I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich an hour ago — Jiff creamy peanut butter, strawberry jam, on Aunt Millie’s buttermilk bread. Undoubtedly, the voyeur Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, will soon write a scathing blog post about Welch’s grape jelly being the only God-approved jelly. Tee is a lazy writer who often co-opts the work of others instead of writing original posts. Both Ben Berwick and I are his favorite targets. We really wish he would move on to other targets, but he won’t. In my case, he is bound and determined to let the world know that I am wrong, even if his “world” has ten inhabitants.
Tee writes about me several times every week. He refuses to use my name or link to this site. Both of these behaviors violate Internet/blogging norms, but he doesn’t care. Typically, I ignore his posts, but on occasion, I will respond to his nonsense (or his bigotry, homophobia, or support for child predators).
Yesterday, in a missive titled, Some Misc. Thoughts, Tee took issue with the Sacrilegious Humor Series on this site, and the post Sacrilegious Humor: Religion by George Carlin.
Attacks on believers
These are going to grow as unbelievers become bolder. Since we use the BG website we are using an example from that content here:
“This is the latest installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.”
The latest installment is using some comedy routine by George Carlin. We are well aware of his views on religion and Christianity, etc., and have listened to many of them. A militant atheist we know had one of his comments in his signature on an archaeology discussion forum we participated in years ago.
The problem with Mr. Carlin’s point of view is that he looks at the world after sin and corruption entered. Then he blames God for the problems everyone faces or has faced since the beginning of time.
Like most unbelievers and former Christians, he blames God for the mess even though God had nothing to do with the mess. Also like unbelievers and former Christians, he doe snot take the time to find the real criminal who is responsible for the mess the world is in.
They also do not honestly look at what God DID do. They ignore that like they ignore evil and accuse God of things he did not do while the real criminal gets off scot-free and is able to continue to deceive people and either ruin their faith or keep people from accepting Christ as their savior.
Number one, that is not fair and number two, that point of view is not honest. As you can see by that quote, the owner of that website is looking for more material to attack or encourage the attacking of believers.
That is not right either. If BG does not want to be a Christian, that is his choice. He should remain silent and not encourage others to follow his path or attack Christians. Christians are only trying to help unbelievers escape sin and hell.
That is not anything that someone should rise up and attack Christians and extension God, Jesus, and the Bible. Stopping spiritual aid to those in spiritual need is equal to some dictators who stopped food shipments destined to help their starving people.
There are numerous problems with Tee’s post, including bad theology and a heretical understanding of the sovereignty of God, but I want to focus on the last three paragraphs:
Number one, that is not fair and number two, that point of view is not honest. As you can see by that quote, the owner of that website is looking for more material to attack or encourage the attacking of believers.
That is not right either. If BG does not want to be a Christian, that is his choice. He should remain silent and not encourage others to follow his path or attack Christians. Christians are only trying to help unbelievers escape sin and hell.
That is not anything that someone should rise up and attack Christians and extension God, Jesus, and the Bible. Stopping spiritual aid to those in spiritual need is equal to some dictators who stopped food shipments destined to help their starving people.
According to Tee, I am unfair and dishonest. In fact, I have been more than fair to an interlocutor who has done nothing but attack me, call me names, and lie about me. I offered to let him write a guest post. He declined. I offered to debate him. He declined. He is not banned from commenting on this site, but he refuses to do so. Instead, he removed comments from his blog so no one could respond to his writing. Tee is only interested in preaching, not dialog.
When it comes to honesty, Tee defines dishonesty as any belief that is different from his. He has established himself as the final authority on the Bible, Christianity, archeology, biology, and sex positions. Okay, maybe not the last one. 🙂 Long-time readers have heard me say many times: certainty breeds arrogance. Tee, a Christian Missionary & Alliance trained Fundamentalist, is the epitome of this arrogance. I have been interacting with him for over two years. I have yet to see him change his mind one time. When you are right, you are right, right?
Is my goal to attack Christians? Of course not. Scores of Christians regularly read my writing. Unfortunately, Tee thinks his peculiar brand of Evangelicalism = True Christianity. The focus of my work is Evangelical Christianity. Sadly, Evangelicalism is rife with beliefs, practices, personal behaviors, and people that are worthy of ridicule and mockery. The idea that religion must not be made fun of is absurd. I refuse to grant religion that kind of authority in my life. I respect individual believers — or try to, anyway — but their beliefs and practices? I respect that which is worthy of my respect. If Evangelicals don’t like being ridiculed, I suggest they change their ways (and let me be clear, some atheists are worthy of ridicule too).
I want to rewrite one of Tee’s paragraphs. Tee said:That is not right either. If BG does not want to be a Christian, that is his choice. He should remain silent and not encourage others to follow his path or attack Christians. Christians are only trying to help unbelievers escape sin and hell.
That’s not right either. If Derrick Thiessen doesn’t want to be an atheist (or Catholic, Buddhist, or Hindu), that is his choice. He should remain silent and not encourage others to follow his path or attack atheists. Atheists are only trying to help Christians escape irrationality and ignorance; to encourage them to embrace the only life they will ever have.
Checkmate.
Let’s try the same thing with the next paragraph. Tee wrote: “That is not anything that someone should rise up and attack Christians and extension God, Jesus, and the Bible. Stopping spiritual aid to those in spiritual need is equal to some dictators who stopped food shipments destined to help their starving people.”
That is not anything that someone should rise up and attack atheism/humanism and by extension skepticism, reason, and rationality. Stopping aid to those in intellectual need is equal to some Evangelical preachers who refuse to let their parishioners read books and websites that might challenge their beliefs and worldview; information that is meant to help people starving from a lack of knowledge.
Checkmate.
What we have here is a clash of worldviews. I am more than willing to interact with Tee and any other Evangelical on our competing worldviews, but Tee isn’t interested in such things. And neither are most Evangelical preachers. They know what they know, but, unfortunately, they are unable to fathom being wrong. Tee’s favorite quote comes from the movie Matilda:
I’m smart, you’re dumb, I’m right, you’re wrong, I’m big, you’re small.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 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.
Hey. at least you get an identifier. I get “random person who will not hear the truth so I will not respond.”
In case you’re curious, the Cliff Notes version of what I said to him was “Jesus’s refusal to answer the Sanhedrin wasn’t to set a precedent, it was a legal strategy.” I also offered a (moderately) more contemporary basis for comparison: the only male victim of the Salem Witch Trials, Giles Corey, who refused to answer his accusers because his case could not be adjudicated if he refused to enter a plea, and therefore the governing authorities would not be able to seize his fairly substantial assets when they found him guilty after a thoroughly fair and impartial trial. Bottom line, he’s not emulating Jesus or anyone else by refusing to answer, so that leaves three options for him:
Everything I’ve said about him is true. You know the answer to that as well as he and I do.
Everything I’ve said about him is a lie, in which case he committed perjury under oath and – because of the way the state in which he gave his sworn testimony handles the statute of limitations when someone actively evades their jurisdiction – he’s still subject to legal penalties for perjury..
It’s “true but not accurate” (think “there’s a non-zero number of people in the room” – true, but certainly implies worse odds than “our side outnumbers theirs 11-7”). Problem is, he ostensibly still has a ministry to worry about, and any ministry worth its salt is going to Google him before extending a call to him, so why would he want the unchallenged information on this website to be the first thing they see?
Waiting to see what kind of response he comes up with.
Fun fact: his “rules” page still has an open comment section, and can be used to reach out to him.
I hope to put an end to his denials soon. Lots of information at my disposal. I just need to put it in a readable format. And even then, I suspect he will spin things to suggest I’m deliberately portraying him in a bad light.
Well said!
It’s a wonder these fundies got through theology class without learning something of theodicy
(FYI, your bio/email/comment section is duplicated at the bottom.)
Thanks. I fixed the post. ❤️
Tee’s response and it’s a hoot: https://theologyarchaeology.wordpress.com/2023/07/21/misc-thoughts-2-3/
“We are to have answers, not debates that do not lead to any answers. If he is upset about that, that is his choice. That quote also says that we can comment on his blog. Well, we did not know if we had permission restored or not or if this is some trick so he can ban us again.
Why comment when it will not do any good and the person in charge doe snot like what was said and revokes the permission again? We stopped comments because of the abuse that was taking place, not on the part of BG, but others who have come here to put their two cents in.
And no we are not interested in dialog but interested in putting on our website the content God would want us to have here. 11 years ago we prayed that we get it right and have stuck with that prayer ever since. We do not always do a good job but God sees that the right people read the words he wants them to read.”
….
“No, God is right. Our job is to follow the Holy Spirit to the truth, accept it and then pass it on with love to everyone else. trouble is, unbelievers are so deceived they can’t handle the truth and to escape it they have to write blog posts like the one we just quoted from.
Or they find ways to attack the person so that the person being attacked goes away and does not bring the truth anymore. As Stephen spoke just before he was martyred, the people around him stopped up their ears so they couldn’t hear him.
Then they killed him just to get away from the truth. We are not looking to be a martyr but we are looking to continue to publish the truth in love. it just doesn’t come across in binary very well.”
(Paraphrased) “Courts are known to be biased against fathers.”
As opposed to Canadian courts, which are known to be biased against people with disabilities, which I’m sure has nothing to do with him having explored the viability of changing the venue for his late 90s/early 2000s divorce proceedings to Crown courts in Alberta. Also as opposed to Arizona courts, which gave him the opportunity to be part of his child’s life, an opportunity of which he did not avail himself.
“We do not recall being invited to make a guest post…”
Then he is telling on himself as someone who does not substantively evaluate what he reads before commenting, because here it is, complete with responses from him: https://brucegerencser.net/2022/08/derrick-thomas-theissen-outraged-over-allegations-i-have-made-against-him/
“We used to like Mike Warnke.” Color me shocked. Also color me shocked that he didn’t explain further, because yeah, I’d like some confirmation as to whether his disaffection arises from a doctrinal issue or from the fact that Warnke made millions of dollars off a complete pack of lies and whined “the Christian army is the only one that shoots its wounded” when held to account for it. (Wait, that part I can’t see Derrick disliking …)
Tee insists that when he makes claims, such as denouncing homosexuality, he isn’t speaking on his own behalf, rather the authority of god. To which I say two things. Firstly, if he’s addressing people who don’t accept the existence of any gods then to those people, by definition, he’s speaking on his own behalf. He can argue all he likes that he’s only acting as an intermediary, using the bible as his source, but then he’s guilty of subjective acceptance of something for which there’s no reason to assume is other than the opinion of other people. No god means that any text the world over is human inspired.
And the second point sort of follows on from this. Assume for the sake of argument that there is a god, why should it be taken for granted that the opinions of this god should be taken as gospel? We are creatures who are capable of reason, so if god were to tell me something I disagreed with I’d tell him(it). I’d at least ask why he created some people to have same sex attractions if he didn’t want them to act on those urges. In fact, it’s out and out cruelty, rendering such a god as having a much lower moral base than my own. Why should I be required to act on the authority of something with such poor morals?
Mr Tee makes so many claims about his deity that aren’t supported by evidence, and when asked for evidence, his responses fall into the categories of “you’re evil/deluded and can’t understand”, “it’s just true, shut up”, and “God is real because the Bible says so, and the Bible is true because God wrote it”. There’s no way to have a rational conversation with someone like this.
Tee spilling the tea: “Then he blames God for the problems everyone faces or has faced since the beginning of time.”
Zoe: He should. Your issue is not with Carlin. It’s with your God
I see this a lot with young earth creationists, like Doc T, don’t want to give blame to God for the “fallen world”. Assuming the whole Adam and Eve and the apple mythology actually occurred my question is why the hell not? Do we not blame Victor Frankenstein for his monster?
Of course the “fallen world” (or universe) actually looks a LOT like an unplanned universe that is evolving without any conscious direction.
Also for the Young Earth lot, when Adam bit into the Apple the resulting sin* wave that emanates as a sphere would only encompass a sphere of about about 12,000 light years. This is small potatoes even in the Milky Way, less then 10% of the volume of our rather common galaxy is tainted by Adam’s sin.
(*That’s sin wave not sine wave)
Mr. Tee, and others who are upset by Bruce’s posts of Sacrilegious Humor, there is a solution to your problem. It’s called a scroll button, and you can use it to slide right on by content to which you might object WITHOUT READING IT. If you don’t find it funny, it’s not intended for you, anyway, but for those people who do not share your religious beliefs. If your beliefs can be destroyed by someone laughing at them, perhaps you should reexamine them?
Love it! Alas, Tee thinks he’s showing us love by insulting us, lying about us, and trolling us, and as long as he thinks he’s actually being loving, he will never scroll on.
First off, his last name is Thiessen; the moniker “Tee” is a nickname given to him in college. Also, what he claims as his first name, “David,” was created from whole cloth, although he has given different reasons for using the pseudonym over the years. His legal name is Derrick.
To the point I want to make … I expect he would respond in kind with “well, why don’t Bruce and Ben and Jacobs [not my real name, but I’ve clearly stated as much, along with my reasons for using a pseudonym where Derrick is concerned] just keep scrolling?”
I’m not going to speak for Bruce or Ben on this point, but I am a Christian, although my role models in the faith are more analogous to Mr. Rogers or Jimmy Carter.
Derrick, on the other hand, patterns his walk a little closer to that of your average rabble-rousing street preacher. (I’m thinking of the one who told a friend of mine he was going to hell for wearing his hair long in the back because 1 Corinthians 11:14. Said friend had had neck surgery 18 months prior and wore his hair at collar length to cover the scar. Preacher was told this. Preacher didn’t care.)
Which … hey, you do you, but if you present yourself as a shepherd of God’s flock, the Bible imposes certain regulations on you, a few of them quite nicely delineated in 1 Timothy 3.
“He is to be above reproach.” Derrick is a man who presumes to tell people how to raise their children, who not only refused to spend time with his child, he refused to pay court-ordered child support. (Scripture also has something to say about not providing for your offspring.)
“Not violent but gentle.” Derrick’s ex-wife wanted to have a private conversation with her mother, so she went into another room and closed the door. Derrick screamed, ranted, raved, threatened to break the door down the next time she did such a thing, and threw the phone, breaking it. Derrick’s justification for this is that his anger and violent actions were directed at the door and the phone, not toward his wife, so he thinks it’s all good.
“He must have a good reputation with outsiders.” I’ve had occasion to talk to several “outsiders” who are acquainted with him over the past year or two. He doesn’t have a good reputation among any of them, which will happen when you steal someone’s identity, denigrate an entire demographic that includes two men who once considered you a friend and to whom you owe your survival, crash on a single mom’s couch for several months and refuse to look for work, etc.
“He must not pursue dishonest gain.” I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this one yet. You know the scam where drivers cut in front of someone, abruptly brake-check them, then sue for the resulting accident? He’s done that at least twice that I am aware of.
So … no, he doesn’t get to put himself in a position where he is subject to such a code of conduct and dismiss anyone who calls out his violations of same as a hateful unbeliever (which I am neither hateful nor an unbeliever) as an alternative to repenting of his ways and seeking to be a better example for his flock.
But you’re right, nothing precludes him from scrolling past.