Dan Barker- 2015 Gateway to Reason

all right as you're making way you back in we're getting ready for our next amazing speaker very proud of this gentleman and the work that the organization does standing up for freedom from religion nationwide always makes me chuckle when a news article comes out and they say a group from Wisconsin blah blah blah well it's their members that are doing it the group from Wisconsin is just supporting their members so if you're not a member of this group Freedom From Religion Foundation join up they are fighting for your freedom from religion now with that said we have that is Stan Barger co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation he is well known for his book godless and his new one coming out life driven purpose and what's the subtitle living a purposeful life and that is on sale and table after he gets done here he'll be happy to get that for you and I want to welcome him as a very prominent member of the community Dan Barker one two three four five six seven so who would have thought southern Missouri of all places one of our council members aboard members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation is from st. Louis and Annie Laurie Gaylor my wife she and her mother started the foundation back in the 1970s and her dad was from southern Missouri Paul Gaylor he went to Methodist Church in southern Missouri and he was one of those kids that was a born skeptic Annie Laurie his daughter my wife she's a third generation atheist but Paul Gaynor he was like eight years old or 10 years old he was in church he had to met this church here in southern Missouri and it dawned on him he was sitting in church looking at all these Missouri and believers and he looked around the church and then he said my parents are nuts he was one of those kids who never believed it never took like James Randi James Randi was like that it just never stuck right some of you are like that right you went to church and you wondered what the heck and these people I you know if it was a play or a drama you could say okay right but these people are actually believing it however on the other side of the bell curve there's people like me I went to church and I loved it and I believed it and I got goosebumps and I talked to Jesus in God with my Savior and I got tears when I sang the hymns so some of you were like that right with some of you like that you believed it all and you felt it all and was like real to you so why is there such a difference why was Paul Geller here in southern Missouri why was he just as naturally born skeptic no one told him to start doubting no one told him hey this is you know he just on his own right I really admire that and those of you that are raised without religion or had no religious I really admire that you didn't have to crawl out of any deep holes at least on for religion goes and Paul was like that and others of us are on the other side and you know my story which I tell in the book godless where I've spent 19 years preaching and loving every minute of a minute of it standing in the pulpit there's something exciting about I knew that I was called of God to be on the frontline of the army of Jesus and bring souls into the kingdom and I was that I was that guy on campus you know that guy on campus who's got the Bible under his arm and he comes it there's always a couple of them overly confident I knew what I knew what I knew and I loved it but I love this Lord and all that and you didn't know it but you were secretly starving for this message that I had and as soon as you talked with me and you looked in my eyes and you felt the Spirit of God you would feel like wow those Christians have something special they really do they're really tapped into something really transcendent and special in this low natural sphere that we're living in is nothing compared to the glories of the spiritual world all of that in the foreword to my book godless Richard Dawkins writes dan Barca was not just a preacher he's the kind of preacher you would not want to sit next to on a bus and he's absolutely right I was just that was just and it felt great you know I felt I felt like what I was doing was positive you know you you didn't know it you blind skeptics leading these empty lives meaningless life you didn't know it but it was your lucky day when God directed you to sit next to me on that bus that was you know it was not an accident it was not coincidence the Bible says all things work together for good right so I loved it I knew it I felt that I preached it and there were a lot of people who said yes after hearing my ministry there are still some people in the ministry today mark Griff was one of them he was a young teenager who said he wanted to go into ministry and his parents said don't go into the ministry but I said don't listen to your parents listen to God he's a he's an assembly of God Minister today because I encouraged him to become a preacher but you should have seen how he responded to me though after he got my letter of deconversion that I sent out in 1983 you can read that story in my book godless where I tell why I changed my mind what happened what my whole life was like and as a result I've met other ministers and clergy who have gone through the same process maybe some of you were sending school teachers like my mom was and so now some of you probably heard about the clergy project which Daniel Dennett and Lindell escola in Richard Dawkins and Elizabeth Cornwell and I sort of started and then it grew in 2011 there's now almost 650 members of it so and some are here right are there a couple of is um is Neil here just left he didn't want to hear me talk he's tired of a preacher probably him but it's to help originally out we wanted to call that sabor preacher which is kind of cute and in fact that I think Dawkins said let's call it save a preacher but clergy project now is going and to help clergy who are in the pulpit get out and to do some honest work in their life so for me I wish there bit something like that for me back in 1983 when I left it was just me and my thoughts and I became brand new atheist all on my own without ever having knowingly met another atheist of course she meet atheist and agnostics all the time but how do you know it right I used to preach that atheists were fools and empty so you would think that if you met an atheist you should immediately spot them right you should be able to see the empty life they have but it's because I think most of them keep their heads down they just don't let it be known so in 1983 I sent out I became an atheist and in 84 I sent out my letter of deconversion to the world and you can read that letter in the book godless and then a few months later about nine months later I got a call from the producer of a talk show with Oprah Winfrey as a as the host and you can see that show any of you seen it online where it's the date not only was that the very first time that I publicly spoke about my atheism after having been a preacher because what do preachers do when they leave the ministry what do they do what pulpit do they have now who do they get to talk to they just sort of you know find another job if they're lucky not only was that the first time that I had publicly spoken before any audience about my atheism it was a live TV audience as well and it was also the first time I had knowingly met any other atheists I'd known about them since then I thought I was the only one kind of when I came out of it this is way before the Internet where you could just type in atheists and find out find out how many of your neighbors don't believe but and I wasn't so nervous about being on TV that was actually kind of fun because I've been on Christian television a lot like Southern California the praise the law show in Spanish but that was also the very first time I'd spoken before a hostile audience and I got to tell you it's fun talking to you guys this is really wonderful but it's not as much fun as talking before an audience that hates you I gotta tell you it is a blast for the first couple of minutes I was kind of nervous and then and then the audience started like you've seen the show they started like yelling on us they were calling Annie Laurie a witch you know and they were like and then I just go but this is great and I just love that so I love doing I love doing debates in churches this is just because like you're saying there's a differential there you're saying something you're not just picking you the choir but you're saying just things that they have maybe never heard before or never thought about and you can make a difference so I'm not saying you should all do that maybe maybe once a preacher always a preacher some of us are just like that I don't know we can't help speaking out but also that was the day that I met Annie Laurie Gaylor and three years later we got married and now we're co-presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation so we have a videotape of the day we met which is really cool we didn't know it and there's a place in this in there if you watch it there's a place where I'm talking and you can see any Laurie going kind of I don't know what that meant but you can see it so and we showed that to our daughter Sabrina a couple years ago and Sabrina was laughing because we looked so young and I had all this hair and and there was all the 80s music in the 80s style and all that stuff and then the audience hoeper had packed that audience with you know all these bible-thumper types it was actually really good TV she's got all these Bible believers trying to get back and forth so it was it has anything changed since then it's still kind of the same same battles were fighting in the same ignorant sand but that was kind of a beginning of a new life of ministry if I can use that word which was for me exciting cuz I didn't change when I left the ministry I walked out of the pulpit I didn't change I went into the pulpit because I wanted to know what was true and speak what was true and that's why I left the pulpit so I get to talk about that and I think this is a compliment Richard Dawkins in that forward to my book godless said Dan Barker is the most eloquent witness of internal delusion that I know because I was deluded I really truly honestly believe it I wasn't faking it I was had this religious experiences and the goose bumps and the prayer and the answers to prayer and all that stuff and I loved it I didn't hate it a lot of times Christians try to say what went wrong was there some bitterness or more often they try to say oh what moral issue were you struggling with do you have some secret sin in your life you didn't want to give up because you didn't want that you didn't want there to be a God to keep you from doing this sinful immoral thing right they think if they can find some little thing it rarely has to do with the intellectual it has to do with more your personal choices in life so anyway it's been a blast we we became co-presidents in 2004 after an Gaylor the principal founder and Gaylor annular his mother died retired she died last month she died last in June kind of unexpected but not totally unexpected and you may have seen the the obituary in The New York Times about her she was cited by the Wisconsin Assembly she was also cited by the US Assembly representative mark Pocan she was internationally known for her work not just with state your separation but also with women's rights and feminism and abortion rights and all of that she started what is now the longest live longest running abortion rights charity in the country the Women's Medical Fund who says atheists don't do good things right she's helped more than 20,000 women she helped more than 20,000 women to poor women mainly to pay for abortions and a great work and she was highly criticized you can imagine in a can of Catholic state of Wisconsin and I've done a lot of debates and I got to debate dinesh d'souza I shouldn't say I got to dinesh d'souza and I you know who he is that right-wing we've done eight debates in his many states and will won't do any more and I would if he invited me again I wouldn't I wouldn't agree to it because his star has really dropped you know for a lot of reasons at least of which being convicted of electioneering or a campaign fraud and hypocritical divorce I actually met the young woman as she showed her he brought his assistant to one of our debates can you believe it he brought his assistant they only needed one room and when when the sister showed up she didn't look like an assistant she was his and I I I kind of blew it I said so are you Dinesh his daughter my fiancee well nobody knew that he was still married you know he was anyway any asset totally different story but he called me once he said Dan let's do a debate about abortion in Cleveland and I said I don't want to do a debate about it well all debate does God exist or can you be good without God or as Christianity a great moral force whatever but abortion he said well there's this right to life Cleveland there's having a big a big event and they want they want to have a debate you and me to have a debate on the issue of abortion and religion and it's on a Saturday night and I said I don't think I want to spend a whole weekend going to some Cleveland right to life group debate abortion there's better things to do and he says well I'll split the pay with you unless you get paid for this because I never charge we just do it I never charged and he said well they're gonna give me five thousand dollars and besides I told them you would so I talked it over with Annie Laurie and we both agreed this that's not the kind of debate I would want to do or that FFRF would want to do but she agree with me go ahead and do it so I went to I went to Cleveland for this it was really weird you know I like talking to hostile audiences but that was like another another knotch not just believers but all the all the regional you know anti-abortion so-called pro-life people there and the evangelicals and the nuns and they were wearing is what would Jesus do you know stickers and I got up during the debate and I said you know Jesus never said a thing about abortion he never said a thing about an unwanted pregnancy so if you Christians want to do what Jesus did keep your mouth shut about abortion so it was it was an all KD bait it was fun but uh but I went home and I took the check for $2,500 and I signed it over to the Women's Medical Fund and that was kind of delicious do you Cleveland right-to-life helped about ten poor women pay for abortions so so debates are a blast but I'm going to talk about my new book here often during debates and this has probably happened to you too you talk about all these intellectual issues right you've talked about first cause you talked about design arguments teleological and you talk about moral arguments and so you talk about history and we talk about philosophy we talk about all these issues right we're talking away often when those are kind of done with they will turn around and say but if there's no God what's the meaning of life and I suppose we're supposed to say oh I better start believing now because I want some meaning of life well I better uh you know wow I never thought of that Wow how could we be so dumb but the meaning of life and the purpose of life comes out a lot and I'm sure most of you know about Rick Warren's book The Purpose Driven Life my brother Tom is the one member of our family who did not D convert to become an atheist my brother Daryl did and so did my mom and dad which is really cool I never thought I'm it's usually other way around I never thought my mom and dad my dad was a seminary educated lay preacher and my mom was a Sunday school teacher and Assembly of God they both became atheist and so did Daryl and there's three boys and so did I and mom once told the reporter he came to her house in Apache Junction Arizona to interviewers he said you know what it's great being an atheist now because I don't have to hate anymore she said you know you know I think I'm gonna make like a sticker about that my Patsy Barker I don't have to hate anymore that's because I don't have to decide who's in and who's out who's the insider who do what do we like these people or don't worry what about gays and what about we can all just be human beings and we can all just accept each other for who we are and that was a great thing for her to say but my brother Tom is still a born-again Christian he's a great guy he's a retired high school principal he lives in Riverside California and I went to see him last fall unfortunately his marriage is falling apart for various reasons I went to his apartment and had never gone to somebody's house and you walk in and you're not quite sure why but there's something wrong about it everything looks right you're going and you look everything looks perfect he's very clean it's a very nice apartment but there was not a single book in the whole place if you ever it doesn't that make you feel when you go into someone's home there's nothing to pick up and read well there were two books right above the TV there's the Bible and The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren those two books are in my brother Tom's house and I'm not dissing him as a person he's a great guy and we we decided we love each other's brothers and let's put aside our differences in fact he's helping us because there is this stalker that we might have to get a restraining order from who's harassing FFRF and me personally and my family personally he's also putting up pictures of my grandkids and my brothers grandkids online we're gonna make book we're not going to kill them but we're gonna make them wish they were dead I mean this is a horrible horrible guy and so we're getting ready with a restraining order and my brother Tom to his credit says I'm not an atheist but I sure hate dad so he's going to help us with legal action against this Christian who's trying to harass he's doing a lot more things and and Tom and I know we disagree but we also know we're a family we love each other we had the same memories in same history and why waste our precious time together talking about stuff that divides us so was that 30 this is like a debate right it's the time but they time keep it a debate right yes okay okay never mind I actually feel more important when they're putting up the timings just like wow oh really in 10 minutes okay good so anyways so Tom and dad and Darryl you know we we kind of have this agreement let's not talk about this stuff a lot but if a couple years ago Tom sent my dad a copy of The Purpose Driven Life my dad was now a strong atheist fact he's turning 90 this month I'm gonna go see him up pretty soon and my dad looked at a couple pages and he said he's put it down and so I got to thinking well what's the power of his book so I read the purpose to it have any of you read it good it's just it's it's nothing more than newly packaged old-fashioned biblical fundamentalism that's all it is and Rick Warren became famous selling this you know self-help where it's him that's being helped it's not the people but and you know he's so famous he got to do the inaugural prayer at Obama's first inauguration remember that so he's like this big he saw I don't know how many 40 million books of this and it's just 40 days of of purpose Rick Warren starts out his book The Purpose Driven Life with the short sentence it says if not about you so guess what's the first sentence of my new book when it comes to purpose it is about you Rick Warren's book don't read it unless you want to give some money to a evangelical basically do you know why you were put in this planet it's not about you you were put here for some higher purpose above beyond to direct your life and a lot of people are a dull about when I used to talk to people in the bus why are you here what's the meaning of life what's the purpose of your life you know what why you know do you know what your future is gonna be how do you know right from wrong an awful lot of people perhaps on this side of the bell curve of human variety want and need someone to tell them from above like a parent figure here's what your life is so according to Rick Warren I'll save you the trouble reading the book you were put on this planet the purpose of your life is to know God to glorify God to fellowship with other believers in glorifying God and to get other people to come with you to church that's it that's why you were placed on this planet this whole scheme of creation in the universe and the stars and the planet and all that was for you to do that that's why you were placed on this planet how many of you want to sign up to that purpose right there should be there's usually one in every crowd that raised their hand but I think it's totally upside down and that's why I took Purpose Driven Life and flipped it this way he made it life driven purpose instead of viewing the world like I used to from a top-down mentality there's an authority up there a parent figure or a military commander or a monarch or somebody some big sovereign thing up there that is now dispensing your orders like when I was a Christian we were part of the body of Christ and we would hope to die someday and God would tell us well done my good and faithful servant you did the job that you were supposed to do your marching orders you know so that's the mentality of most religions it's a top-down way of looking at the world in fact most countries were formed that way to most countries and constitutions were based on some sovereign Authority but in the United States what did we do we took that top-down model and we did this who's the sovereign authority in our country we the people right our president is called mr. right there's no class there's no higher authority there's no although if you're a clergyperson you think you are at a higher level and the IRS by the way gives you special breaks if you remember the clergy which is one of our lawsuits finally over but that's an upside-down thing so Ulysses press which publish godless I approached him about doing a book called life driven purpose they got cold feet they took the manuscript and they said we don't want to have a book called life driven purpose because Rick Warren might sue us they got scared in fact if you see the book which came out from that was called the good atheist I have some copies there the good atheist is a good book but it's not the book I wanted they took off they took the whole thing out they took the chapters out and they just put them aside and they came out with a good atheist which is which is the good accomplishments of atheists in the world so pitch stone press last year said we'll take a stab at but we're not afraid of getting sued by Rick Warren in fact if you look at the back of the good atheist the publisher put a little disclaimer on there like their attorneys told them they should do that in case Rick Warren wants to sue us for having for using life driven purpose and do you know the Purpose Driven Life Rick Warren has actually trademarked the title what author trademarks the title of their book well he did so no one can use that as a book title you can you can take anyone else's book title in the world and use it for your own book did you know that you can't copyright a book title or a song title otherwise there'd only be one song called I love you right I mean there's how many thousands of song but Rick Warren has trademarked it and so the publisher was kind of scared and with good reason Rick Warren came to our attention back in the late 1990s when there was a lawsuit there's a provision in the IRS code that says clergy in the United States don't have to count their housing as income did you know that it's paragraph section 107 in fact that's one of our lawsuits that we're challenging and so wouldn't you like to do that every year wouldn't you like to take your taxes all your rent or all your housing just say no if that wasn't even income it would drastically lower your liability and you pay a lot less taxes so Rick Warren in the 1990s got his church to declare his entire salary as a housing allowance the whole thing he paid zero taxes and the IRS didn't like that the IRS says wait a minute this is stretching this is cheating and so the IRS made a determination that Rick Warren was cheating the taxpayers and they assessed him penalties and back payments Rick Warren sued the IRS it's called warren vs. the tax commission he sued the IRS saying but the codes 107 doesn't specify an amount ok keys can you think of anything more sleazy right it didn't say exactly you know but he probably in good conscience was arguing since the IRS code didn't specify an amount of the housing allowance I could declare whatever I wanted but clearly he was declaring a housing allowance money that he wasn't spending on housing right it wasn't all housing allowance so he was cheating US taxpayers Congress stepped in and got Rick Warren off the hook they rewarded the phrase in paragraph 107 to say that from now on the housing allowance is limited to fair rental value for home so from now on Minister still get it but it's limited to the fair rental value and in case this is some of these big megachurch pastors what's the fair rental value of the home these people these matches these people live in plus a lot of these churches ordain 3 or 4 or 5 or 7 pastors and Pat Robertson was even ordaining they're janitors you know so that they could take advantage of this anyway we heard about Rick Warren Rick Warren has a congregation that might have a Purpose Driven Life but their leader has a loophole Driven Life basically he's he was cheating and he knew it and he got away with it so the publisher was kind of afraid well he's the kind of guy who's going to sue well so pitch stone press who came out with life driven purpose my new book their attitude was and Curt there is a great there a young really up-and-coming medium-sized publisher now his attitude was bring it on kid can you can you imagine the publicity and I mean it'd be like a dream please rick warren sue us please wouldn't that be a great thing for a book or i think it it's probably not going to happen maybe he's a little smarter than he was 20 years ago but so live different purpose turns everything upside down and views the world instead of top-down where there's a master up there that we are submitting to and even islam the word Islam means submission this whole religious mentality is that we are nothing and you are everything and all you have to do is look at people when they're praying what are the postures of prayer the postures of prayer are identical to the postures of slavery there's a master who is large and big and you're small and you kneel down and you show your no threat and you go down and and what is this you're shackled your wrists are shackled together I'm no threat to you Oh big master and what does one thing that a master fears more than anything a slavery vole right because what if all the slaves did revolt right you want them to be submissive and you want them to be like sheep you want them to be quiet so even Paul in the Bible proudly boasted I am a slave of Christ the Greek word is doulos which means absolutely nothing I just like to say that to show you know that have you ever heard sermons where the minister's preaching and then they say by the way in the Greek or in the heap they just want to show you that they know it's some Greek in Hebrew so but now you know the word is doulas and that means you know Paul was a doulos of Christ so Rick Warren's got it all upside down and all backwards it's kind of like looking through the world through some binoculars but you've got them the point of the wrong way the same tool and might go a long way toward explaining why it's so hard for some of us to talk with some believers have you ever had a conversation where you think you're having a conversation but you wonder well how come is not translated how come it's not because their view in the world this way and you're viewing the world this way you're looking at the same set of facts but you're looking at through their other side of the binoculars so I make a point in life driven purpose of trying to uncover that bias one of my chapters is called religious color blindness where try to explain how I used to think you know I was the eloquent spokesperson of internal delusion I know what it's like to be deluded and it's powerful and in believer listening to you skeptic coming back is not going to be hearing what you think that believer is hearing they're going to be seeing it totally different I try to explain why that happens and how maybe we can find an end run around that so I think when I was a preacher I used to have the good news of the gospel for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son I think we atheists have the truly good news better news best news in the world better higher than any of that stuff but being submissive slaves before some master who has the power to punish us with eternal hell or whatever you consider that punishment to be and in life the urban purpose I explained exactly in one brief sentence what is the best news that we a theist do offer to the world and it's going to sound wrong and it's going to sound counterintuitive but it's really great news the news is of this there is no purpose of life and that is great news because if there were a purpose of life we would be beneath it if there were a purpose of life we would be members of that army or parts of that machine or whatever we would be fitting into some big plan up there top down model life is its own reward if there's a god what's the purpose of his life just God set up in heaven going why am I here why is there a God instead of no God you know where do I get my morals from well if there's a God doesn't he just get to be and be whatever it or he or she is so why do we think that we don't get to be instead of this top down in in life you have no purpose I make the argument that it's actually better to be bottom up because the bottom is the real world that we live in the natural world we're natural animals and so thinking that there's a purpose of life actually cheapens life but if life is its own reward if there's no purpose of life then we are free than to have our own to find or create our own purpose now to say there's no purpose of life is not to say there's no purpose in life and that one preposition makes a huge difference of verses in I remember kind Nielson wrote a book back in the early 90s of ethics without God in which he made that point there's no meaning of life but there's plenty of meaning in life and purpose whatever purpose is its natural purpose is striving for a goal you either trying to get something you want or avoid something you don't want purpose is why the branches of a tree are reaching to the river why did it why does it do that there's a need or a goal or some something you're trying to attain or something you're trying to keep away from so as long as there's problems in in life and there's going to be plenty of problems challenges as long as there are problems to meet then there's purpose in life we non-believers we atheists by saying there's no purpose of life actually enhance the purpose in life who would dare say that someone like Elizabeth Cady Stanton a atheist by the way and her friend susan b anthony who was an agnostic Unitarian who would dare say Elizabeth Cady Stanton did not have a purpose filled life in those 50 years she worked for this crazy idea that women should participate in their own democracy can you imagine that it's been less than a century less than a century ago women could not vote for their own leaders isn't that amazing it's gonna be a big celebration in 2020 huh when that Wow but 20/20 vision so people like that who lived in men's lives non-believers and yet lives of immense purpose trying to solve problems so if you want purpose in your life usually you don't have to find it it usually finds you it could be something like one of your siblings or one of your relatives dies of some rare disease and you say I'm gonna fight that disease that wasn't planned in the Big Bang that wasn't like some purpose of your life but you're choosing it you're deciding to fight this problem and meet this challenge it could be well you could make a long list of your own it could be hunger thirst predation and natural disasters shelter it can be what what else war illness fighting illness or the challenges could be the challenges of gaining knowledge through science or creating Beauty to art any of the challenges that face us give our lives immense purpose and immense meaning so there's a lot more to say about purpose and about meaning in our lives but life driven purpose is sort of summed up in that idea there's no purpose of life there's purpose in life I think it's wonderful that our lives come to an end the fact that they end is what makes them valuable if life is eternal then life is cheap what do we do with things that are rare and precious their value goes up right value increases with rarity when things get more plentiful what happens to the price price goes down the value goes down so if life it goes forever and ever and ever then it's cheap it's nothing you know it's plentiful and we're gonna live forever or not but the fact that our lives in some day is what actually increases the the preciousness of it and we can live our lives with more value more meaning more precious than sacrificing it has slaves to some master up there so you know I used to be a preacher I could talk forever and I'm gonna force myself to stop cuz do we have time for questions or oh we do we have about what fifteen minutes or ten minutes you're the boss you're the master and by the way the photographer for the front cover of life demand purposes Ingrid are you here somewhere all right over there okay she took the picture on the front so if you want a good picture you can go see Ingrid laa-laa s mr. Barker I had a question about what the FFRF might be doing currently involving the In God We Trust issue and recently in the news bumper stickers in the backs of cars in Missouri but overall bigger issues which never seem to have got tackled fully currency things like that is there anything currently in the works that can be supported we sent out a letter yeah we sent out a letter to eight or ten sheriff and police departments around the country just last week including one here in Missouri right it was that in the news they put In God We Trust on the back of the car where's that it's that close to here Stone County ok and it's not just here in Missouri but there's all over the country because in god we trust' is our national motto did you know that in the 1950s it was made our national motto so they're just saying we're just putting our national motto on on a vehicle but we think it's wrong we think is unconstitutional we tried to sue back in early 90s about In God We Trust on the money we were the third attempt a guy in California tried in the 60s Madalyn Murray O'Hair tried with American Atheists back in the 70s we tried in the 90s in it all three cases the same thing happened the judge threw it out of court without getting to the merits the judge never even took the case so in god we trust' has never been determined on its merits yet and can you can you imagine what reason the judges in each of those cases gave for disallowing us to go into court over in god we trust' on the money it wasn't standing wasn't tradition wasn't damages no it wasn't public outcry the reason the reason we can't sue over in god we trust' is because in god we trust' is not a religious race really that's what all the three judges said that it's not a religious model right it's just some ceremonial deism kind of thing it doesn't it's not really promoting religion it's not religious but I got to tell you every time we make a complaint about state your separation somebody will pull out a dollar bill and say look we've got God on our money why can't we pray before City Council so this non religious phrase according to the courts is being used to justify religious violations so so it's wrong and sometimes people say well Dan it's just some words on a piece of paper it's trivial why do you care it's just money I mean it's really nothing it shouldn't bother you at all and I say well if that's true then it shouldn't bother you if it were removed right and of course it would bother them remove why why did they care about some non-religious phrase on our money of course they want a stamp I think a lot of these religious right people are like these territorial animals they have to mark off their boundaries you know this is ours this is our this is our this is mine right we need the nativity scene in the state Statehouse grounds in anyway so with the current courts there's very little chance with the current Supreme Court of doing anything about In God We Trust Michael Newdow is still trying he's a real brave champion we admire Michael Newdow and some people some people think he's going too far but I think he's a real champion to keep pushing and pushing and pushing with the pledge and with in god we trust' so it only happened in the 1950s it's a johnny-come-lately it doesn't represent our country and it's wrong and every time I spend a dollar bill I'm advertising somebody else's religion is that American that I have to advertise someone else's religious views so we're going to try to find ways to fight it if nothing else let's get it off the back of the patrol cars who's got the microphone yeah oh she's got it I'm sorry thank you for all the work you do with that bar frf so I make sense why the religious right might be against the work that your organization does but what do you make of the sort of hit job that the Daily Show did when you think of a more progressive show why why do you think that the the left and progressives really understand that what the organization does isn't just trivial stuff why why do you think all sides of the media try and make it out to be just a frivolous and trivial lawsuits well yeah they're going for laughs it's a comedy show for one thing and you know I was twice invited to The Daily Show to do a segment one was on mother Teresa and if you saw that one and they tried to make us look like we were a conspiracy theory you know if you saw that was like a big Dan Brown thing made us look like we were complaining about nothing same thing happened when I went on was it two years ago last year about this restaurant that's giving a discount for prayer we were really certain that this time the woman giving a discount for prayer would be the butt of the joke instead of us being the butt of the joke right so it was disappointing it was silly is it was hahaha and they at least let me say a few things positive but then when I mentioned when they said what's wrong with a restaurant owner giving a discount for prayer and I mentioned the Civil Rights Act right the Civil Rights Act any place of public accommodation is not supposed to discriminate based on race and one of the one of the categories is also religion so religion falls under the Civil Rights Act and then they turned it into pole you're comparing this with marching with Martin Luther King is that what you're comparing this per thing you think this is such a big issue I don't know if any of you saw that but it was really out of the water and actually I think to the credit of most viewers many of them were really mad with The Daily Show for not seeing that and it was what's the guy's name Jason and wasn't Jason Jones Jordan yeah yeah so you know he's trying to make a career trying to make some laughs so at least the issues were out there and the mail and emails that we got from people were like why don't they get that why didn't they get that well it's comedy it's not real news it was a cheap laugh so if they call again should I go back on again I just asked him it are you hear him it in this probably nothing I asked him and if they called you would you do it and you said yep I would do it I'd go on even knowing the risks if they're gonna make you the butt of the joke it's it's uh no they did a good one well they finally did a good one okay oh great okay so anyway and so at least I get to say I was on The Daily Show you know yeah um okay so kind of a long story how I ended up in a situation but I always had a chance when his conference about two or three weeks ago and one of their I admitted I was me and they knew me they wouldn't have a lot of argument against me and like and one of the things they said was well maybe you didn't love John in the first place if you if you're a theist now and I'm thinking I wanted to be a nun I wanted to give my life to Christ oh okay I'm just standing on the lawn the person right no one's offending uh totally the time or Nia Nia I'm Todd I just finished and it's no blaming him anymore because I only came and I I don't I didn't know how do I tell them that what politely hanging that's when I didn't know how to explain it's not that I hid long time it's just that my beliefs how would you personally like it's the linking up see you inside maybe this isn't love God if you were a former pastor um how would you have responded well one thing and there's this probably it doesn't waste respond but you could say something like I did I did truly love Santa Claus it was really hard to give up you know but I grew up right so you could say something like that depends on the relationship but some of us in this audience really did love God you know what I mean putting God in the word quotes in quotes we believed that we felt it and even today I can go back in that mode and I won't do it now but I could go back in that mode speaking in tongues and I can get all the goosebumps in the feeling and it feels like there's this presence in my mind and some of you don't know what the heck I'm talking about right but some of you do right some of you know what there's a religious experience that happens to some of us and this it's probably a variation on the in the species that some of us tend to be a little more what's the word mystical maybe or something I was just about a half inch this side of hearing voices if you know what I mean just that's me and you're not like me or maybe you are we're all gonna go to church and we're all gonna have a slightly different take on what's happening in that worship service so it looks like you were a true believer and you believed it and loved it and wanted it and then you intellectually changed your mind so it's the intellectual questions that were important to me that's why I left and then later the moral questions and the emotional and even the social questions and political questions came later for me the most important question was is it true regardless of the fallout is it true or not and I think you would probably say the same thing you loved it and you believed it but you realized it's just not true wing talk later then a den it takes an awful lot to get me upset just let my training as a mediator an arbitrator I can talk to people for a long time and they can say all kinds of ridiculous things or post things or write things what have you but something did get me upset and I expected more from this particular program it was on ABC what would you do and it's a program that I watch all the time and they I don't know if you saw the show oh well I would just hope that for those of you who have seen the show and how it misrepresented how an atheist would act it just got to me I I sent my letters to ABC and what it was yeah I read about it I didn't see it though so you know about it yeah it's all over the internet but I never saw the show well I would hope a lot of people would would respond to ABC because it was a terrible misrepresentation of an atheist restaurant and I just could not get accept you know there probably are three atheist like that in the world so we had a convention in Madison in one year and most of them are dressed nice like you you know I mean it was but we had one member who was this really nice guy but he was a motorcycle driver who who came in with his long hair flowing and his face was sunburned he looked like Charlie Manson he was a really nice guy wonderful guy he sat in the front row so the evening news focused on him and they had the evening news was the atheists are in town and then they've got his picture you know it's like they're looking for what they think we're supposed to be like instead of actually asking us what are we really like and I realize you know yeah that's that's kind of unsettling yeah some owner if you could touch a little bit on the clergy project and your involvement in that and also specifically talking maybe talk about the requirements as far as how somebody qualifies for that for example if you have an organization that doesn't allow women ministers but there may be women who essentially function as such or perhaps are Christian as teachers who are serious those types of situations - would they qualify for the clergy project yeah the clergy project is for clergy whatever that word means and it can be kind of fuzzy how to define that word it's mostly ministers and priests and rabbis and nun we have some nuns in the group and some seminarians who were doing ministerial work that got out early that kind of thing they're actually doing ministry and clergy work it doesn't include Sunday school teachers and lay workers and that kind of thing although a lot of them do a lot of ministry and it might include a church choir director if it's an ordained minister who's that's the ministry is music ministry so we have some of those we have a screening committee that very carefully screens each person who wants to join and sometimes it's a judgment call sometimes the minister's wife is just as much a minister as the minute stur himself because lot of churches will hire the couple and so the ministers are an ordained minister but the wife is doing an awful lot of the ministry in the work so I think there are a couple of ministers wives that are in the group as well who are now atheists about 1/4 of the group are still active they're still preaching and ministering in some way there's about 650 in the group now so what is that more than 100 and so 150 people so and they we use pseudonyms and we tell them to use a pseudonym and in the clergy project only one or two people knows where the person actually is because of privacy and within the project itself which is a secret online forum they use their pseudonym name and they talk to each other and we encourage them don't give away too much about yourself because what if somebody did sneak in and wanted to ruin somebody's life it could really be devastating so if this clergy project it's a bit of a long story it's kind of like if I was a believer I'd say it was an act of God that brought it together you know when I left the ministry I found other former clergy fact we had we had a meeting in 1985 in Minneapolis of some former clergy and we had a panel talking about what it was like so it's going it goes way back there are people who left the ministry but and so I have a whole lot of friends and people that I've known and people who are still and I get emails from people who read my book so in 2010 Daniel Dennett the philosopher and his colleague Lindell escola did a study about preachers who don't believe which was in evolutionary psychology you may have seen that study they have since done a part two which is now a book called caught in the pulpit and when they were doing their study they realized how do you find a minister who's in the pulpit who doesn't believe how do you advertisers how do you find some because they're gonna keep their mouth shut right so Linda found a few and then she called me and I I've had a few people who they call I got secret phone calls from people don't tell anybody who I am but I'm a preacher in southern Tennessee and boy if my family if my congregation knew I was an atheist boy so so Linda and Dan took a few of those and included those people in their initial study Richard Dawkins his long time talked about we were in Iceland maybe ten years ago and Richard doctor says you know there's a lot of clergy don't believe we need to help them and he had the idea listen let's start something called save a preacher you know which is a cute idea maybe we'll use that on the brochure and then we were in Copenhagen a few years later and Richard Dawkins again went out of his way to say what can we do can we help these can we raise some money to help these clergy that are trapped to get out of the ministry so in January of 2011 Lindell escola and Richard Dawkins director Elizabeth Cornwall and I we met at the American Indian Museum in Washington DC for lunch and we decided let's form a group we didn't have a name for it we decided to start it Richard Dawkins Foundation put up all the money it was a lot of money to start this whole project in the webpage and then a bunch of the clergy members themselves including two active clergy who were still preaching who were like our admins for a while I was pretty exciting to see this work and one guy his nickname was Adam the Tennessee preacher he would he would preach this he preaches Easter morning sermon and then he closed his office door and email us you won't believe the crap I had to say today from I can't wait to get out of here I need a new job it took him about two years and during that time he was secretly helping us build the clergy project it's pretty exciting and so we've raised some money the Todd steeple Foundation made a huge grant to help with transitional job training so if they need to find new training out of the ministry into some other career and we've given out probably well I don't know maybe 20 of those grants already to people to help them get retrained and then we have a small amount of money for hardship grants if they need help right now to get out of town or something we help Jerry DeWitt for example he's gonna lose his car in his house and everything so we kind of passed the Hat you know he was sitting well-respected member of his community you know he was a minister of a well-known church and then he became an atheist and he was dumped on the streets he couldn't find a job so was that kind of a thing that happens so in 2011 we started in March with 52 members we call them the founding the founding 50 kind of like the founding fleet in Australia we caught and then it's it's about 650 now and it's it's kind of nice because it's a new organization that you don't have to join so you can support it if you like but the only members of the group are clergy including there was an actual monk Sergei was his name his nickname he was actually thrown out of the monastery by the abbot when they found out he didn't believe in God he said you're either the the abbot said to Sergei well you don't believe in God well it's simple it's either one of two things you're either mentally ill or you're demon possessed and they took him they forced him I don't know how they forced him they took him out in handcuffs because he was on medication and I think for depression they took him out in handcuffs for forced psychiatric evaluation and all they found was excessive ear wax he said and he went back to the monastery they wouldn't let him back in he couldn't get his clothes his books his laptop we interviewed him on freethought radio he was sitting on a park bench outside of a homeless shelter he didn't have anything to and he called it he called the homeless shelter of bugs and thugs because of the way the people that were there but um it was sad and he you know he was just thrown out because of it so we're trying to help some of those people and a lot of it is emotional help what books did you read how did your family react what happened to your marriage you where can I find a good secular marriage counselor where can i you know that kind of stuff we're trying to be practical with the clergy project all right thanks oh thanks Dan Barker

Channel: Gateway to Reason

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Length: 58min 5sec (3485 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 17 2015