Category Archives: General

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Blog Changes

In light of the recent deletion of The Way Forward off the Hostgator server, I have added a new backup plugin from VaultPress.  VaultPress will monitor this blog and on a daily basis make a backup. Their basic service costs 5.00 per month. I want to move up to their real-time backup service but it is 15.00 a month. Maybe later.

Hostgator also does a weekly backup of this blog. I also daily backup the database and I do a manual FTP backup every few weeks. I am doing my best to keep everything safe and secure.

As of yesterday the WordPress CDN service Photon  is handling all the graphics on this blog. Hopefully, by off-loading the graphics, this will speed up page loads.

A short while ago, I upgraded the mobile plugin to its newest version, WPTouch Pro 3.0  If you have any display problems on your mobile devices, please let me know.  I think you will find a lot of new features to like and I really like the new design.  Please let me know if you have any suggestions as to how to make the mobile experience better.

There are many ways you can read The Way Forward.

You can get each post I write via email.  Go to the sidebar and look for SUBSCRIBE VIA EMAIL. Enter your email address and that’s it. You will be an email requesting you confirm your email address. Click the link and every post I write will come special delivery to your email inbox.

You can subscribe to the RSS feed and get every post I write delivered to your RSS feed reader.

You can also subscribe to the comment RSS feed.  You will get every pithy comment people leave delivered to your RSS feed readers.

Do you need to contact me?

The best way to contact me is to use the contact form.  I will respond to your email as soon as I  possibly can. You can also contact me on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

Are you new reader and want to understand my journey?

I encourage every new reader to read the posts in the START HERE series. This series will likely answer most questions you might have.

Do you accept donations?

Sure. I will never pressure readers to support my “ministry” or threaten that God will kill me unless you give a donation.  Any donation is greatly appreciated. If you would like to make a donation, please use the PayPal donation link on the sidebar.

Do you accept guest posts?

Sure. Please contact me via the contact form and I will give you an email address to send your guest post to.

Thank you for reading The Way Forward. There are a lot of blogs that you could be reading and I am honored that you choose to read mine.

Bruce

Site Restored

19 Replies

hostgator

Some time yesterday, someone deleted all the files in the  root folder of my account with Hostgator. This caused The Way Forward to be inaccessible, along with several other sites I own. I still don’t know the “who” or even the “how” and I will continue to investigate this to see if I can find out “who” did this and “how” they did it.

Fortunately, Hostgator was able to restore everything from a backup. (after a security sweep was done) As always, their technical support help was outstanding.

This is the first time in five years this has happened. I need to rethink some of the security protocols I am using in hopes of avoiding this happening again.

Thank you for your understanding.

Bruce Gerencser

A Note From Bruce

45 Replies

news

My writing output will be somewhat diminished for the next  week or so. I am in the middle of a major flare-up (12 on sale of 1-10) and I simply can not write as much as I want to. Hopefully things will calm down soon. (like yesterday) Smile

Due to this flare-up, it is not possible for me to keep up with replying to comments and emails. I will do what I can, and as far as email is concerned, I will eventually get to your email.

Here’s what you can do to help:

  • Pray for me Smile
  • If you have thought about writing a guest post, now would be a good time to do so.

Hopefully, I will have something to post from Polly in the next few days.

Thank you for reading.

Let me leave you with the nastiest, most vile email I have ever received. Keep in mind this email is from a person who professes to be a follower of Jesus. They left several vile comments I did not post. I would have blocked them, but like the true coward they are, they used an anonymizer service

What an ungrateful and stupid dog you are,ex-false prophet! How can you be so ungrateful to God who made you,although you are a disgusting, ugly, fat,stupid gluttunous creature, and how dare you speak against Him..at least be thankful for your existence, dog!

Don’t just support gays, also support incest and other God-forbidden vice.Why not serve as an example by marrying or fucking one of your daughters or granddaughters,ugly old stinking curse-to-mankind, after all no God is watching you, there is no judgment gonna come!So don’t worry,elephant.According to you, you can do anything you want, you shit! Don’t worry about JUDGEMENT! Maybe you’ll love it with your Down Syndrome-ridden daughter with an extra 21st chromosome! Or maybe Emma will do! Don’t you think that Polly’s an old useless bitch anyway? Which chromosome do you have extra? Maybe you miss one of the first pair which is responsible for brain development..you have no brain anyway.

No one’s safe around you, who has no fear of the all-loving Great God!Go kill yourself please and wake up in Hell! Remember, it’s okay to curse an immoral godless fool like you,Mr.Gerescner or whatever..you are bound for Hell anyway..May the wrath of the JUST God find you and may you rot in HELL-fire and brimstone for eternity.Your pain and suffering is only gonna increase from now on, you have no hope..may you die a violent death! Don’t forget to delete this comment and put up all the idiotic ones you like!

North Carolina Representatives Look to Establish a State Religion

10 Replies

Proof again, that the state of North Carolina has more right-wing crazies per square mile than any other state.

NBC News reports:

Republican lawmakers in North Carolina have introduced a bill declaring that the state has the power to establish an official religion — a direct challenge to the First Amendment.

One professor of politics called the measure “the verge of being neo-secessionist,” and another said it was reminiscent of how Southern states objected to the Supreme Court’s 1954 integration of public schools.

The bill says that federal courts do not have the power to decide what is constitutional, and says the state does not recognize federal court rulings that prohibit North Carolina and its schools from favoring a religion.

The bill was introduced Monday by two Republican representatives from Rowan County, north of Charlotte, and sponsored by seven other Republicans. The party controls both chambers of the North Carolina Legislature.

The two lawmakers who filed the bill, state Reps. Harry Warren and Carl Ford, did not immediately return calls Wednesday from NBC News.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued last month to stop the Rowan County Commission from opening meetings with Christian prayers. One of those prayers declared that “there is only one way to salvation, and that is Jesus Christ,” the ACLU said.

The bill does not specify a religion.

The North Carolina ACLU chapter said in a statement Tuesday that the sponsors of the bill “fundamentally misunderstand constitutional law and the principle of the separation of powers that dates back to the founding of this country.”

North Carolina scholars also cast doubt on the bill.

“It has elements of not being American,” Gary Freeze, a professor of politics and history at Catawba College, told The Salisbury Post. “I think it goes far beyond religion and frankly doesn’t have a lot to do with North Carolina or tradition.”

Another professor at the college, Michael Bitzer, told the newspaper that the bill is based on discredited legal theory that the states can declare themselves exempt from federal law.

“We saw this in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education,” he said, referencing the integration ruling. “The belief is that the states hold more power than the federal government. If the federal government does something, the states can simply ignore it.”

Did you notice that the bill does not specify a religion? Yeah, right. Does anyone think that they have any other religion than Christianity in mind?

This is a graphic reminder of why we can not afford to ignore the right-wing crazies and their attempts to establish a theocracy in the United States.

This bill will go nowhere…but…it is shocking that such a bill would even be introduced.

You can read the text of the bill here.

You Ask, I Write

20 Replies

ask_your_question

I feel a spell of writer’s block coming on…also known as…it is getting warmer out and the baseball season has started.  Smile

I need your help. What would you like me to write about? Is there a question about my past/present you think I haven’t answered?  Is there a particular political/social/religious question you would like me to address?

Whatever your question, please leave it in the comment section and I will do my best to answer it.

A Delightful Lunch with a Friend

10 Replies

Polly and I drove to Fort Wayne today to have lunch with Mike. Mike is a regular reader and commenter on this blog and I count him as one of my friends. I took a couple of pictures…Mike said, you are not going to put them on your blog, are you? Smile

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Mike and Polly

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Mike and Bruce

And a totally unrelated but a pleasant surprise when we came home:

crocus_2013

The Crocuses have bloomed

General Information About The Way Forward

2 Replies

There are many ways you can read The Way Forward.

You can get each post I write via email.  Go to the sidebar and look for SUBSCRIBE VIA EMAIL. Enter your email address and that’s it. You will be an email requesting you confirm your email address. Click the link and every post I write will come special delivery to your email inbox.

You can subscribe to the RSS feed and get every post I write delivered to your RSS feed reader. (I use Google Reader and Feed Demon on my desktop and laptop and Feedler on my iPad)

You can also subscribe to the comment RSS feed.  You will get every pithy comment people leave delivered to your RSS feed readers.

Do you need to contact me?

The best way to contact me is to use the contact form.  I will respond to your email as soon as I  possibly can. You can also contact me on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

Are you new reader and want to understand my journey?

I encourage every new reader to read the posts in the START HERE series. This series will likely answer most questions you might have.

Do you accept donations?

Sure. I will never pressure readers to support my “ministry” or threaten that God will kill me unless you give a donation.  Any donation is greatly appreciated. If you would like to make a donation, please use the PayPal donation link on the sidebar.

Do you accept guest posts?

Sure. Please contact me via the contact form and I will give you an email address to send your guest post to.

Thank you for reading The Way Forward. There are a lot of blogs that you could be reading and I am honored that you choose to read mine.

Bruce

A Poll of Readers

50 Replies

Some of you have asked about the reader demographic of this blog  Hopefully I added enough categories to cover most everyone who reads this blog. Please vote for the category that best describes your religious beliefs or non-belief.

The poll will stay open for one month.

Enjoy.

How Do You Describe Yourself?

  • I am an Atheist (37%, 114 Votes)
  • I am an Agnostic (21%, 64 Votes)
  • I am a Progressive/Liberal Christian (12%, 37 Votes)
  • I am an Evangelical Christian (9%, 28 Votes)
  • I don't know what I am (9%, 28 Votes)
  • I am a Humanist (6%, 18 Votes)
  • I am a Unitarian Universalist (3%, 9 Votes)
  • I am a member of a non-Christian religion (2%, 6 Votes)
  • I am a Pagan (1%, 6 Votes)

Total Voters: 310

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So Much News, So Little Time

2 Replies

Every day  people send me links to stories they think might be good material for a blog post.  I appreciate every link people send me.  The problem I have is that I don’t have enough hours in the day to blog about every story people send me.  So, I thought I would pass on to readers a few of the links that people have recently sent me.  Great stories, stories I wish I could devote a blog post to, but my blog fodder file and draft blog post folder is overflowing and it is unlikely that I can get to these stories any time soon.

I wonder what Creationists think of this story?  500 million year old sea creature unearthed

Have you seen the website Christianity Disproved? If you questioning your Christian faith this is a great site to check out.

The London Telegraph has an excellent article about  Nate Phelps titled,  My father, the hate preacher: Nate Phelps on escaping Westboro Baptist Church.

Conservatives are upset  over CIA director, John Brennan taking his oath by placing his hand on the Constitution rather than on the Bible.

The mayor of Longview, Washington tells the local ministerial group that their invocations must be non-sectarian.  Christians are upset that Jesus’s name can’t be used in invocations given at the start of City Council meetings.

A Tennessee bill will allow Christian counselors to discriminate against LGBT students, sexually-active students or anyone else based on religious objections.

James McGrath has a wonderful list of posts he has written about creationism.

The Cap Times recently published an article on the subject of policing ugly online comments. Should people be permitted to say whatever they want?

The Freedom From Religion Foundation objects to a government sponsored chili-cook off that raises funds for Christian groups.

Who Reads This Blog?

6 Replies

I thought I would share with readers the demographic statistics for The Way Forward. I love statistics so I regularly check the stats for this blog.(I have a paid account with Statcounter)

Page Views

This number is the actual number of pages clicked on by a reader.  This number does not include bots or spammers, I use the Bad Behavior WordPress plugin  to block most malicious access to this blog.  Since I do not use page excerpts, the following numbers do not account for readers who read more than one post on the front page. (i.e. a person comes to brucegerencser.net and may read up to ten posts without clicking a link)

page_views

Country

Where do readers of this blog live? (top 16)

where_people_come_from

State

Where do U.S. readers of this blog live? (top 14)

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Browser/Operating System

This sections helps me understand how people are reading this blog. Readers using mobile hardware/browser has increased dramatically over the past  year.

browsers

operating_system