Showing results by author "Dan Barker" in All Categories

For thousands of years, holy books have told us that such a life is available only through obedience and submission to some higher power. Today, the faithful keep popular devotionals and tracts within easy reach on bedside tables and mobile devices, all communicating this common message: Life is meaningless without God. Former pastor Dan Barker eloquently, powerfully, and rationally upends this long-held belief.

Dr. Daniel Fry, an engineer in charge of the installation of instruments for missile control and guidance at White Sands Proving Ground near Las Cruces, New Mexico, was whisked away on an 8,000-mile flying saucer ride from White Sands to New York City and back. Thus begins his instruction by the illustrious Venusian thinker, Commander Valiant Thor, who wanted everyone on Earth to understand the truth about our existence and how we can spiritually profit from the beneficence of extraterrestrial contact.

Do we have free will? And if we don’t, why do we feel as if we do? In a godless universe governed by impersonal laws of cause and effect, are you responsible for your actions? Former evangelical minister Dan Barker and author of God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction unveils a novel solution to the question that has baffled scientists and philosophers for millennia.

What drives us to be good? How do we even know how to be good? Philosophers and theologians have dealt with such questions for millennia, but Dan Barker thinks the answers are not so complicated. In Mere Morality, he argues there's no need to appeal to supernatural commandments or the fear of some higher power when considering morality. Stripping “good" and "evil” down to the basics, he offers a simple compass for navigating life's most difficult moral and ethical dilemmas.