Dan Barker - Life Driven Purpose

[Music] [Applause] thank you atheist Foundation of Australia for putting on this wonderful event all you people going to hell in one hand basket here an amazing thing you have done thank you also David and Lee and Mary Gilroy wherever she is she picked us up she picked me and Annie Lori up at the airport and drove us down to Lauren where we had a few days of seeing the beautiful not God's country but the beautiful Godless country of Australia the oceans The Cliffs we saw koala bears in the trees we saw the birds we saw the 12 apostles which are crumbling by the way uh religion is crumbling and thank you Shelly Shel seagull for driving us to go see the Penguins the other night shelle's going to be singing tomorrow night uh we saw a lot of wonderful sites we also saw by the way I'm going to move away I spent so many years in the Pulpit I think I'm going to leave the pulpit behind here and uh come out here um we also saw a creationist an Lori and I went down to Cape Atway and we went up that beautiful lighthouse if any You' ever seen that Lighthouse you go up Circle all the way to the top and uh we got up there and it was gorgeous scenery and they have this guy it's it's not a functioning Lighthouse anymore but they have this Lighthouse Keeper up there anyway this kind of salty old guy you know um and he asked us why why did you come to Australia I said this was Annie Lor's first visit to Australia and it's beautiful here and she said well we're here for the global atheist conference and he said atheist what's that and Annie Lori said we don't believe in God we're people who don't believe in God and he said why don't you believe in God and I said well if there were a God we wouldn't need lighthouses would we and Annie La explained a little bit more and he went on to say uh well but and we thought maybe we should be getting down the stairs now uh he he wanted to argue and uh he said well where did we where did we come from where did we come from and as it's going down the stairs I said well uh my mom and dad fell in love and had sex and here I am so uh Leslie is right there's a lot of work to do on Australia um the religious right does want to take over and don't let them do it don't let them barge into the schools and use our schools as Mission fields and uh read about bashy McCollum read the book she wrote It's called one woman's fight where she tells about her little boy sitting out in the hallway she fought and you can fight back as well when I was here two years ago I told the story of my own deconversion leaving the pulpit behind the motivation that drove me into the pulpit was the same motivation that drove me out that was to know the truth and speak the truth I learned painfully through a gradual process that what I was preaching is simply not true if it's not true why preach it I loved it I was a co-pastor of three different churches I got a degree in religion was ordained to the ministry I was a missionary to Mexico for more than two years trying to convert Catholics into Christians uh and it worked uh I was a cross country evangelist a Christian songwriter I lived the life in fact I'm still getting royalties today and I told this but I want you to know I put the money to good use I got a check it's not much money anymore but I wrote a musical called Mary had a little lamb and uh last year I got a check for like $1,017 and so I signed it over to the Women's Medical fund which is a charity run by Annie Lor's mother an gayor the longest lived abortion charity in the United [Applause] States and the bookkeeper asked me should we send the thank you letter to the Christian publisher and I said go ahead so in in my book Godless I tell that whole story about why I changed my mind why why I studied why I deconverted why I eventually dumped out all the bath water and I said hey there's no baby there you know this there's it's just it's just a book it's just empty teachings and uh I'm not the only one there are thousands and thousands of ministers and Priests and clergy who are struggling with their faith they're actually learning too much they're studying too much about their faith and uh later in this conference Dan Dennett is going to talk to a little bit about this new group called the clergy project it's nice that there's a new group that you don't have to join uh it's a group of former and active clergy priests ministers rabbis a couple of pastors wives uh one Imam one former Imam in the group we started last year with about 50 former and active clergy today there are more than 200 it's called the clergy project and it's helping to save a preacher so uh [Applause] and they're going through immense struggles right now there are people in the Pulpit preaching who don't believe but they can't just get out right now they've got health insurance and they have you know family to support and they have commitments and so they're trying to they're like I was for four or five months really admitted Hypocrites in the Pulpit not believing a word of what they're saying and wishing they could find who's going to hire somebody with a Divinity degree in this economy you know I mean so it's it's it's a tough it's a tough tough deal right now there are more than 200 in the group about 50 of those are active clergy you'll be hearing more about uh the clergy project later as we get more and more off the ground but today I want to talk not about my first book Godless it tells my story but I want to talk about my next book it's the good atheist I wanted to call that book LIF driven purpose which is the title of my topic today but the Publishers were a little nervous that if I called it life- driven purpose guess who might sue us do you know about Rick Warren do you know the book he wrote called purpose-driven life uh in fact if you look in the back of the book you'll see they have this disclaimer this has nothing to do with his book I thought life- driven purpose would be a greater title but the good atheist is the title that picked and it's good not so much in the sense of moral good but good in the sense of practical good uh all the good things that atheists are doing and have done around the world to make the world a better place in so many ways in science and in in the Arts and in Humanities and in charity and in and in music and uh how the world has been enriched by the contributions of good atheists but uh how many of you have read Rick Warren's book The Purpose Driven Life I hope you haven't um I decided to read it in writing this book and you know what the purpose of life is if you read this whole book it's an immensely popular book in fact my born again brother Tom loves that book um he sent a copy to my dad who's an atheist now and Dad sort of read two chapters and said thanks but um don't bother reading the book I'll tell you what the purpose of life is according to Rick Warren can you guess it's to know God to glorify God to go to church and to bring others to church with you that's it that's the purpose of life according to Rick Warren doesn't that make you feel who snoring out there you sat through too many sermons didn't you um to glorify God that's the purpose of life according to Rick waren and according to the Bible basically to glorify God what does that mean to glorify to worship to praise to bow down before to magnify to say you are great you are everything and we are nothing we are your humble servants I suspect there aren't too many people in this room with that attitude um to glorify basically is to bow down before a slave master a master who tells you what your purpose is a master who dictates to you like a military leader who says here's how you fit into the army or to the Navy or what this is your place and then you say oh I have my role in life I know what to do now I I can be a good servant of the Lord have you ever noticed the postures of prayer what are they what are the postures of Prayer the head is bowed the knees are bent you're down prostrate before this master you are no threat at all you're humble and this what is this all about the hands together the wrists are Shackled together that's what slaves are slaves are Shackled their hands are like this they are no threat to the slave master one thing slave masters fear is a slave revolt and that's one thing we are doing as atheists in this world we are revolting against the slave master we are saying wait a minute we are not slaves we don't bow down in my country we fought a proudly rebellious Revolutionary War kicking the king off the shores kicking the dictator the Lord the master instead of having a constitution that's based on some Sovereign Authority some Divine leadership or some church of whatever we turned it up side down and said nope we the people we rule our own lives that's profoundly anti-biblical you don't find those Concepts anywhere in the Bible in the Bible we are all worms we are slaves we are sinners we must submit like I used to preach from the pulpit that to be a good humble servant that someday you'll go to heaven and hear those phrase good job my humble servant and you can say yes I did a good job for the daddy for the Lord so and yet in my country there are still a lot of people who still want to bow down before the king that we kicked off our Shores so glorifying God is supposed to be the purpose according to the Bible I used to preach John 3:16 how many of you know that verse for God so Lov the world did some of you go to Sunday school and stay awake for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life there are a couple of good Sunday school students here and I thought that is good news I stood on park benches I stood in pulpits I traveled um knocking on doors I I went into prisons to tell these prisoners how free they are in Jesus uh all across Mexico and across the United States preaching this good news that the world needs to hear this great news I'm going to tell you in a minute what the truly good news is the good news that we atheists offer to the world but the good news I used to preach as a Christian minister was basically this suppose I were to walk out on my front porch and you're walking by and I say hey I've got some good news for you some great news stop stop you've been walking by all these days and you've been ignoring me and I deserve to be acknowledged I deserve to be noticed I'm somebody I'm important and you just keep walking by you're not even paying any attention to me so I've got some good news for you you don't have to go down in my basement that's right this is great news because you've been ignoring me all this time and you've been you've not been giving me the proper respect that I deserve it made me so so angry and I'm an angry person when I don't get honored and when my goodness is not respected so I built this torture chamber down in my basement and there's some icky smelly Vats down there and there's some sharp knives and there's it's kind of dark and there's a furnace with flames growing and there's these chains and it's it's horrible in this ugly but you don't have to go down there this is great news you don't have to I sent my son down [Applause] there and it was ugly it was horrible it was a Passion of the Christ it was Bloody it was oh it was but but that satisfied my anger and I'm not mad anymore okay I got it I got all that taken care of so it's all over this is great great news so all you have to do come on up here to my porch and just come on up here and and tell my son thank you for the great thing he did for you and come up and give us a hug and and we'll welcome you into our house and we'll live up in the attic forever and you can tell me you can tell me how great I am and you can thank my son for wouldn't that be just wonderful news aren't you happy to know that so what would you do would you just keep walking or would you um sorry I've got to get to work that's supposedly the good news I also used to preach of course that the great news is that without religion we can't be moral we can't be good people and we've all heard that phrase that we need some kind of you know we are these animals with these base instincts that we want to kill and rape and steal like all of you I can see it you're just restraining yourself from doing these horrible things things aren't you but you need this sort of res these Commandments to come down from a mountain you need this to basically tell us these things I've done 98 public debates now since I became an atheist um seven of them were with denesh duza if you know who that is and he and I are doing another one this fall so I'm it might be the 100th debate I do with him but we did one at the University of Wisconsin uh a couple years ago and and uh I made the comment that contrary to the teachings from the pulpit religion does not enhance your moral judgment religion compromises your moral judgment religion gets in the way religion is an added layer it's an obstruction and I said to that audience I'm going to prove to you that religion is compromising your moral judgment there were about, 1500 people there and Madison is a pretty liberal town and I bet I bet Maybe 30 or 40% of that audience were non-believers but I said I'm going to tell you two stories and I want you to raise your hand after each story the first story is this and these two stories are morally equivalent suppose I were to break into somebody's home this loving Christian family mother father and children and pets they go to church they pray they contribute to charity they're really really great people and I tied them up and I tortured them and I drown the cat in the bathtub and I shoot the dog and then I set the house on fire and kill all those people and then the police asked me Dan why did you do that and I would say no reason the devil made me do it raise your hands if you think I am a moral monster virtually every hand went up right yeah horrible moral monster how would he do no reason the devil made me do it the second story was this I got out my Bible and I opened the Bible to the Book of Job and you know what's coming remember how God tortured job he caused the wind to blow the the building over the wall crashed against those children and killed his children killed his livestock and his animals and it didn't say if he had a cat to drown but he killed it all and and then God tortured job and with and horrible things that happened if you want a Magic Bullet by the way that totally destroys Christianity in the Bible you will find it in one Bible verse it's the Book of Job 23 the 2 chapter verse three let me read this to you the Lord said unto Satan have you considered my servant job that there is none like him in the earth a blameless and an upright man that fear fears God he turns Away From Evil and still he holds fast his Perfection he holds fast his Integrity God said this to Satan and then he said although you moved me against him to destroy him without cause so God why did you do this to job no reason the devil made me do it so then I asked that audience okay raise your hands if you think the god of the Bible is a moral monster can you guess what happened less than half of the hands went up in that audience isn't that proof that religion compromises our moral judgment we are loyal to the slave master we are loyal to the Lord we don't want to threaten we don't want to say anything bad about the father we submit we become these humble servants of the Lord and we'll let him figure all these things out in my book The Good atheist I talk not about a purpos Driven Life not that life has to have something from outside of it but that there is a LIF driven purpose it's the other way around the good news that we atheists offer to the world I think one of the good news there's a lot of them uh but this regard I think and this news is so surprising and so non-intuitive that a lot of people are going to say huh but I think the truly great news after years of preaching the gospel the truly great news we should be saying to the world is there is no purpose of life and that's good yes it's true that life is survival and reprodu uction in that but that's more of a definition of life it's not the purpose of life if there's a God what's the purpose of God you know if there's a God he gets to determine his own purposes right it's wonderful that there's no purpose of life because if there were we would be secondary we would be subservient we would be looking for the marching orders we would be tell me what I need to do how do I fit in what is my what is the purpose of my life or what is the meaning of my life life and yet those of you who are in this room I think most of you would say it's wonderful that life is just its own reward we are biological organisms in a natural environment we have our instincts we have our fears we have our hungers we have our our needs our drives our wants our social instincts and all that thing that's what we are and we we want to survive and we do reproduce and we want to make the world a better place to some way but that's not a purpose of life those are purposes in life we don't need some morality from on high to tell us how should we act I was in the Detroit airport back in the late 80s I went to be a guest on the phield Donahue show it was a show about the afterlife and there was a the fundamentalist Bible ther there was a Wiccan Priestess there was a Universalist priest uh and there was me The Atheist and uh but before I got to the show I was in the airport in Detroit waiting to get on the plane and there was another line of people over here to go in another gate and I I don't know I was probably thinking about the show and out of the corner of my eye I must have noticed there's this young couple over here and they had a little baby and they had their luggage in one of these carrier things about this and they had the baby and a little baby carrier on top of the suitcase about like this and the father must have wandered away or something because the corner of my eye saw that baby kick in that carrier rolled off the top of the luggage and with no thought I saw myself just like that my fingertips caught that thing as it turning in the air and then I grabbed the other side and about a second later the mother grabbed it too she would have been too late and I stood there and what I said to her was that was scary now there was no forethought there was no planning I wasn't standing there contemplating how I can be a good moral witness to the world I wasn't thinking about Jesus or glorifying God I wasn't thinking about oh how what does Allah want me to do in this world today I was just a a human animal there I was watching myself act I was not deliberating I was not thinking I was not weighing the consequences and coming up with some moral philosophy that if we consider the relative values and the merits I I just acted I just did that and I bet everyone in this room would have done the same thing you naturally would have acted for preserving the species I think it's because our ancestors those who were better at preserving the babies from falling produce more offspring than those that didn't so we come prepackaged with instincts like this when I grabbed that thing I I held on to it really tight I almost didn't want to let the mother of course I gave the baby back to the mother but um you should have seen the look she gave her husband too um but did I say to her okay lady I did you a good deed now you owe me reciprocal altruism here now I want you to know um or did I say to her by the way I'm doing this to show you how good we atheists can be in the world was any of that crossing my mind it was just a natural thing and of course we come with violent Instinct as well but we come prepackaged with these basic General most of us who are mentally healthy and I think most people in this room are um we we just naturally know what goodness is within ourselves so there's no moral code from outside it comes from within us so as long as there are problems to solve like falling babies or traffic accidents or hunger um disease there's disease in the world oppression uh the suppression of Human Rights you name it what are some of the problems that we're facing in our world today there are many of them maybe one of your siblings dies of some horrible rare disease you devote your life to fighting that disease it wasn't something that was handed to you from on high it happened in life so as long as there are problems to solve knowledge to gain Beauty to create think of all the beautiful songs and music created by non-believers many of the songs that we all sing and many of the songs that Mark our passages in life from bram's laabi to um elgar's Pomp and Circumstances as you're graduating to uh do a dear a female deer and somewhere over the rainbow and Verity's reum and all these beautiful music that we all love written by non-believers who have enriched the world who's to say that those people did not have purpose in their lives who's to say that Elizabeth Katie Stanton did not have a life of purpose an atheist a woman who fought for a half a century to guarantee that women could participate in the Democratic country what a concept right and she was fought by the church this whole time who's to say that someone like Elizabeth ktie ston did not have a LIF driven purpose as long as there are problems and there are many we all can live lives of immense purpose and of immense meaning so watch for the clergy project some of these people are going to be needing help uh you can find out more about the clergy project at the clergy project.org and more about the freedom from religion Foundation which has immense purpose in trying to keep State and church separate you can find us at ffrf.org [Applause] ladies and gentlemen thank you very much now uh questions let's see looking into the audience and we have down yes you have to go to the people with mic oh we have one over here okay let's start over here uh yes I was just wondering if you might think it's a good idea to to expand your view of being altruistic beyond our own species you say you caught the baby and that's good because it helps our species to you know survive but as humans I know many of us would probably also help to save a monkey a baby this a baby that so when we talk about altruism I know reciprocity from that act may not be forthcoming from a monkey or a spider or something but what's your view on that should we be more altruistic more morally interested in other species yes that little baby that I grabbed was not a relative of mine it was some distant distant distant cousin I suppose we had a common ancestor somewhere I didn't know that family they might have been Republicans you know but and by the way we have a lot of good Republicans in our group so I'm not picking on Republicans there's a a lot of atheists who who are in all different political parties but uh the other species on this planet are also cousins of ours as well we all can go back to a maybe further common mother ancestor so yes uh the the basic idea I think most of us have of morality is to minimize harm to increase well-being in this world and uh we are a part of a total global environment we are interconnected so yes of course and I think what it comes down to is we have different personalities I think on the bell curve of human psychology and altruism some of you just more easily break into tears when you for example when you see cruelty to animals some of you in this room will break into tears don't don't do that or some of you will break into a rage like my sister-in-law but there might be others in this room and don't raise your hand uh who just psychologically just don't care as much and maybe there's even a few that might even enjoy seeing that happen so we we can try to combat that with education uh it's important to live in a world where there's as much well-being as possible for all of us on this planet another question up there um how can we take the argument without accepting the premise or playing by the rules of the religious when you debated George pel you called him George you didn't call him Eminence or cool hat or whatever that guy wants to be called and I I I love that what can we do to kind of raise the consciousness of not accepting their norms and not not accepting their uh just the premise yeah stop pretending that there's different levels of humans that there's a higher level of clergy that are above us and you're right about George pel before the debate I said he said I can call you Dan and I said and I can call you George okay everybody there was calling him his Eminence and uh you know and I just I think he didn't like being treated as an equal human being the clergy like their status they like the benefits one of the lawsuits we're taking in the United States is to take away a tax benefit that clergy get they don't have to report clergy don't have to report their housing as income that's an amazing benefit they get so uh I was so glad I got a call from a um former Imam in the UK I don't even know his real name but he said it's so nice to just be talking to you as an equal human being I don't have to pity you I'm not I'm not below you or above you we're just the same in this planet and so uh you know let's give respect where respect is due but not just to a title Reverend I hated that word reverend even when I was a reverend and I didn't want to be revered like I was special so uh let's respect them not we don't have to always put them down we can put down their views and we should ridicule their views without ridiculing them I think the views are ridiculous and but uh treat people commonly is all this sounds like a cliche but we're all brothers and sisters on the same planet and we have time for one more update um hi I actually have two parts to this the first part again is with your um catching the baby um in a sense are you trying to say that there's an absolute conscious morality regardless of religion or is it actually a buildup or a you know created by our environment with the morals and and a lot of that sometimes can come from religions that helps people build that morality to have a subconscious that will react straight away while you're catching a baby same as I guess the atheists will say no it's because of our own ethical reasonability um so that's the first part and the second part is that my friend wants to know when and what made you change um from getting um from changing into atheist read the book but um yeah I learned that Christianity is not true and I learned that there's no evidence for God there's no good argument for a God Like beron Russell said it's all just bad grammar um I learned that there's no coherent definition of a God that there's no agreement among Believers as to the nature or moral principles of this God and I learned uh that there's no good reply to the problem of evil there's not there's a number of theodes but uh and then I learned there's no need for God millions of people live good happy Mor Mor lives without it so that's really making a long story short but I think you're right about morality I think it's a combination I think most people I think Peter Singer and most Scholars and that would agree that nature and nurture it's both so you can live in a culture where you're inculcated with certain quote unquote moral things and then you might view these people as subhuman and not want to catch the baby that's falling that could happen I suppose but I think naturally most of us that are healthy have these sort of built-in in that we inherited from our ancestors who then were better able to survive we we're we're stuck with some of these things it's like I could not not reach for that baby I mean most of you would feel the same way wouldn't you you could not not do it there's something and above and beyond all that we also develop moral philosophies we can think through things we can come up with some you know some utilitarianism or in my case a kind of negative utilitarianism not the greatest good for the greatest amount but the the least amount of har harm you know the minimizing of harm in the world is is the floor for Morality it's a mere morality so it has to be a combination of both we are instinctive animals but we also are learning animals so both of those things fit together so again big thank you for Dan Barker

Channel: Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc

Views: 40,455

Keywords: AFA, GAC, Global Atheist Convention, 2012GAC, Atheist Foundation, Dan Barker

Id: 15tvEFz3oeU

Length: 34min 36sec (2076 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 11 2012