The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser

Bruce, You KNOW Deep in Your Heart Hell is Real

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Bruce Gerencser

in

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peanut gallery

Melvin Wagner, an Evangelical zealot, left the following comment on Facebook today. My response is indented and italicized.

Bruce..

Melvin . . .

God is long suffering not willing that any should perish..

There is no God, Melvin. You know I am an atheist, right? Just because you say something doesn’t mean it’s true. Do have any evidence besides quotes from the Bible for the existence of your peculiar version of God? I’m waiting . . .

Meaning an eternity in the lake of fire…Hell is real whether you believe it or not…..

Melvin, please learn how to use ellipses.

Do you believe fairies, leprechauns, the Loch Ness monster, Big Foot, and Allah are real? People say these beings exist. Surely, this is evidence for their existence, right? See how silly your claims are, Melvin? If you want to convince me of something, you are going to have to provide evidence for your claims. Bald assertions or quotes from a manmade religious text won’t cut it with me. Do better, Marvin, do better. I am willing to believe if you just convince me. Come on, big boy, “you can do it.”

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and deep in your HEART YOU KNOW IT..

Where, exactly, is my heart? Hint, in my skull. What I know is that neither you, nor any other Christian zealot, has provided sufficient evidence for your claims. What I know is that Christian apologists are long on bluster and short on persuasive arguments. You know I was an Evangelical pastor for 25 years, right? You know I was in the Christian church for 50 years, right? You know I spent tens of thousands of hours reading and studying the Bible, right? Knowing these things, what, exactly, are you going to tell me that I don’t already know? Your comment is little more than public masturbation. Makes you feel good, but the rest of us say, yuck. If you want to get into a Bible dick measuring contest, I’m game. You should know, however, that I am John Holmes.

but you are so hardened it no longer affects you

Damn, I am taking Viagra for the heart?

..what is worse than an apostate?

Lots of things. Christians like you who shit on the doorsteps of unbelievers. Donald Trump. The Cincinnati Reds’ bullpen.

how much sorer punishment is he worthy who has trodden underfoot the Son of God, and has done despite to the Spirit of Grace..The gracious means A loving God offered you , you have despised..How shall you escape his Righteous Vengance?

Welp, Melvin, the Righteous, I am an atheist. Your claims about God, judgment, grace, love, vengeance, and eternal punishment fall on deaf ears. Do you know what I think? You sought me out because you have doubts about your beliefs. What better way to allay one’s doubts than by attacking an unbeliever, attempting to “prove” your beliefs are true. (If you have not read any of Dr. Bart Ehrman’s books on the nature and history of the Bible, I encourage you to do so. Read, and then we can talk.)

What did you hope to accomplish with your comment, Melvin? Feel better now, flaccid gospel dick in hand?

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Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 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.

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Comments

13 responses to “Bruce, You KNOW Deep in Your Heart Hell is Real”

  1. Avatar
    dale m

    Send these types of naysayers a challenge. Encourage them to read one of Bart Ehrman’s books. Then have a filtered question that will reveal whether or not they did so, on their return. Don’t provide the answer. The answer is actually a password that answers the question only if one has read his book ( whichever one you choose to have them read). Change the “password” every time they come back onto your site. It’ll save you soooo much grief.

    Reply
  2. BJW

    These types are so predictable. It’s like they have an IFB list of questions they all use to refute evil atheist, agnostics, non-Christian, pagans etc, and it’s boring. Boring as their knowledge is predicated on believing that the Bible is true all the way through.

    Reply
  3. Avatar
    Yulya Sevelova

    Melvin Wagner. You ARE aware that people are more than capable of approaching God, should they choose to– with no prompting from YOU. Nagging someone about hell doesn’t work. Bruce knows the details about it already. If sometime, a person decides to make a return to the Christian faith, then they will on their own. They don’t need threats and bullying. It has the opposite effect anyway. I get the feeling that if Bruce made a ” deathbed ” return, this would bother your kind a lot, as I suspect you hope that hell is real, and you want him to end up there because he expose’s what’s wrong with most churches. One doesn’t have to be an atheist to do this, though Bruce of course is an atheist by now. That said, take a hike !!

    Reply
  4. Troy

    It’s interesting to me that when we sleep every night, we lose consciousness, but out existence does not require us to awaken in heaven or hell while we wait to resume our conscious life. I’m not sure why the dead would be any different.
    It is also interesting that even Christianity has a wide interpretation of many kinds of “Hell”. From the overly pondered by theologians “separation from God” to the scare tactic “fire and brimstone” crazily proclaimed by the Melvins of the world.

    Reply
  5. Avatar
    Obstaclechick

    Well, bless his heart. (And I mean that in the Southern way, which is polite for F off).

    Reply
  6. Michael Mock

    I love these folks who are like YOU KNOW IN YOUR HEART THAT HELL IS REAL and then make no effort consider how that squares with atheism.

    Like, if God exists and Hell is real and we all know that then what exactly would we get out of being atheists? What being an atheist even mean if that were the case? Oh, we’re trying to avoid God’s judgement by claiming that He doesn’t exist? But you just told us that we already know that God isn’t going to be fooled by that and that we already know that there’s no escaping His judgement. We’re in rebellion? How exactly does one rebel against an omnipotent being — and didn’t you just tell us that we already know such a rebellion is destined for failure? Seriously, what do these people think is our angle here? What’s our motivation?

    And for that matter, what’s theirs? If the knowledge of God’s existence is truly written on every heart, then they really ought to be able to relax. There’s no need to proselytize; people already know. Nobody really loses their faith, because there’s no such thing as faith: we all already know the truth. There’s no point in trying to chasten the unrighteous; they already know where they stand, and they already know that God’s gonna get ’em, so why worry?

    Reply
  7. Avatar
    Astreja

    “Flaccid Gospel Dick” should be the standard nom de plume for the private-parts-waving evangelicals who stumble in here with their baggy faith pants down at their knees. 🙂

    Reply
  8. Avatar
    William

    I have no problem with someone believing something on faith but let’s be reasonable. Don’t you think that if one thing in the bible was true that we’d find it out? Isn’t it strange that all our discoveries do not support the bible but show it to be in error? Why does Genesis claim people to have existed for 6,000 years and yet our actual discoveries show that people have existed for hundreds of thousands of years?

    If the bible was correct that God cannot lie (a favourite of mine from Titus) why are we being presented with so many contradictions?

    The golden age of religion believed that the study of science would reveal more of God’s glorious creation. Religious people encouraged the sciences. However now evangelicals want nothing to do with science because the cold reality is that the truth does not match with the bible. And the truth cannot be ignored or suppressed forever, maybe not on an individual level for some but it cannot be for an open minded individual, or society. I suppose faith is the absence of open mindedness, because the reality of facts creates doubts, but are you happy to be closed minded, Melvin?

    Reply
  9. Avatar
    Hugh

    Poor widdlll thingz….They seem completely incapable of understanding why we won’t respond to the ultimate THREAT, coming from their ‘loving’ deity.

    Reply
  10. Avatar
    Karen the rock whisperer

    My heart knows many things, but the reality of the existence of Hell isn’t one of them. In fact, my doctor’s office chatted with my heart today via an EKG (in preparation for some minor foot surgery in a couple of weeks). Heart had lots to say, all of which could be summed up as, “I’m working fine, thanks.” It really isn’t interested in Hell, one way or another.

    The thing is, yes, human minds can lie to their owners. As someone who has bouts of severe depression, I absolutely know this. But when my brain lies to me, it tells me things that I have rational evidence AGAINST, like the lie that I’m garbage, worthless, a waste of oxygen and other resources. Years of treatment have allowed me to recognize those lies by comparing them against real-world evidence.

    If I apply the same real-world evidence filter to the Bible, I come up with the same result. There’s lots of stuff in there that absolutely defies the way reality functions, and defies everything physics, chemistry, cosmology, biology, and geology tells us about ourselves, our planet, and our universe. There’s lots of background about the writing and assembly of the documents that became our Bible that reveals a great deal of uncertainty about the texts themselves.

    There may or may not be some existent deity, but the one(s) identified by the Bible are very unlikely. There’s no evidence that souls exist, let alone destinations for them after death. If you want to know where I’ll go after I die, the answer is most likely private land near the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest in Eastern California (after some preprocessing in a crematorium). I am star stuff, as is everyone reading my words here, and we will all be ultimately recycled back into the greater universe.

    Reply
    1. Avatar
      Bruce Gerencser

      My mind can be quite a liar too. If my mind had its way I’d be dead. 🙁

      Reply
      1. Avatar
        Yulya Sevelova

        Same here ! I stick around to be a thorn in the side of oppressive people, that’s what I tell my mind. Never give up and never give in.😆

        Reply
  11. Avatar
    Chikirin

    Apostasy/apostate sounds like a really awful thing, but really it just means a person changed their mind about something. I was going to have the steak but I apostatized and chose the salmon instead.

    Reply

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