Dan Barker

From Philosopedia

Barker, Dan (25 June 1949— )

A fundamentalist minister turned freethought activist, Barker was born in California. His father, Norman Barker, a talented trombonist, played with Hoagy Carmichael, and had a cameo with Judy Garland in the movie "Easter Parade."

Dan, who became a piano-player and songwriter, worked as a volunteer missionary as a teenager, going to Mexico with youth groups. He attended Asuza Pacific College, majoring in religion. Ordained by a Christian Church congregation, Dan worked as an assistant minister in several churches, but mainly freelanced with a musical ministry, also writing secular children's music. Many of his songs and two Christian children's musicals were produced by Manna Music and other Christian publishing houses.

In his early thirties, Dan began a course of reading in science, liberal theology and rationalism that led to "an intense inner conflict." Finally, "I just lost faith in faith." In 1983, he publicly left religion. He joined the staff of the Freedom From Religion Foundation in 1987, and has written the book Losing Faith in Faith (1992), as well as three freethought/humanist books for children, and more than 30 freethought songs, including "You Can't Win with Original Sin," "None of the Above," and "Nothing Fails Like Prayer." He has recorded his freethought songs, as well as other traditional and contemporary freethought music, in three music cassettes and two CDs, "Friendly Neighborhood Atheist," and "Beware of Dogma."

In a 1992 debate with evangelist Cliffe Knechtl at the University of Wisconsin on the resurrection of Jesus, Barker quipped, “Next week will we debate, ‘Did Minerva emerge from the brain of Jupiter?’”

Barker is production assistant for Freethought Today, of which his wife Annie Laurie Gaylor is editor. His Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (1992) shows how, in moving from the position of a Christian to that of an atheist, he “threw out all the bath water” only to discover that “there is no baby there” and that he has no regrets whatsoever.

Barker is a popular speaker who appears on television and addresses groups throughout the United States, often providing his own musical accompaniment. Inasmuch as Barker travels widely and is well informed about non-theism, he is one of the best-known of contemporary freethinkers.

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