Contraduction

by Dan Barker

In a quiet and unassuming way, Contraduction is utterly brilliant. Every page has a thought so deep and unexpected that it stops you in your tracks, as you not only realize, “That’s a different, really interesting way to think about the world, exactly the opposite of how I normally view things” but also, “And it is absolutely equally valid (and enriching) to adopt this opposite way of thinking.” I loved this book. — Robert Sapolsky, author of The Blank Slate and Determined.



An ingenious word for an invaluable concept. Sharp, clear, and timely. — Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and the author of The Blank Slate and Rationality



Both a delightful read and a penetrating Barker has invented an invaluable new concept, and puts it to work with clarity, wit, and above all conclusiveness. A must-have book! — A. C. Grayling, author of The History of Philosophy and The God Argument



I am completely down with the concept of contraduction. It fills a need. False pattern recognitions pose a real danger to our survival. Well done! — Ann Druyan, author (with Carl Sagan) of Cosmos, Contact, and Demon Haunted World



I love it when brilliant ideas are conveyed clearly and soundly. That’s why I love this book. Dan Barker has provided a much-needed explication of a common fallacy that needs to be understood and rebutted. It is an engaging, enlightening, and insightful book.—Phil Zuckerman, author of Society Without God and What it Means to be Moral



With Contraduction, Dan Barker gives us a new word—and a new way of looking at things. I thoroughly enjoyed this! So much to think about—and it made me laugh. What else could I ask for? — Kate Cohen, contributing columnist for the Washington Post and author of We of Little Faith



I love how Dan Barker offers us a new word to help us understand how to think rationally in a fun, simple way. I will never look at my reflection in the mirror the same! — Bailey Harris, author of My Name is Stardust



Barker has really created something mega with this book. WOW, what an absolutely awesome mind bender [mind fuck] contraductions are, while at the same time seeming very obvious. I give Contraduction 50 hell-yeahs! [fuck-yeahs!] (outta 50). — Zeke Piestrup, director of Apocalypse Later and Satan's Guide to the Bible



Dan Barker's approach reminds me of Douglas Adams' famous Intelligent Design analogy about the rain puddle that "fits me rather neatly." A simple shift of perspective can be invaluable in our understanding, and Dan's fresh angle gives us plenty to consider. Simply put, I've never read anything quite like Contraduction, and that's a good thing. — Seth Andrews, Author of A Journey from Religion to Reason



Contraduction is a delight and lights the way through complexity. Pound for pound, Dan Barker’s best book.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Science, Religion

130 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 3, 2024

About the author

Daniel Edwin Barker is an American atheist activist and musician who served as an evangelical Christian preacher and composer for 19 years but left Christianity in 1984. He and his wife Annie Laurie Gaylor are the current co-presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. He has written numerous articles the organization's newspaper Freethought Today. He is the author of several books including Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist. Barker has been an invited speaker at Rock Beyond Belief. He is on the speakers bureau of the Secular Student Alliance.

Reviews

[Richard]

Dan Barker's excellent new book is bold and brilliant, quirky and whimsical, fast and funny and very well might be the best and most important book he has written. After finishing it, Contraduction immediately went on my To Be Reread pile.
Barker's introduction to this book details the relatively short evolution of the word Abductive to Contraduction, born in a debate against a religious person in Florida. While birthed in a debate with that religious person and Barker, an atheist, Contraduction goes well beyond the arguments of belief versus knowledge into the realms of how the brain operates and responds to stimuli in an all too common kneejerk reaction, taking our legs out from under us, denying us to take a stand to view a new and slightly different horizon.
Steven Pinker's book blurb, one of many from a number of excellent writers, is the most prominent and best: "An ingenious word for an invaluable concept. Sharp, clear and timely."
While I pride myself in walking in another person's shoes by the large amount of books/stories I've read, Contraduction has opened an entirely new vista for my world view, one that I eagerly anticipate exploring.
And here's hoping Barker writes at least 25 more books with newly minted words, fleshing out an alphabet of strange fresh words, offering exploration of our universe, like a turned kaleidoscope.
-
Side Note: Dan Barker signed his book for my wife and I at the Freedom From Religion Foundation convention in Denver last week.

[Mr. Book]

You can also see this review, along with others I have written, at Mr. Book's Book Reviews.

Mr. Book just finished Contraduction, by Dan Barker.

This book was published in September 2024.

This is the fourth book I’ve read by this author, of which all of them have gotten either an A+ (God: The Most Unpleasant Character In All Fiction and Godless: How An Evangelical Preacher Became One Of America’s Leading Atheists) or an A (Mere Morality).

Contraduction is a term that Barker created to mean inversion of thinking or order. For example, the sun rising, rather than the earth moving, would be an example.

This is a very good book on how people think. Among the best topics covered were time and fine tuning. While the book was short and is a quick read, it was definitely very interesting and worth while.

I give this book an A.

Goodreads requires grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews, and Goodreads.

Mr. Book finished reading this on November 28, 2024.

[Ari Chand]

I quite enjoyed this new idea. This book is an interesting addition to the language of reasoning. As someone always drawn to abductive reasoning over the others, this new concept extends reasoning and some of my thinking about position/perspective taking. Barker introduces “contraduction” as a mental move in taking a familiar idea and flipping its direction, its cause, or its assumed truth. The result isn’t just contradiction for its own sake, but a deliberate reframing that exposes how much of our reasoning is built on unexamined defaults. He works through some great examples and case studies to exhibit his point and it’s accessible as a read. Known for his secular and sceptical stance, uses contraduction as a tool to question religious and teleological thinking. It’s quite a useful concept for visual storytelling, where meaning shifts through composition, sequencing, and perspective changes. The idea of flipping assumptions mirrors how animators and illustrators use inversion, juxtaposition, and transformation to create irony, tension, or unexpected narrative insight a lot in their work.

[Eric Anderson]

The concept Barker is presenting is clear enough and not untrue, it's simply not something that needed a new term. I've listened to many episodes of the Freedom from Religion Foundation's Freethought Radio program via podcast recording and I can understand Barker's keen desire to be taken in as a deep and profound thinker among the scholars, academics and philosophers that have and continue to influence thought and culture globally. Not to take away from his contributions as an activist and debater in favour of the Atheistic and free thinking worldviews but he really punches above his weight here. There are a whole list of fallacies already in place (link provided below) that describe the "contraductions" that Barker wants designated under one umbrella term. A "contraduction" is really just an unreasonable or backwards deduction or induction. The book itself explores some vast and deep topics and since it tries to spread a wide net it captures very little depth itself.
https://utminers.utep.edu/omwilliamso...

[Matthew Clark]

A quick read on the arguments against intelligence design found it interesting and insightful. It doesn't try to go further then needed and provides plenty of other reads that can be much more independent if needed. The big question I get from the book is. What assumption are you making that center on the human perceptive? For those that might want to think about the debate between creationist and atheism.

[Ken Owens]

Thought provoking.

This book seems very simple,but i found many times a struggle because not my way of thinking and confusing. As i got further in i found i needed to slow down and contemplate the example. I plan on rereading a few time for deeper understanding.
My hope is this word and way of thinking becomes more my default when examining issues.

[John L]

I don't read a lot of philosophy, but I did read this. Quite often I would go back and reread a paragraph, page or chapter to ensure I understood it properly. It's a small book, but large on thinking.

[Jeff Rudisel]

THE CONTRADICTIVE JOKE

A woman called her husband to warn him that there was a report of a car going the wrong way on the interstate. “I know!” he replied. “But it’s not just one. There are dozens of them!”

[Jamie Santa Cruz]

This book felt like it was longer than it needed to be, but the basic point is really good: that we sometimes get the logical order of things backward, and that this has major implications for the Christian argument for God based on the fine-tuning of the universe.

[Syalindran Sevasamgaran]

Seeing the world in an opposite direction..

[Kirsten Tautfest]

interesting concept but I don't think he explained what he meant very well. It did make for a good discussion with my freethinkers book club tho.