Dan Barker is co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

His talk was entitled Life-Driven Purpose, which is of course, a take-off on Rick Warren’s book. As a pastor, Rick Warren’s purpose is “to glorify God”, which is to say, to bow down to a master. What’s that like? Barker invited us to consider the posture of prayer: Prostrate on the floor, on our knees, hands clasped (shackled?) in supplication, not a threat. A slave. Masters are afraid of slave revolts, which is what atheists are doing. But many people still want to bow down before a king, even those whose ancestors kicked kings out of their country.

You can watch the next bit of Barker’s talk yourself (or something like it).

Barker points out that religion does not enhance your moral judgment. It compromises it. Two stories to illustrate.

Story one: Suppose I were to break into some Christians’ home. I torture them, shoot the dog, and burn the house down. When people ask why I did it, I say, “No reason; the devil made me do it!“

Would you consider that person to be moral? Probs not, I’m guessing.

Story two: The story of Job. His whole family is killed by a collapsing house, and Job is tormented with sore boils.

Why did God allow this?

Job 2:3 And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause.

In other words: No reason; the Devil made him do it. This is not a moral being.

The good news we offer to the world is that “There IS no purpose of life. And that’s good!”

People often act like there’s some kind of purpose to life, and if only we could find out what that was, we could do it and be happy. But if that were true, we would be secondary. We would be subservient, looking for marching orders, looking outside ourselves to find some purpose. But it’s wonderful that life is its own reward. We want to make the world better, reproduce, have jollity, and so on. But those things aren’t the purpose OF life. There’s a purpose IN life.

As long as there are problems to solve, knowledge to be gained, beauty to create, we have a purpose IN life. Life with purpose, life with meaning. A life-driven purpose.