FFRF Co-President Dan Barker will be speaking to the Bay Area Humanists on February 5, 2022 at 3:00 PM PST.
Humanism is a philosophy which is based on a naturalistic understanding of reality. Many Humanists were raised in religious homes and may have been religious themselves but found naturalism to be more sensible and life affirming. Each of us who made this journey have a story to tell about how we came to be nontheists. Dan Barker will tell us about his journey in this presentation based in his book, Godless.
Dan became a teenage evangelist at age 15. He received a degree in Religion and was ordained to the ministry. He served as associate pastor in three California churches and was a missionary in Mexico for a total of two years. Dan preached for 19 years and maintained an ongoing touring musical ministry, including eight years of full-time, cross-country evangelism.
Following five years of reading, Dan gradually outgrew his religious beliefs. “If I had limited myself to Christian authors, I’d still be a Christian today,” Dan says. “I just lost faith in faith.” He announced his atheism publicly in January, 1984.
Dan is currently a co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) along with Annie Laurie Gaylor. The purposes of the FFRF are to promote the constitutional principle of separation of state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism. Dan regularly travels the country and the world giving lectures, performing concerts, and participating in debates with theists, many at college and university campuses.