Dan Barker is one of the world's most famous atheists, but he hasn't always been so well known. In fact, for over seventeen years he toiled in relative anonymity as a Christian evangelist, receiving virtually no fame or fortune in compensation for his efforts. Now today Dan runs the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), one of the most zealous and successful special interest groups dedicated to opposing religion in the United States. He now has millions of dollars at his disposal  -- the FFRF currently boasts of holding $11.5 million dollars in assets on their balance sheet. Obviously, atheism pays a lot better than honest evangelism. Dishonest evangelism is something else entirely -- those "prosperity pimps" really know how to rake in the dough, but that's another story. At any rate, shortly after declaring himself an atheist, Dan was invited as a guest on Oprah Winfrey's television show AM Chicago to speak about what led from preaching to atheism. On the show Dan met future wife (and co-founding partner of the FFRF) Annie Laurie Gaylor, and soon they started on their journey down the road leading to fame and fortune. I've been familiar with the FFRF and Mr. Barker for quite a while now -- once upon a time, he was even a "virtual" friend of mine on Facebook. But I got dumped once Dan figured out that I wasn't an atheist. Only a few years ago, I took and then self-graded Dan's open Bible test -- a clever ploy of his obviously designed to create doubt and confusion in the minds of Christians. The "test" wants the Christian to focus on the relatively minor … [Read more...]