Last week, I wrote a post titled, According to Spaniard VIII, Atheists are Servants of Satan and Vile People. This week, Spaniard VIII penned a missive titled, Why is Atheism so Dangerous?
Why is the belief of atheism so dangerous for the atheist? The reason it is so dangerous is that Satan blinds them and convinces them that God is not real, which keeps the person from pursuing spiritual truth, like the afterlife and the Creator of the universe. That type of persuasion keeps them in the dark.
When a person doesn’t believe that something is real, they won’t try to investigate it to see if it is true. If they presume to seek the Bible for evidence, they go about it with complete doubt making it useless and a waste of their time.
The devil persuades these people from even thinking about searching God through the Bible by luring them away through worldly lust of all kinds. The devil tells them, “if you become a Christian, you cannot enjoy your sinful desires that you live for and must give them up.” He will keep them from the truth, which will send them to hell because they won’t seek redemption from their state by asking Jesus Christ for salvation.
I could dismantle Spaniard VIII’s post line by line, but I am too weary to do so today. I do, however, want to address his false claim that atheists are ignorant of Christianity/God/Satan/the Bible. While I cannot speak for all atheists, I can say that most of the unbelievers I know are actually quite conversant in the teachings of the Bible. Many of them were committed followers of Jesus: pastors, evangelists, missionaries, deacons, Sunday school teachers, or Christian college professors. It can hardly be said of them that they are “ignorant” about Christianity and the Bible. With full knowledge and understanding of the faith once delivered to the saints, these atheists and agnostics with one voice say the Christian God is a myth.
Spaniard VIII knows my story. He knows I attended an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) Bible college; that I pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years. He knows I spent thousands and thousands of hours reading and studying the Bible. In fact, I’m certain that I have far more Bible study hours under my belt than Spaniard VIII. All told, I preached over 4,000 sermons. Surely, based on my education, study, and experience, I know the Bible quite well. Yes, I am an atheist, but unless Spaniard VIII wants to claim that all my theological knowledge magically disappeared the moment I deconverted, I remain quite knowledgeable of Christianity and its divine religious text.
I will leave it to readers to address Spaniard VIII’s other claims. I just wish he would stop misrepresenting atheists.
Clubschadenfreude, a regular reader of this blog, left a comment on Spaniard VIII’s post. I thought it would be an apropos ending to this post:
As usual, Span shows that he is terrified of atheists. Our mere existence shows him that he is nothing special, and his version of Christianity is just like the other thousands of versions out there.
Poor Span, no satan either. No demons or devils, just sad humans who need to lie about others.
Unsurprisingly, humans have been looking for this god for quite a long time and have found nothing to show that it exists. Just like every other theist, Span tries to claim his god is the only real one, but he has no more evidence than the rest.
Since Christians can’t agree on what sin is, we only have Span declaring that what Span doesn’t like is sin. No god involved. And, alas for Span, sharks do exist. We have evidence.
We don’t have evidence for Span’s god. So his analogy fails again. All we have are scared little men like Span who try to pretend to be a hero when all he desperately wants is external validation for his delusions.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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What does this person think agnostics/atheists do everyday of our lives? He writes, the devil tells me I’ll have to give up my sinful ways and desires if I become a Christian. What would those sinful ways and desires be exactly? Grocery shopping? Cooking? Reading? Going for walks? Paying bills? Chores? Working?
Where’s all those sinful ways and hot desires at that I’d have to give up? I want to know because I must be missing out on something.
WHOOOOOAA !!!! Spaniard !!! Ask salvation from WHO ?? You’re not referring to that guy on the cross who couldn’t even save himself, are you ?!? You know …. that guy who was crying out to that invisible man in the sky …. “FATHER ! … FATHER! …. WHY DOES THOU FORSAKETH THEE ? He realized He had been living a life of delusions when those delusions finally came home to roost on that Jew’s crown of thorns.
My good advise to you dear Pastor : Read your Bible. Walk away. Don’t fall for that phony line of “being happy to be a submissive slave or all eternity …. and you’ll like it !” Dude! I was under the impression you were born in America. You obviously are a new immigrant from a non-democratic country. Welcome to America! It’ll take time to adjust to your new reality! I’m a Canadian atheist, proud and free!
Hopefully your new American citizenship should go well. If however, you were born in America, then why oh why would a free Canadian have to remind his brother American about what it is to be an American ?
Good grief. I’ve met more caring and humane people outside of the Christian church. SP7 may think people may become non-believers, agnostics, or atheists because they want to SIN. Ha ha ha. Funnily enough, I feel less tempted to do bad things than when a Christian.
The other thing is, most people who become atheist are people who studied, and prayed, and read the Bible, and came to the conclusion that it was nonsense. None of this Pascal’s wager idiocy, because if you don’t believe at all, you can’t fake it, either.
It always amuses the heck out of me when people like this make, basically the ‘You don’t want to accept Christ, because Y’all just wanna sin’ point. AAMOF, it’s true, there are some enjoyable things in my life that involve consenting adults that I don’t wish to give up just because some tyrranical A-hole in the sky somewhere who quite obviously has never given 2 shits about me otherwise ‘says’ that I must! As if ‘christians’ are really giving up the things they enjoy, regardless of the fact that they’ve been told it’s ‘sin’. NOPE….They just talk tough about ‘sin & calls to holiness & purity’ for an hour or 2 on Sunday morning/ Wednesday evening, then pretty much do what they want the rest of the time. I’ve often wondered if we find ourselves @ a Judgement Day at some point in the future……If perhaps ‘god’ is actually going to have a lot more respect for those of us who were at least HONEST with our intentions and desires, and the people who died with a surefire confidence in ‘heaven’ are actually going to find themselves in a whole lot of trouble for their lying and hypocrisy???
“I’ve often wondered if we find ourselves @ a Judgement Day at some point in the future……If perhaps ‘god’ is actually going to have a lot more respect for those of us who were at least HONEST with our intentions and desires, and the people who died with a surefire confidence in ‘heaven’ are actually going to find themselves in a whole lot of trouble for their lying and hypocrisy???”
I think that’s what He will want out of you when it comes to that Judgment Day (if indeed it does)– to come clean about your intentions and desires about everything.
“… most of the unbelievers I know are actually quite conversant in the teachings of the Bible.”
Would it be fair to say that there are no teachings in the bible, just assertions, and that the numerous Christian sects derive from interpretive attempts to make sense of those assertions?
“When a person doesn’t believe that something is real, they won’t try to investigate it to see if it is true. If they presume to seek the Bible for evidence, they go about it with complete doubt making it useless and a waste of their time.”
This is the source of Spaniard’s problem. He gets it the wrong way round. It’s not a question of believing something is real before we go check, it’s that we have methods of validating truth claims which are tried and tested. Sometimes they come up nil in circumstances where we might expect to see something (the weird world of quantum physics is one such, yet it’s the most reliable method of measurement known to mankind), but usually when evidence is lacking then it’s evidence that there’s nothing there. The old saying ‘absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence’ is absolute rubbish. It can be true, but it’s not a scientific point, it’s a phrase dreamt up by apologists looking for excuses.
Take the story of the Exodus. I have no emotional ties to the story being true and, if it is, then fine. The problem is that it isn’t true. Archaeological evidence is absolute clear and shows that no part of the story can likely be true. Apart from that, however, the writers of the texts appear to have had no understanding of the political and social situation in Egypt at the time, so it’s clear that the text was written at a very different time to that which it refers, and appears to have been an attempt to give some solace, and perhaps meaning, to a small group of tribes people who found themselves stateless, and full of resentment (I’m sure Bruce knows a gazillion times what I know on this!). I’m ignoring the clearly false miracle claims, such as the Passover, or hardening hearts, or seas dramatically parting.
At least Spaniard doesn’t delete comments, as far as I can tell, though he clearly has precious few active readers. I noticed he was getting pushback from one other person also on his ludicrous shark analogy.
He does delete comments. John, in particular, has had numerous comments deleted. He seems to have a small, but loyal, following.
span deletes comments all of the time. He’s a coward to the core.
I’m willing to bet good $$$ that S8 doesn’t bother to investigate the vast majority of things that he believes to be untrue. Such a hypocrite.
What Spaniard doesn’t understand, or wish to understand, is that many of us who were believers actually DID STUDY our religion. We read the holy scriptures. We read books explaining the holy scriptures. We read history and archaeology regarding the times in which the events supposedly occurred. We read science that conflicts tremendously with what the holy scriptures are supposed to reveal. We read books written by scholars who examined the holy scripture texts. We read WAY BEYOND what our peers in Sunday school every designed to read. Our conclusions that it’s not real, that it’s a religion made by (mostly) men for a variety of reasons, definitely are not for lack of education. Span needs only to read a few of Bruce’s posts and some comments from readers to find how well-studied we are, but I guess he doesn’t want to.
As for sin, well, if a supposedly omnipotent deity gets his panties in a bunch over the shrimp and pork I ate this weekend or the mixed fabrics I wore yesterday, u don’t know what to say about that deity’s fee-fees. I hope it feels better soon, and maybe it needs to focus on bigger issues like climate change….just saying…..
thanks, Bruce. Your kindness of using my post is appreciated.
The gentleman may want to ask why a loving and peaceful god would create such a being, Satan, who had the power to mask his message. According to this religion, this god create us for the express purpose of worship it, yes? So, why would it refuse to let its name be known or spoken, why his countenance not be known, why create a propaganda minister that clouds its message? On the contrary, if one wants to be adored, they wage a propaganda campaign, plastering their name and likeness everywhere, and having people write about how wonderful they are. This is Marketing 101 stuff.
These theists seems to think that Satan is the source of all evil, that it is in competition with their god, but their god is all-powerful and all-knowing, and can create and uncreate things with a thought. So, what opposition could there be … that wasn’t officially approved of at the top?
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” Isaiah 47:7 KJV
Hi, all ! My phone died, so until I could get to a UPS store, I missed out on my favorite blog. Isaiah 47 :7 has got to be one of the most irritating verses, along with Isa. 20:30 and Romans 9. Who knows when I get another phone–no more Samsungs again, that’s for sure. So, Sp8 is at it again. I think it’s a kind of OCD with him. It galls him that so many athieists, nones, and agnostics were part of the fold at one time. I remember once, in the 90’s, hearing some church person say that taking abuse is part of church life, and you should accept this as par for the course and normal–yeah–for THEM.
Spaniard has written a new post post on this called “Why Do Some People Abandon Their Faith In Christ?” In the comments section, a guy who calls himself Marques Jeffries and Spaniard both talk about you, Bruce and other atheists. They seem to think that the Holy Spirit has given them magical insight on the reasons that people leave Christianity, but these guys never seem to know any atheists personally because they imagine that atheists cannot love their fellow human beings. To them, atheists are angry with God, their hearts are full of “hatred and bitterness towards Christ” etc.
Spaniard, and his small band of mates, seem to be incapable of trying to show kindness towards those who disagree with their particular brand of Christianity. They don’t follow the Jesus of the Sermon on the Plain and the Sermon on the Mount because they show no love towards those they consider to be their enemies. Yet these fanatics claim that the bible is inerrant, and fail to live by what the text says that Jesus commanded his disciples to be compassionate or kind towards “the ungrateful and the wicked”. Aren’t Spaniard and his mates really hypocrites?