culture anywhere in Trinidad, an island named for the trinitarian deity of the Christian invaders. Those free local people, descendants of the early settlers of the island, were apparently exterminated in a holy genocide, all because of their “bad disposition” in resisting foreign invasion and Catholic conversion. They were punished for the crime of acknowledging “no master save their own will,” for refusing to bow to the One True God. Because those natural human beings had their own purpose and did not submit to the “purpose of life” of bringing biblically mandated “glory” to the Lord of those violent dictators, they could not be tolerated. Since...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• PART 1 - Life-Driven Purpose
• PART 2 - Profiles in Nonbelief
• Biographical Sources by Subject
• Additional Sources
• Acknowledgements
• Index of Personal Names
• About the Author
• Copyright Page