The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser

Bruce, Your Life Shows the Scriptures Are True

Written by

Bruce Gerencser

in

,
peanut gallery

Recently, a Christian man named Ricky New sent me several short emails. Here’s what he had to say:

You don’t have to respond, you do show the scriptures are true. He cannot deny himself, see you there.

and

You only have two choices, big bang, GOD, both take faith. No one on this planet was there. Here say is all they have. A GOD would better for to trust than the bang.

Typically, I don’t answer such emails. The senders usually just want to hear themselves talk. I decided, however, to answer New’s first email. Here’s my reply:

Ricky,

Oh, but I will .

True about what, exactly?

Can’t deny who, exactly?

What evidence do you have for the existence of God?

Have you read any of Dr. Bart Ehrman’s books on the nature and history of the Bible?  The Bible is not what you claim it is. Bring it on, Ricky.

See you “there.” Where, exactly, is “there?” How do you know that “there” exists?

What, exactly, did you read on my site? Do you know anything about my story? Please see Why?

The ball is in your court. Typically, I tell people like you to fuck off. Today, I am in a generous mood.

A sinner saved by Reason,

Bruce Gerencser

New, of course, never responded to me. Once you have shot your load, there’s nothing left. (And yes, that’s a sexual reference. I consider such emails as the equivalent of masturbation.)

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

19 responses to “Bruce, Your Life Shows the Scriptures Are True”

  1. MJ Lisbeth

    Doesn’t he have anything better to do?

    Reply
    1. Avatar
      Bruce Gerencser

      Typically, 25-30 percent of daily traffic for this site comes from Internet searches. Due to the subjects I typically write about, my posts rank high with search engines. My goal is always to rank first page. This, of course, brings a number of first-time readers to this site. This leads to comments and emails from “offended” Christians—mainly Evangelicals. Quite entertaining, but I do wonder what they hope to accomplish?

      Reply
  2. Avatar
    William

    ‘You only have two choices, big bang, GOD, both take faith. No one on this planet was there. Here say is all they have. A GOD would better for to trust than the bang.’

    ^ Hi Ricky, I know this is a common argument by Evangelicals, when they say, how do you know, where you there? But the thing is the police don’t have to witness a crime to be able to solve it. You don’t have to be eg on planet earth 6000 years ago to see if humans were here, you don’t have to be at the creation of the universe and come to a decision simply on faith, there are ways of investigating facts and circumstances to solve a question, just like a police officer solving a crime.

    Just like the tools available to the police, our methods of investigating the questions of existence become increasingly advanced. When the Bible was written, you probably really did have to be there to know if humans existed before a supposed Eden (for instance), but, similar to how crimes can now be solved with DNA evidence (something not available before), we now ‘don’t have to be there’ to be able to answer previously unanswerable questions. We KNOW life on earth existed way before the creation story, and with NASA’s James Webb space telescope due to launch, we will soon know even more about the universe.

    Reply
  3. Avatar
    Yulya Sevelova

    Cool comment ,William ! And as an astronomy buff, I can hardly wait for the launch of that telescope,lol.😀

    Reply
  4. Avatar
    Ricky New

    Not sure who William is, don’t sound like Bruce.
    To answer your question with a question, where did it all start?
    As I said to Bruce, People’s books and Education don’t mean a thing to me. Someone told you cause someone told them.
    Be the way, I just found this comment place, if I lose it, it ain’t cause I did on purpose. When I am finished with this conversation, I will say so.

    Reply
    1. Avatar
      Sage

      rolls eyes and closes door

      Reply
    2. Avatar
      Bruce Gerencser

      William is William, and I am Bruce. Every comment shows its authors name. I sent you a link to this post and the comments, as I do every time I write an article about a comment/email from a Christian.

      In your email to me, you said “prove there’s no God.” That’s not how things work, Ricky. You are the one making a positive claim: There is a God, and that deity if the Christian God. It’s up to you to provide evidence for the existence of God. Convince me, and others, that your peculiar version of God exists and he is what you claim he is. Maybe, just maybe, we will believe.

      We know (science tells us) the universe began with the Big Bang billions of years ago. Before that moment, we don’t know. Christians don’t know, and neither do atheists. The former says “God Did It.” What evidence do they have for this claim? None. The atheist says, “I don’t know, but maybe, thanks to science, someday we will know.

      You said, “someone told you cause someone told them” is a perfect illustration of the Bible and the history of Christianity. I’m sure you will say, God wrote the Bible. However, “were you there” when God wrote the Bible? You have no evidence for this claim outside of men telling men , men telling men, men telling your parents, parents/pastors/teachers/evangelists telling you. The Bible is a book written by men, not God. The former is a historical fact. The latter requires faith. You demand evidence for the non-existence of God, yet you do not use that same standard for the claims you make about the Bible.

      You should be very glad men and women read books and got educations. Imagine how the world would be if everyone embraced willful ignorance, as you have? Millions and millions of people would now be dead from COVID-19 and other dreaded diseases. Book learning is important. I encourage you, once again, to read several of Dr. Bart Ehrman’s books. If your faith is as strong as you claim, surely a book written by the NT scholar won’t harm your faith.

      Reply
      1. Avatar
        Adam Thiry

        I’m not Ricky, but I’ll take that challenge to read a book by Erhman. You’ve mentioned him in many posts. I’m always open to material that will challenge my beliefs. I’m a big KJV only guy, which book would you recommend of his as a starting place?

        Reply
    3. Avatar
      William

      Yulia, me too 🙂

      Ricky 🙂

      If you mean the universe, when you say again, ‘where did it all start’, most likely a big bang, science is still investigating.

      To continue the analogy of the police investigation, we have what is known as a credible witness. The Bible has been proven wrong on the shape of the earth (it’s not flat), the age of the earth, the time all life has been on the earth (it’s not 6,000 years). We know it’s wrong because it records battles with soldiers on horseback hundreds of years before horses were used this way (hundreds of years later someone wrote, re-wrote these stories, but they don’t know what happened, they weren’t there :)).

      So no the Christian Bible is not a reliable source. By the way I don’t necessarily think this is a good thing, because the fact is if there is a God, it’s not the God recorded in that book, because it’s wrong about so many things. But, to be brave I think, as adults, we just have to accept the truth. If the facts show the Bible is not correct on history, the shape of the planet, how long life has been there, then for any of its merits, it’s not true. Just a collection of myths like King Arthur (who was probably a real character, but not the one portrayed in the stories…. which although a different topic, it has similarities to the the stories of biblical characters).

      Reply
  5. BJW

    Bruce is right. There is actual, measurable, quantifiable scientific proof of the Big Bang (an inaccurate term, but understood as the “beginning” of the universe we inhabit.) Any person who turns on their TV to a fuzzy channel, one that shows “snow” and sounds staticky, is literally hearing the remnants of the cosmic microwave background from 13.8 billion years ago.

    I’d be interested in seeing as much actual, measurable, quantifiable scientific proof of a god. But that proof doesn’t exist. Praying and getting good feelings, thinking some prayers are positively answered when it’s just as likely to be random chance, isn’t scientific proof.

    Reply
  6. Avatar
    Bruce Gerencser

    I typically recommend these books (in order of importance). Other people will likely differ on which of Ehrman’s books are most important:

      Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions of the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them)
      Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
      Forged: Writing in the Name of God; Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are
      Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and Faiths We Never Knew
      How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee

    Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife is quite fascinating too.

    On a personal note: Ehrman’s book, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer, really “spoke” to me.

    Reply
    1. Avatar
      Adam Thiry

      Thanks Bruce, I will order the first one on the list and read it, should be a fun read.

      Reply
  7. Avatar
    Ricky New

    I will answer these in time, to the KJV dude, I am as well, The others I use for fire wood.

    Reply
    1. Avatar
      Bruce Gerencser

      If this is going to be your approach, Ricky, you can fuck off now. Your arguments, so far, are kindling, at best. If you want to have a thoughtful, vigorous discussion about these things, I, along with others, am game. Please read the commenting rules before commenting further. https://brucegerencser.net/comment-rules/

      Thank you.

      Bruce Gerencser

      Reply
    2. Avatar
      William

      Ricky, I suggest that you read Matthew 5. God causes the sun to rise and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. If as you say you treat people like me and others on this blog like firewood, people who have done nothing against you and have been polite, informative and patient then what does it say about your view of Jesus and what he teaches?

      I actually sometimes wonder if evangelicals read the bible, because to set the example of christian spirit, they so often don’t even seem to measure up to Corinth. What can anyone do? If you don’t as you say read any books, you have no interest in understanding the world, natural history, the universe that you claim God made, and you’re not even setting an example of Christian spirit which the bible claims, what’s to be said? Regardless I wish you well. All the best.

      Reply
      1. Avatar
        Ricky New

        Mr Williams, I do apologize, I was talking about other bibles, not people. If you interpreted my post as a derogatory statement against you or anyone on this forum, I do greatly apologize, even if I met you in person and your persona about me was pure hated, I would not call you, or anyone something as useless as ashes in a fireplace.

        Reply
  8. Avatar
    Ricky New

    As you wish, Mr Bruce.
    I have read your guidelines on individual commentaries, I see no debunked, nor discredit to these rules in my last statements.i did, however read quotations from the bible are disproved, oddly enough this is where my arguments derive from. I do however enjoy an intellectual conversation with all sources available to each individual with no restrictions. I did not show nor have an interest of evangelization, That’s not my call, it’s individualization. You may delete this post and all post of you wish, good day to you sir.

    Reply
    1. Avatar
      Bruce Gerencser

      I, along with many readers of this blog, know the Bible quite well. We spent years in the church. Many readers are former pastors, youth leaders, evangelists, worship leaders, missionaries, etal. Many are still Christians. So, we know the Bible inside and out. Your unwillingness to offer up any evidence outside of the Bible means no discussion is possible. Now, if you want to discuss whether the Protestant Christian Bible is inerrant and infallible, I’m game. However, saying the Bible says it is inerrant and infallible is a dead end street. What you perceive is “intellectual” discussion is anything but. As long as you are a man of one book, there’s no discussion to be had.

      I will encourage you, yet again, to read several of Dr. Bart Ehrman’s books. If you truly enjoy intellectual conversation, becoming educated about Biblical source materials is essential. That you see the readers of this site as “firewood” tells me you aren’t ready to truly have such discussions.

      Reply
  9. Avatar
    Obstaclechick

    Why did “we don’t need no education” suddenly pop into my head?

    Reply

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