Fake Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, didn’t write about me yesterday — a blessing for which I give all praise, honor, and glory to my god, Loki — but he’s back with a vengeance today, writing two posts about me.
Theissen, who has been devouring my writing for the past two years, said today that I wrote something that he finds “disturbing.” What disturbed him, you ask? A Black Collar Crime story? Surely, you jest. Tee is a well-known defender of rapists, child molesters, and sexual predators. In fact, he has told me that I should stop writing this series; that the actions of these criminal preachers are none of my business. (In Tee’s mind, nothing is my business. I’m an atheist. I have nothing to offer to the human race.) What he found disturbing was this:
I get a lot of emails from Evangelical Christians who are struggling with their faith. Pastors, evangelists, missionaries, college professors, and devout church members will contact me about their existential struggles. Some of them have questions, others just want someone to listen to them.
One reason this [his] blog exists is to help Christian pastors, missionaries, and church leaders. Unfortunately, they are not stopping by and talking to us. So we can only guess and follow God’s leading as to our content.
We can only trust God that the right people read what is written here and either it helps them or they use it to help someone in ministry who is struggling in their faith. We do not mind this method as it keeps us from being prideful, arrogant, and other negative characteristics. God gets the glory as he uses it freely according to his will.
Tee says no one is stopping by and talking to him. Instead of wondering why that is, he appeals to providence. He’s just doing God’s work, and he’s leaving the results to him. Sure. Perhaps Tee needs to think really hard about his content. Imagine complete stranger stumbling upon Tee’s blog. What would be their first impression? If they looked at Tee’s 2022 writing, what would they find? Dozens and dozens of posts about BG and MM. They wouldn’t know who these people are. Tee is too lazy to write out their names. He also refuses to link to their sites. They would likely conclude that Tee has a burr in his saddle over BG (Bruce Gerencser) and MM (Meerkat Musings/Ben Berwick). Thousands and thousands of words written attacking not only their beliefs, but their persons. Would they conclude that the triune God of Christianity, the Great I Am, the Way, Truth, and the Life, approve of Tee’s verbiage? Or would they conclude that Tee is just another rabid Fundamentalist crank with an ax to grind; a man who will not rest until BG and MM are burned at the stake?
Yes, we talk about different content from BG’s and MM’s websites but those posts are efforts to help pastors, etc. remain on the straight and narrow. We do not lie, distort, or attack those people for whom we take examples from. Our purpose is to help those struggling remain in Christianity and not be destroyed by evil through people like BG & MM.
Am I the only one who thinks Tee is trying to appropriate the purpose statement of this blog? Damn, Derrick, how about a bit of originality on your part? To quote the line from the Waterboy, “you can do it!”
In my aforementioned post, I wrote:
My goal as a writer has always been the same: to help people who have doubts and questions about Christianity and to help people who have left Christianity altogether. My objective has never been evangelization. While scores of people have deconverted after interacting with me, that’s never been my goal. I genuinely want to help people.
That has been my purpose and goal for fifteen years. I remain one man with a story to tell. If by telling my story I can help others, fine. I am eternally 🙂 grateful that scores of people have found my writing helpful. What writer doesn’t want to have his work well received? But, make no mistake about it, if no one read this blog, I would still tell my story. I personally benefit from telling my story. That thousands of people read it is affirming (and more expensive) and encouraging. When I wake up every afternoon, one of the first things I do is read the comments that came through overnight. Thoughtful words from people I have come to love and respect — with a bit of bullshit and Christian hate mixed in.
Tee asserts, without evidence, that I have nefarious motivations:
Herein lies the problem. It sounds attractive yet this is just pure deception at work. The type of ‘help’ BG is referring to is to help believers lose their faith and reject God. He is not helping them keep their faith and remain with God so BG and people like him are helping evil destroy God’s people.
We need to stop that from happening and get to those struggling believers before they make a fatal eternal mistake.
….
No Christian should listen to BG or those men. They are as deceived as any unbeliever. We have read Erhman, Dawkins, Hitchins, Harris, and Loftus and there is not one word of truth in their content.
If BG wanted to help these people, he would lead them to Christian authors who do have the truth and who do understand what those struggling Christian men and women are going through. All BG is doing is planting seeds of destruction and watering them so that evil can finally destroy those people.
Tee thinks I am “destroying” Christian people. I ask you, how can a lowly Evangelical-turned-atheist man destroy people who have the Holy Spirit living inside of them? Is Tee saying that I am more powerful than God? All I do is write. People are free to read or not read. People are free to contact me or not contact me. You will search in vain for one person who will testify that I tried to evangelize them or shove atheism down their throats. That’s just not how I do things. Five decades in the Evangelical church showed me how wrong and harmful it is to push your beliefs on others. As an Evangelical pastor, I believed that life was all about its destination (Heaven or Hell). Today, I believe that life is all about the journey. I’m content to kindly interact with people, helping in any way I can. How they respond to my help is up to them. I have had Evangelicals contact me with questions I patiently answered. They go their way, never to be heard from again. That is, until 5-7 years later when they write to tell what’s new in their lives. I often hear that my honest interaction with them planted seeds that later spouted. Is it my fault that through reason, skepticism, and common sense, these people concluded that what they had been taught as Christians was a lie?
People come to me because they have found the standard answers from preachers wanting. When Lee Strobel, William Lane Craig, CS Lewis, Ray Comfort, Frank Turek, Kent Hovind, Ken Ham, and Josh McDowell are the best you got, what do you expect? (And that’s not saying the sophisticated theologians are much better.) Until apologists can provide compelling arguments for the problems of evil and suffering or the hiddenness of God, I suspect more and more Christians will exit stage left. Until apologists can provide compelling arguments for the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible — good luck with that — more and more Christians are going to conclude that what their preachers have been saying about the Bible and its teaching are lies.
The Internet has pulled back the curtain and exposed the lies behind Christianity. Tee longs for the day when sheep sat in church and hung on their shepherd’s every word. Preachers were viewed as infallible authority figures who would never, ever lead them astray. Now, thanks to the one and true God — Google — Christians know better. All I am is just one small point of light for those who stop by to read my writing. I suspect the fact that lots of Evangelicals find my writing resonates with them terrifies Tee. OMG, Satan is winning! No, reason and rationality are.
According to Tee, I am “evil.” That’s pretty rich coming from a guy with such a sordid past. Regardless, it is clear, at least to me, that “evil” is winning. I am quite happy that I am on team “evil.” 🙂 When I look at Tee’s past behavior and how he presently lives his Christian life, I find myself asking, “why would I ever want to be like him?” The single greatest reason people are walking (and running) away from Christianity is the behavior of God’s elect. Mahatma Gandhi famously said:
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
Bad Christian behavior remains an indictment of Christianity. Rare is a Christian who evidences the fruit of the Spirit in his life — without which a person is not saved, according to the Bible — and practices the teachings of Christ. If faith in Jesus doesn’t transform people, why should the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world care one whit or shit about Christianity? If David Tee is the best Christianity has to offer, no thanks! People such as he continue to lead people away from faith. And all the atheists, agnostics, and progressive Christians said AMEN!
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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I think the scales have fallen from my eyes from the last few years. I used to have a bias towards Christianity, even as I was leaving it. Now, I do have some lovely Christian friends, but they aren’t evangelical or fundamentalist. Instead, they are more likely to be SJW.
Maybe Dr T is just like pre-Trump evangelicals, and I just missed the poverty of care and kindness back then. But now I realize that all the times I attended a church, and expressed any need for others…I was barely acknowledged. Almost no love bombing, which is good. Better to have no attention than fake attention.
I have a friend in Texas who is in dire straits. Her partner killed himself last year, and her health has greatly deteriorated. I was able to post to a church near her and they actually gave her some food AFTER the FB post. Her asking for help? Nothing. I suspect they think she is a taker. So it turns out this non-Christian helps people more than the Christians. Dr T would be a better person if he made friends without any condition, and helped them in physical ways (paying debts for others, giving food etc). But of course he would rather yell on the internet about the “evil” atheist.
” Dr T would be a better person if he made friends without any condition, and helped them in physical ways (paying debts for others, giving food etc). But of course he would rather yell on the internet about the “evil” atheist.”
So many lies said about me it is more than an athletic event but an Olympic one. Please stop speaking about me when you do not know me or know what I do behind the scenes.
Tough, isn’t, Derrick, when you can’t control the narrative. Remember, you are the one who said you had “right” to say what you wanted about me because I had a public blog. That street runs both ways. Don’t like it? Crawl back into your hole.
Welp, we do know Derrick, based on your own testimony, that you spent years leeching off of other people. Do you deny this is true?
“Bad Christian behavior remains an indictment of Christianity.”
What a true statement, Bruce.
I am sure there are still exemplary Christian people – my disclaimer in case the “oh-so-humble, totally-not-prideful, and never-arrogant” Tee jumps on my comment – but it was hardly my experience. Christians in my life are as bad, if not sometimes worse, than non-Christian people.
I have experienced both love-bombing – essentially fake love, as BJW aptly describes – and cold shoulders from people in church.
I suspect, deep down within their hearts, church people don’t harbour special love and concerns about you, especially if you’re not their close friends or family. Not about your physical, emotional mental, or spiritual needs. This is normal human behaviour, but Christians would annoyingly broadcast that they’re supposed to be loving towards everyone. Not true at all.
They would try to help, but when it starts to cost them something, they would stop.
I discovered this blog when I was still an Evangelical and I never felt that Bruce was actively trying to convert me.
So you are wrong, dear “Dr.” Tee, no matter how much you claim (your version of) the Holy Spirit told you otherwise about Bruce’s supposed motivation.
You are as clueless as me in deciphering the deepest desires of Bruce’s heart.
Doesn’t your own scripture say, “For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?” So we’d better trust Bruce when it comes to his motivation to write this blog.
You’ve heard the saying, “don’t feed the trolls!”. Something about Dr. Troll (fixed it for ya) is that I wonder if both “BG” and “MM” feed this troll? [I know BG does, and I see at least one post by MM in a quick look at his blog]. By paying him any attention, you feed his ego. He’s “got your goat”. Otherwise he would be in isolation, banished to the Philippines for being a predator, forgotten and quashed out of existence like the souls in Disney’s “Coco”.
(Bruce: I am substantially reducing the content of my original post; apologies if you feel slighted for approving a post that is different from what follows.)
Once upon a time, there was a troll on a country-music fan site who claimed a moderately successful female country singer had starred in a homemade porno flick, and that the Nashville establishment covered it up by replacing all copies of her film with a shot-for-shot remake of it, using an actress with some resemblance to the singer. Further, when the singer was a presenter at a mid-90s ACM award show, she ostensibly sent the troll a coded message of encouragement for “telling the truth” by wearing a cowboy hat.
Then you have Derrick, who – among many, many other things – claims to have been falsely accused of domestic violence because when his then-wife went into a bedroom and closed the door to have a private conversation with her mother, he responded by screaming at her at the top of his lungs, throwing the phone against the wall and breaking it, and threatening to kick down the bedroom door if she ever did that again. This, to him, does not constitute domestic violence because he didn’t hurt his wife, he just attacked a telephone and threatened a door.
Here’s the difference between that troll and Derrick. She didn’t actually believe what she was saying was true. Derrick does. Further, he genuinely believes that failure – of anyone – to completely buy into his thought process, let alone arguing with it, is evidence of him being “persecuted.”
In my case, my profession of faith must be false because no man of faith would refuse to endorse such behavior by another man of faith, let alone challenge his claim of moral authority. Instead, he told me – and I quote – “Christians like you disgust me.”
So … no. Not just a garden-variety troll here.
WW, maybe you should have left the comment in tact, I didn’t completely follow your thesis. Hopefully my reply still makes sense. I don’t see how you’ve proved (or attempted to prove) that ignoring Dr. Troll won’t render him effectively silent. It sounds like he hurt your feelings, but this actually makes me more inclined to completely ignore him.
The original Troll was actually Gandalf in the Hobbit (and not ironically the trolls themselves). The origin of “trolling” comes from Gandalf goading the trolls on by making his voice sound like each of them in turn, fostering the argument about how to eat Bilbo and the dwarves, they are so distracted they lose track of time and forget about the impending dawn. I say this because I do think Dr. Troll IS a garden variety troll. His blog gets no traffic, he immediately gets blocked if he comes here… but yet he is still a distraction and wasting our time.
As for Dr. Troll, I don’t really care about if allegations against him are true or not. His reputation isn’t particularly relevant as we are unlikely to have any personal interaction with him besides the blog. As Hank Hill would say, “that boy ain’t right”, that’s really the bottom line here.
One more thing to consider, does Dr. Troll represent a large swath of Christianity? He is similar to the Westboro Baptist church in having a hateful and self serving m.o., but even as bad as most IFB can be, he is definitely an outlier so what his viewpoints are rarely of interest.
You might want to go back and read some of the recent Tee-related posts/comments. You are missing some context (I think) about why it’s important to respond to him.
Besides, I’ve never been ones to give trolls a pass. 🤣
The Tee saga will soon come to an end. I’m confident that will be the case.
As far as Tee’s views, his beliefs are widely held within Evangelicalism. And since there are at least 90 million Evangelicals in the US, it’s important to address their beliefs.
Okay, fine. I’ll distill it down a little further:
Troll: metaphorically brings his hand to within 0.05 inches of my arm and chortles while gleefully saying “I’m not touching you!” like my brother did when he was five. Annoying, but pragmatically speaking, generally harmless.
Derrick: metaphorically is the only other person in the room with me when I am sucker-punched in the back of the head, then claims “I didn’t touch you and you can’t prove otherwise because you didn’t see my fist connect with the back of your head!”.
Also Derrick: makes me issue the disclaimer that I am speaking metaphorically right now, lest he place his hand to his forehead and cry “woe is me, I’ve been falsely accused of assault by someone I’ve accused of being a fake Christian!” And even that might not stop him from doing so.
As well … as Bruce has pointed out, if you don’t think this is representative of the way large swaths of evangelical Christianity comport themselves, you haven’t had a broad range of experience with the institution of evangelical Christianity.
Originally, I responded to Thiessen for three reasons:
Second, his defense of rapists, sexual predators, and child molesters is shameful. Non-Evangelicals need to know there are people in the world who think this way; devoutly religious people who hold vile beliefs.
I despise pompous, arrogant, self-righteous moralizers. I find a sense of satisfaction taking them down a peg or two.
When W.W. Jacobs started commenting, I also realized that Thiessen needs to be exposed. He has caused a lot of harm.
Derrick Thomas Thiessen finds your writing disturbing. I find his writing to be super-double-mega-disturbing-on-steroids. So there’s that.