Today, a Canadian Christian woman named Jane sent me the following email:
I don’t know what happened in your life to cause you to become a non-believer, but your rant is unacceptable.
God has a reason for everything – believe me, I’ve been tested many times. But, whatever His reason, I continue to have faith. I don’t know of a better plan.
You don’t need to spout off your hate because you feel that, at some point in your life, he “let you down”.
Best I can tell, Jane read one post, Evangelical NFL Analyst Dan Orlovsky’s Prayer for Damar Hamlin Should Be Offensive to Christians and Atheists Alike, before firing off an email to me. She later viewed the front page for an indeterminate amount of time. Jane made no attempt to learn about who I am. She didn’t read any of my autobiographical material. Has Jane done so she would have had all her questions answered. Would she still have emailed me anyway?
Jane’s email sounds like a scolding. How dare I spout off in an “unacceptable” manner. What that unacceptable manner is, Jane doesn’t say.
I really wish the Janes of the world would at least read the About page and peruse the posts on the Why? page before emailing me. Is it too much to ask that people at least make a good-faith effort to understand my story before pissing in my cornflakes? The writer of the book of Proverbs had this to say: Answering before listening is both stupid and rude. I will leave it to “God” to speak to Jane’s heart.
Jane says “God has a reason for everything.” She provides no evidence for this claim other than personal experience. Surely she knows that anecdotal stories prove nothing. Before I would buy Jane’s claim, she would have to show that God even exists; that that deity is the God of the Bible; that this God actually has a reason for everything. If the Bible reflects the acts of God, can we say he is reasonable? Further, look at all the suffering, pain, and death children and adults alike face. How is what we see “reasonable”? Jane could argue that the Bible says “God’s ways are not our ways,” but this does not absolve God of moral culpability. Based on the Bible and what we can observe, Richard Dawkins was right when he said:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
I have no doubt that Jane is a better person than the God she worships. I say this for argumentative purposes. As an atheist, I believe the Christian deity is a myth.
Perhaps Jane would argue that we suffer because of a “sin.” Here’s the problem with this line of thinking. Jane emphatically states that her peculiar version of God has a reason for everything. Would that not mean, then, that God has a “reason” for our sin? I am sure Jane believes God is in control of everything; that he is the sovereign ruler over all; that he even knows how many hairs are on our heads. Thus, following this sort of thinking to its logical conclusion, God is the creator of sin and is responsible for our sinful behavior. You can’t have it both ways. If God is in control and has a reason for everything, “sin” rests on the doorstep of the Almighty.
Jane, as many Christians do, wrongly says that I hate God. First, I am an atheist. It would be silly for me to “hate” a being that I think is a mythical character. I don’t hate God, nor do I hate anyone, for that matter. I reserve my hate for institutions and beliefs that harm people. That’s why I have spent the past fifteen years sharing my story and critiquing Evangelical Christianity and the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church movement. That’s why I continue to publish the Black Collar Crime Series. It is to these things I give my “hatred.” (I am using the word hatred in the sense of my passion for writing about these issues.)
I hope Jane will, in the future, “think” before sending an email to a complete stranger. Questions are always welcome. But scolding me and judging me without bothering to learn who and what I am? Why, that might get you what regular readers affectionately call “the Bruce Gerencser treatment.” 🙂
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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It is the height of christian privilege to screech at others for spouting their own “inappropriate” viewpoints while saying her own with the self righteous and arrogant tone of certainty. May the Flying Spaghetti Monster strike her with the curse of logic and reason, ramen.
Jane…stop tone policing. If you don’t like what someone says on THEIR OWN BLOG, move along and find somewhere else to go.
Nicely put, BJW.
Move along aunty Jane.
Advocating atheism isn’t in itself a rant or “spouting off hate”. At least for me, becoming a non-believer, isn’t anything more than that belief is untenable. As for Bruce, the only thing a cursory read of the blog would indicate is he hates the tribal Jesus, who becomes the repository of every prejudice and right wing cultural norm.
OK, I’m curious now: are there any examples of someone getting the Bruce Gerencser treatment? Sounds like it would be fun to see/hear/read it. 🙂
I don’t hate God because, although I’ve been called insane (and a lot of other things), I am sane enough not to hate what doesn’t exist.
I don’t hate people who hate me for not believing in their God, being a bisexual trans woman or being more liberal than they are because, well, what’s the point in that.
What I do hate, though, is assigning false motives to me, Bruce or anyone else–or any other kind of willfully flawed thinking.
Oh, and I hate the Dallas Cowboys, New York Yankees, Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Celtics, Jell-O, bubble tea, anything Kanye West did after “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” and anything that tries to be “authentic.” If you want to hate me for that, be my guest. I won’t hate you back–for that, anyway.
Jane could have just moved along if she didn’t like what was on this blog. No one is forcing her to read it.
I do wish that Matt Dillahunty would be willing to debate more people, if he is certain that atheism is true. There’s some neurosurgeon claiming that Dillahunty refuses to go on camera, in a debate. Dillahunty won’t do this -why not ?? Put this depressing subject and screwballs like Jane to rest.
Atheism is neither true nor false. Atheism is the absence of belief in the existence of any god or gods. Specifically, it is the rejection of belief that deities exist. A belief, or a lack thereof, is neither true nor false. It is a personal philosophy which is, by its very definition, is neither true nor false. Statements of fact can be true or false, but personal philosophies – either of belief or disbelief – are not facts, but ideas held in the mind.
Matt does a lot of debates, some live, others on the Internet. Matt has already debated the neurosurgeon. I watched it. He doesn’t plan on, however, debating him again. Michael Egnor is an asshole.
https://youtu.be/yahf0t5mK5g
The problem is that debates don’t ever have a satisfying outcome. Each side scores points, but the ‘winner’ on the day is invariably the person who performed better, not necessarily the person with the better arguments. Add to this that audiences almost always have a predisposed view, so will seek to enrich their own beliefs with confirmation bias, and the importance of debates in apologetics is pretty low. Having said which Matt Dillahunty is a fearsome debater, albeit he must learn to restrain himself at times, and any reluctance he may have to debate someone is certainly not any fear he may have.
Hey Jane, how about how god has tested you? Some examples would help. Were you an amputee and god regenerated your limb? Maybe you had some major issue like your couldn’t find your car leys but god led you to exactly where you last had them. Sheesh, some people…