Recently, a Christian man by the name of Roger sent me the following email:
Interesting story. I think you’re right on that fundamentalism is idiotic. You’ve spelled that out quite well. Pastors are mostly egomaniacs as you rightly point out. But you could just ask them to find this pastor in the Bible (along with their whole church edifice and all its trappings) and you expose their empty hypocrisy. You don’t need to pick apart the Bible to destroy fundamentalism. They don’t even apply the Bible they claim to preach.
The problem you fail to see is that atheism is equally if not more stupid than fundamentalism. Why do these annoying atheists keep making moral claims? Why do they whine all day about how unjust hell is or how evil the biblical God is? Who are you, you evolved rodent, to make such an appeal to what is evil or unjust? Good and evil are just socially evolved constructs, right? So stop the whining. But atheists never stop whining. Atheists in my experience are actually highly moral people and constantly appeal to moral / ethical claims. The fact is the notion of morality and ethics is simply hard-wired into the human mind whether you like or it not. But atheists’ lack of self awareness about this is more annoying than fundamentalists telling me the earth is 6000 years old. It’s just theft. They’re stealing from the theists that they mock in this regard. They live in their own bubble, just like you accuse the fundamentalists of.
According to Roger, atheists are worse than Christian Fundamentalists. Atheists lack self-awareness, and have no morality or ethics of their own. Atheists are just stupid people who spend their waking hours whining about harmful Christian beliefs. Good to know, right?
I suspect that while Roger distances himself from Christian Fundamentalism, underneath his liberated self lies Fundamentalist beliefs. He sees himself as an “enlightened” Christian, yet it is likely that his core theological beliefs are not much different from those who proudly wear the Fundamentalist label.
Roger later sent me another email. Here’s what he had to say:
I wanted to reach out again and hope you didn’t take offense at the last message I sent. I read it again after I sent it and realized I probably came across as antagonistic and rude. Tone is absent in email. I was just laying out my general thoughts on fundamentalism / atheism, nothing personal about you or your story. Please forgive me if that was offensive to you and if so, please just disregard the message. I don’t mean you any disrespect or unkindness. I wish you the best on your journey.
warmly,
Roger
Take offense? Of course not. Roger is just another self-righteous, arrogant Christian asshole. I have received thousands of emails and comments from the Rogers of this world. I am of the opinion that people tend to say what they mean the first time. Roger meant for his email to be personal, and I took it as such. It is too late for me to “disregard” his message.
I wish Christians would “think” before emailing me. I wish they would ask themselves what they hope to accomplish by contacting me. I am NOT a prospect for Heaven. There’s nothing Roger could possibly say that I haven’t read/heard before or said in one of the 4,000+ sermons I preached. Wouldn’t it be better to refrain from hitting “send”? Yet, most of the Rogers of the world can’t seem to help themselves. Whatever their motivations, they are driven to set me straight, put in a word for Jesus, or evangelize.
Roger closed his last email with “warmly”. Yep. His email made me feel warm all over. As in wearing dark blue khakis and pissing your pants.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
Connect with me on social media:
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.
“Why do these annoying atheists keep making moral claims? Why do they whine all day about how unjust hell is or how evil the biblical God is? Who are you, you evolved rodent, to make such an appeal to what is evil or unjust? Good and evil are just socially evolved constructs, right? So stop the whining. But atheists never stop whining. Atheists in my experience are actually highly moral people and constantly appeal to moral / ethical claims. The fact is the notion of morality and ethics is simply hard-wired into the human mind whether you like or it not.”
Supposing that the basis of morality and ethics is hard-wired into the human brain, how is that incompatible with the exact definitions of good and evil being social constructs? Species can’t evolve intense socialness without also evolving some foundations in their brains for making that socialness work. The whole evolutionary benefit to socialness is that it lets the group members accomplish more than the individuals could for themselves, but that can’t work unless there is some evolved inclination to accept the restrictions of being in a group. As intelligent beings who also evolved language (a really, really big deal) and the ability to work with symbols and complex ideas (another really, really big deal) we could codify those inclinations into right and wrong, good and evil. No deities required.
The above is AN explanation for how we can have an inherent sense of right and wrong, based on thinking about the implications of being an intensely social species, gleaned from an eclectic reading list. It might be wrong. The human mind is extremely complex, and our understanding of it is still very limited. It’s hard to study. A lot of respected evolutionary biologists think that evolutionary psychology can’t be meaningfully studied in a lot of detail.
My point is that you don’t get to point to some aspect of reality and declare that a deity must have been involved until you have evidence beyond “I don’t know how it got that way”. Otherwise you’re just making an argument from ignorance.
Most of us humans don’t have an optimal sense of self-awareness, but that isn’t actually relevant to the topic at hand.
Wow. Christians claim that atheists aren’t moral, bitch, bitch, bitch! And now one is claiming you’re droning on too much about morality? Well, you just can’t win.
Roger demonstrates the typical fundamentall black and white thinking. EVERYONE of the atheists are ALWAYS etc. Roger free your brain from good/bad eternal heaven/eternal hell.
This is how your thinking works, you say,
‘Who are you, you evolved rodent, to make such an appeal to what is evil or unjust?’
Now even fundamentalists know that evolution teaches humans are evolved from the ape family, not rats, but because you don’t allow your mind to think through waves of cognitive dissonance, you twist it to a rat, all the while calling Brice a filthy ‘rat’ just for having a different opinion from you which is atrocious behaviour. Can you see how your fundamentalism has made you behave so evily, and to rejoice in it.
The deceiving and being deceived scripture of the Bible, how ironic is that it is the fundamentalists that are being deceived and deceiving each other. If it’s not about evolution, it’s about good Christian manners, or it’s about covid and face masks and vaccinations being hoaxes. Fundamentalists really do live a life of so much deceiving and being deceived.
Probably antagonistic?
Warmly,
Stupid Zoe
” I don’t mean you any disrespect or unkindness. ”
such bullshit from a poor lil’ Christian
I put this email into the category of “you just haven’t tried the correct flavor of Christianity yet”. He just took a slightly different approach.