When Evangelicals speak of “God,” they often do so in ways that give people the impression that God is a generic deity who is the same regardless of the name of the sect. When it suits Evangelicals, they will appeal to the deities of other sects as proof that their God exists.
Evangelicals point to supposed universal moral traits in the various world religions as proof of the existence of God. They also point to the various creation myths and flood myths found in many sects, and suggest that the universality of these stories is more proof for the existence of God.
Don’t be misled by the subterfuge of Evangelicals. While they may speak of God in generic ways and appeal to other religions as proof that God exists, they really don’t believe this. Don’t listen to their public talking points, points used when they want to convince the public that they really are nice people who just want to get along with everyone.
Go to your local Evangelical church and listen to the preaching. Behind closed church doors, Evangelical pastors no longer have to play nice. These so-called men of God are free to say what they really think about the gods of other religions. I can tell you what you won’t hear. You won’t hear about a generic God, or the universal commonalities the religions of the world have, Oh, no. What you will hear is that all other gods but the Evangelical Christian God are no God at all.
There is some movement within Evangelicalism to be more inclusive when it comes to other sects, but at the heart of Evangelical belief is the notion that there is one God: a triune being, revealed to humankind in the 66 books of the Protestant Christian Bible. For Evangelicals, there is no other God but this God.
The Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, Quakers, Unitarian Universalists, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Roman Catholics, and Greek Orthodox all, according to Evangelical apologists, worship false gods. Some Evangelicals even suggest that unless a sect holds to a certain soteriology, they too are worshiping a false God. Calvinists often make this claim about Arminians. Believe in free-will? Believe you can lose your salvation? You aren’t a Christian, according to many Calvinists.
In the days of the Roman Empire, Christians were considered atheists. Why were they considered atheists? The Romans had a plethora of gods, and they worshiped all of them. The Christians would have none of this. They were monotheists (actually polytheists), rejecting all other gods but theirs. Are not modern-day Evangelicals atheists; rejecting all other gods but the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?
Ask Evangelicals: do all roads lead to Heaven? and they will emphatically say no. According to Evangelical orthodoxy, there is one road that leads to Heaven and life eternal, and that road is the road bought and paid for by and through of the blood of Jesus, his death on the cross, and his resurrection from the dead three days later.
This road is a straight and narrow road that few people travel. Most of humanity — past and present — will not go to the Evangelical Heaven when they die. Billions and billions of people will go to Hell (The Lake of Fire) when they die and be tortured for all eternity by the loving, kind Christian God.
Most Evangelicals are quite Fundamentalist when it comes to God. And those Evangelicals who are not? They most likely are not really Evangelicals. An increasing number of Evangelicals, influenced by the emerging church and liberal/progressive politics, are becoming more inclusive in their view of other sects. It is not uncommon to hear Evangelicals say that while Catholics, Mormons, and Seventh Day Adventists, to name a few, are heterodox, they are still Christian sects. While this is good news as far as inclusiveness is concerned, such beliefs are betrayals of core Evangelical dogma.
Evangelicals who are more inclusive have one foot in the Evangelical church and the other foot in the liberal/progressive church. I suspect inclusivists will, in time, leave Evangelicalism altogether and join up with liberal/progressive Christian sects or completely leave Christianity. Countless on-fire-for-Jesus Evangelicals have walked away from Christianity and embraced atheism, agnosticism, or other forms of unbelief. The number of defections grows daily.
Are you a member of a non-Evangelical religious sect? The next time you have a discussion with an Evangelical about God, just remember he thinks your God is no God at all. Don’t be tricked into thinking that their use of the word God includes your God. It doesn’t.
This is why Evangelicals are so evangelistic. Since they worship the one, true, and living God, members of every other sect but theirs are soulwinning targets. They believe every human being needs to know, in a personal, salvific way, the Evangelical Christian God. A refusal to do so means spending eternity in the Lake of Fire.
If you happen to be an Evangelical and are reading this post, please explain to me why you do not call yourself an atheist? The ONLY difference between you and atheists such as I and many of the readers of this blog is that we have one less god on our NO GOD LIST than you do. You think every other god but your God is a false god. Please be honest enough to admit this. Please boldly tell non-Evangelicals — billions and billions of loving, caring, thoughtful people — that they are going to Hell after they die, and will be tortured by your God for all eternity unless they start worshiping Jesus.
No well, only God knows who is going to Heaven or Hell, cop-out allowed. This is not what Evangelical pastors preach on Sundays. Their sermons make it very clear who is and isn’t worshiping the true God. If this is your belief, then why not proudly own it? Why not proudly wear a button that says, My God is the only true and living God or God chose me but not you!
And if this is not what you believe, then why are you still sitting in the pew at the local Evangelical church? Are you not condoning their exclusivism and bigotry by continuing to attend an Evangelical church? Why not join up with people who share your theological, political, and social views?
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life; and he that winneth souls is wise. Proverbs 11:30
Soulwinning — the art, the endeavor of sharing the gospel with sinners and leading them to put their faith in Jesus Christ. A metaphor for evangelism or witnessing. (It is not a word found in the English dictionary.)
Soulwinner — a person whose purpose, desire, and motivation is to share the gospel with sinners and lead them to put their faith in Jesus Christ. (It is not a word found in the English dictionary.)
The Bible makes it clear that every church should be a soulwinning church and every Christian should be a soulwinner.
And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. Mark 16:15
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. Matthew 28:19-20
Matthew 28:19,20 is commonly called the Great Commission. While some may argue that the Great Commission was given ONLY to the eleven disciples, most sects and pastors think the Great Commission is a command given by Christ to every Christian in every generation, until Jesus returns to earth.
Why is it then that most Christians never verbally share the gospel with another person? I am not talking about inviting people to church so the head soulwinner, the pastor, can preach the gospel to them. I am not talking about nonverbal, just let your light shine or any of the other excuses Christians give for not verbalizing the gospel to those who do not know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Why is it that most Christians never, one time, in a clear, concise way, share the good news of the gospel with a lost, hell-bound sinner? Isn’t not doing so a direct repudiation of the Great Commission — a direct command given by Jesus to his followers?
The Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement has turned soulwinning into fine art. Churches hold soulwinning conferences and clinics. These special events are used to light a fire under church members who are not soulwinners. They are also used to train members in the best soulwinning methods and techniques. Technique matters. IFB Evangelist Dennis Corle bragged to me that he could win a soul in five minutes. According to him, all a soulwinner had to do is follow the script. Follow the script, use proper technique, and you too can be a great soulwinner like Dennis Corle.
No one was a bigger promoter of soulwinning than the late Jack Hyles — the former pastor of First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana. Hyles was famous for telling stories like this:
A few years ago I was in a Bible Conference in Houston, Texas. After a morning service, I returned to my room at one of the large motels on the north side of Houston. To my surprise, the door to my room was open and I heard singing coming from the bathroom. After checking the room number with my key, I realized I was in the right room. Perhaps someone else was in the wrong room.
I hollered through the door, inquiring who was there, only to find it was the Negro maid cleaning out the bathtub. She was actually down in the tub cleaning out the ring.
I asked her if she were a Christian. She said, “Mercy, no! I am as mean as the devil.” I got my Testament out and showed her the plan of salvation. All the time she was in the bathtub. After I showed her how to be saved, she knelt in the tub and received the Saviour.
I have laughed many times about this and have jokingly said, “I guess I am the only preacher in the world who ever won a lady in a bathtub!” This is just another of the many unusual experiences that God gives to soul winners. We should be on the lookout constantly for people who need the Saviour.
I have won people to Christ in train stations, in bus depots, on airplanes, in grocery stores, in barber shops, in shine parlors, in service stations, in garages, in school buildings, on ball diamonds, and in many other places. There are many hungry hearts waiting for someone to tell them the story.
For decades, Hyles and First Baptist Church conducted what they called Pastor’s School — a week-long event used to motivate pastors and church leaders to win more souls. Under the leadership of John R. Rice and Curtis Hutson, the Sword of the Lord held Soulwinning Conferences all over the country. These conferences were used to encourage and motivate pastors and churches that had forgotten Jesus’s command to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
From the 1960s-1980s, countless IFB churches experienced explosive growth as they went into the highway and hedges and compelled (without vampire powers) sinners to put their faith in Jesus. In the 1970s, many of the 100 largest churches in America were IFB churches.
Today? First Baptist Church in Hammond, once the largest church in the world, no longer conducts Pastor’s School, The Sword of the Lord no longer holds soulwinning conferences all over the country. Most of the IFB churches that made the Top 100 list in the 1960s-1980s are shells of what they once were. Some have even closed their doors. What happened?
In 1976, I enrolled at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan to study for the ministry. Midwestern, a small IFB college, was known for producing preachers who were great soulwinners. Tom Malone, the founder and chancellor of Midwestern, was also the pastor of nearby Emmanuel Baptist Church. Every student was required to attend Emmanuel.
For many years, thanks to its bus ministry, Emmanuel experienced explosive attendance growth, and was listed as a Top 100 church. Emmanuel saw high attendance days of over 5,000. Soulwinning was the lifeblood of the college and church. Students were required to go out soulwinning at least once a week, and each week they required to account for their soulwinning activities, by filling out a slip that detailed how many doors they knocked on, how many people they witnessed to, and how many people they led to Christ. Many students, myself included, lied about their soulwinning activities. Fake it till you make it, right?
Midwestern held a soulwinning contest while I was student there. Students competed with each other to see who could win the most souls. The winner of the contest usually won a hundred or more souls. Every student was required to participate in the soulwinning contest. One year, the college put up a big banner and a chart that was used to track who was winning the most souls. In the mind of Tom Malone, soulwinning was all that mattered.
Today? Midwestern has sold off its buildings. A developer had turned the main school building into a senior center, and the dorm has been turned into an apartment complex. The handful of students who remain meet for classes at Shalom Baptist Church in Orion Michigan. Emmanuel, a church that once bragged about being a Top 100 church is no more. Its church facilities are up for sale.
What happened? Why is Emmanuel closed, Midwestern a shell of what it once was, and the IFB church movement facing steep numerical decline?
If you ask IFB pastors this question, they will likely tell you that the WORLD is the cause for the attendance decline. People love sin more than they love Jesus. They might even point the finger at Evangelical mega churches and their slick marketing, worship bands, and relational sermons. Where they will never point the finger is at themselves. In their minds, they are the true church, preaching the true gospel. They seem unable to see that it is their theology and methodology that has led to their precipitous decline.
Instead of preaching a transformative, holistic gospel, many IFB pastors preach what is commonly called decisional regeneration — also known as easy-believism or one-two-three, repeat after me. Salvation became a simple transaction between a sinner and God — believe these propositional truths and thou shalt be saved. Sinners were told to pray a prayer:
Dear Lord Jesus, Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. Come into my heart and save me from my sins. Thank you for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. I am trusting you to take me to heaven when I die. Amen.
According to countless IFB churches and pastors, if people pray this prayer, they become, in that moment, born-again Christians. Millions and millions of Americans have prayed a prayer such as the one above. From Billy Graham crusades and Campus Crusade outreaches to Southern Baptist churches and IFB churches, the sinner’s prayer contained the magic words that made one a child of God. This bastardized version of the gospel filled churches with people who had no idea about what it meant to a Christian or a member of a Christian church.
The sin of the soulwinning movement and the IFB church is that they thought that winning souls was just a matter of using the right techniques. Pastors taught church members to use certain formulas such as The Roman’s Road to lead people to saving faith in Christ. Got Questions, a Fundamentalist website explains The Roman’s Road like this:
The Romans Road to salvation is a way of explaining the good news of salvation using verses from the Book of Romans. It is a simple yet powerful method of explaining why we need salvation, how God provided salvation, how we can receive salvation, and what are the results of salvation.
The first verse on the Romans Road to salvation is Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” We have all sinned. We have all done things that are displeasing to God. There is no one who is innocent. Romans 3:10-18 gives a detailed picture of what sin looks like in our lives.
The second Scripture on the Romans Road to salvation, Romans 6:23, teaches us about the consequences of sin – “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The punishment that we have earned for our sins is death. Not just physical death, but eternal death!
The third verse on the Romans Road to salvation picks up where Romans 6:23 left off, “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 5:8 declares, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus Christ died for us! Jesus’ death paid for the price of our sins. Jesus’ resurrection proves that God accepted Jesus’ death as the payment for our sins.
The fourth stop on the Romans Road to salvation is Romans 10:9, “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Because of Jesus’ death on our behalf, all we have to do is believe in Him, trusting His death as the payment for our sins – and we will be saved! Romans 10:13 says it again, “for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins and rescue us from eternal death. Salvation, the forgiveness of sins, is available to anyone who will trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
The final aspect of the Romans Road to salvation is the results of salvation. Romans 5:1 has this wonderful message, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Through Jesus Christ we can have a relationship of peace with God. Romans 8:1 teaches us, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Because of Jesus’ death on our behalf, we will never be condemned for our sins. Finally, we have this precious promise of God from Romans 8:38-39, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Would you like to follow the Romans Road to salvation? If so, here is a simple prayer you can pray to God. Saying this prayer is a way to declare to God that you are relying on Jesus Christ for your salvation. The words themselves will not save you. Only faith in Jesus Christ can provide salvation! “God, I know that I have sinned against you and am deserving of punishment. But Jesus Christ took the punishment that I deserve so that through faith in Him I could be forgiven. With your help, I place my trust in You for salvation. Thank You for Your wonderful grace and forgiveness – the gift of eternal life! Amen!”
Have you made a decision for Christ because of what you have learned through the Romans Road to salvation? If so, please click on the “I have accepted Christ today” button below.
Soulwinners are told to stay on point, reiterating the points in the soulwinning plan. If unsaved sinners ask questions not related to salvation, the questions are to be ignored and sinners steered back to the soulwinning plan. They are to give sinners just enough information to get saved. Their questions would be answered later after they were baptized and became a part of the church.
Think for a moment about what I have written here. Doesn’t all of this sound similar to a sales program used by Amway or some other direct marketer? Work the plan! Stay on point! Press the prospect to make a decision! Don’t let them ask questions! Close the sale!
When I was in college, I sold Kirby vacuüm cleaners. My Dad sold them for many years, and I thought, like father, like son. Every Saturday, the local Kirby office would hold mandatory sales meetings for their salesmen. These meetings were pep rallies meant to motivate salesmen to sell more vacuüm cleaners. They even sang songs with lyrics like There’s power, power wonder-working power in a Kirby, sung to the tune of the There’s Power in the Blood.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I was in the Christian church for fifty years. I spent twenty-five of those years pastoring Evangelical churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. I was a fervent, dedicated, committed believer of the “faith once delivered to the saints.” I believed it, practiced it, and lived it. When I was in the Christian box, it all made sense to me. Everything I read, everything I heard, and everything I experienced, reinforced the belief that I was in the right box.
God told me, the Bible told me, my friends and family told me, and the opposition of the world told me, that I was in the right box. Every once in a while, I would take one step outside the box and experience a bit of “other-boxedness.” However, after every foray into the world outside the Christian box, I would return to the safety of the box.
This is the way I lived my life for almost fifty years. Then one day, I decided to take more than one step outside of the box. I haltingly, tentatively took a few steps, staying close enough to the box that I could run back if I needed to.
Over time, I wandered farther and farther away from the box. I found all kinds of things that were not in the box I was in. I was confronted with data, beliefs, ideologies, facts, and practices that I had never heard of. I was uncertain about what I should make of these new-found things.
I talked to fellow box-keepers about this. They cautioned me about wandering outside of the box. Bruce, nothing good happens outside of the box, they told me. Everything we need for life and godliness is right here in the box. We even have a manual that tells us how to live in the box.
But I continued to wander outside of the box. One day, I wandered so far outside the box that I realized, for the first time, that the box sat on a steep, slippery hill. And there were other boxes too, all of them on that same slippery hill. The first time I noticed this, I quickly retreated to the safety of the box. Then one day, I found myself far outside the box. I turned around to look longingly at the box and I slipped, and before I knew it I was slipping and sliding down the slippery hill. On this day, I fought and clawed my way back up the hill and crawled back to the safety of the box. Dirty and bruised, I was safe within the box once again. The box was my salvation.
But it wasn’t. My mind was filled with thoughts of all the wonders I found outside the box. Things that people in my box said were bad for me; things that they were sure would ruin me. They told me that The box was all I needed. They feared I was becoming a wanderlust.
And they were right. I wandered once again outside the box, and just as before, I fell down the slope of the slippery hill. This happened to me many times before I finally gave up and stayed at the bottom of the hill. When I did this, the box I had lived in for almost 50 years was no longer large enough for me. For the first time, the things I had lived with in the box seemed odd, peculiar, and contradictory.
When I was in the box it all made sense. It all fit. But now, outside of the box, at the bottom of the slippery hill, the things I once believed now seemed to be the strange language of an alien culture. I found myself saying, I can’t believe I actually believed _________________________. It seems so crazy and incoherent now, yet when I was in the box it all made sense.
I can’t go back to the box I was in. As a secularist now, as a person who values skeptical, rational, and critical thinking, I must always be aware of other boxes around me. Every box’s occupants say that they have the truth. Every box’s occupants want me to take up residence in their box. However, I have learned, perhaps the hard way, that living in the narrow, blind confines of a box keeps me from experiencing the world that exists outside the box. Every box’s occupants think they are unique. Their sameness cannot be seen until one is out of the box — all of the boxes.
Experiencing the world outside of the box changed me forever. I know I still have a penchant for box-like thinking, but I revel in a life free of the constraints of any box.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The third time is a charm for the victims of Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) pastor Richard Mick. After two contentious mistrials, Mick’s third trial began last week, ending in a conviction on one count of rape and eight counts of gross sexual imposition. On Tuesday, the former pastor of Lighthouse Baptist Church in Sandusky, Ohio was sentenced to life in prison. He will be eligible for parole in about ten years.
His [Mick’s] first trial, in 2016, ended in a conviction after his then-attorney K. Ronald Bailey refused to participate in the trial, citing grievances with decisions of the trial judge, Roger Binette. Earlier this year, Bailey received a one-year law license suspension for his conduct in the trial.
Mick received a life prison sentence, but in 2018 an appeals court overturned the conviction and granted him a new trial.
Mick’s second trial started in 2019 but it didn’t make it to a jury’s verdict. After several days of testimony, the defense announced to the trial judge, Tygh Tone, the prosecution didn’t give them a piece of evidence — a police report — during pre-trial discovery. Tone declared a mistrial.
Visiting Judge John Haas sentenced Richard Mick, 59, formerly of Lighthouse Baptist Church in Sandusky, to life in prison plus three years.
Mick, of Castalia, was convicted by a jury last Friday on nine felony counts — one count of rape and eight counts of gross sexual imposition — following a weeklong trial in Erie County’s Court of Common Pleas. Those charges relate to two victims, both of whom were children at the time of the offenses.
If released from prison, he’ll also have to register as a sex offender. Mick’s attorney, Chris Maher, said Mick should be eligible for parole in about 10 years.
None of the victims made impact statements Tuesday in court, but their families did.
The brother of one victim told Mick that he “(doesn’t) believe anyone is born evil.”
“I don’t believe you were born wanting to commit these crimes,” the brother said. “I cannot imagine what kind of life led you to what you’d done. Let your victims have peace. Be honest to your friends and family about what you’ve done.”
The father of a different victim also spoke, telling the judge to keep Mick in prison as long as possible.
“He’s broken man’s laws, he’s broken God’s laws,” the father said. “We can only address man’s laws here.”
As has long been the case, Mick continues to have people believe he is innocent. One church member stated:
He is loved and will continue to be loved and supported. [she said, before turning to face Mick] I love you, pastor. You will always be my pastor.
That I’ve ever known, he’s never done any wrong. I don’t really know what else to say but he’s a good man.
Ah yes, Mick is a beloved pastor, a good man who has never done any wrong. Well, besides raping and sexually assaulting children. What’s a few minor indiscretions among friends, right?
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I have recently had several Trump-supporting relatives tell me that our respective candidates are just differences of opinion. In their minds, facts are opinions, and the only difference between us is that we hold differing opinions. No matter how I try to explain the irrationality of their beliefs, their retort is just the same: that’s your opinion. Which is then followed by: we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
In Trump’s world, facts and evidence don’t matter. No matter how many lies Trump tells, his supporters either believe his falsehoods or find some fantastical way to “explain” them away.
I have reached a place in life where I simply cannot stomach being around such people, either in person or on social media. As a result, I have unfriended a small number of people on Facebook, including several close family members. Surely, blood is thicker than water, someone is going to say, but I have come to the place that I can no longer be associated with people who support politicians and policies that cause me material and physical harm. These beliefs have real life consequences. I wonder, do Trump supporters bother to consider how his words, actions, and policies affect others; how they affect their parents, siblings, children, and grandchildren?
What I find even more troubling are people who think that Trump/Biden, Republicans/Democrats are equally bad. I’ve seen countless false equivalence arguments made on social media about the recent Presidential Debate. I thought, did you watch the fucking debate? Did you watch Trump spend 90 minutes bullying and talking over Joe Biden and Chris Wallace? Did you hear all of Trump’s bald-faced lies? Yet, because Biden called Trump a clown and told him to shut up, Biden is just as bad Trump. You know that’s not true, and from my perspective, this is lazy thinking.
Put yourself in Biden’s shoes. How would you have responded to being constantly bullied and harassed by Trump? I am of the opinion that Biden was too polite, as was Hilary Clinton in 2016. Imagine what might had happened if, when Trump was leering at Clinton, she turned around and said, “Mr. Trump, please stop acting like a sexual predator!” Trump gets by with this behavior because no one calls him on it.
Donald Trump is not fit to be President of the United States. He is, by far, the worst President our country has ever had — yes, worse than Hoover and Nixon. Yet, millions of Americans will gleefully vote for Trump. And if he loses? These same people will claim the election was stolen from the “best” President in American history. Trump knows he could lose in November, and that’s why he is laying the groundwork for contesting the election, alleging widespread voter fraud. Never mind the fact that none of this will be true. In the minds of Trump’s supporters, everything is just personal opinion.
When you say you support Donald Trump and will vote for him in November:
I hear you say lying doesn’t matter.
I hear you say cheating on your SAT doesn’t matter.
I hear you say rape doesn’t matter.
I hear you say sexual assault doesn’t matter.
I hear you say misogyny doesn’t matter.
I hear you say grabbing women by their genitals against their will doesn’t matter.
I hear you say tax fraud doesn’t matter.
I hear you say paying off porn stars doesn’t matter.
I hear you say people of color don’t matter.
I hear you say poor people don’t matter.
I hear you say old people don’t matter.
I hear you say big cities don’t matter.
I hear you say properly funding social security doesn’t matter.
I hear you saying the post office doesn’t matter.
I hear you say affordable universal healthcare doesn’t matter.
I hear you say it’s okay to put children in cages.
I hear you say the international community is our enemy.
I hear you say that countries in Africa are shit holes.
I hear you say COVID-19 is a hoax.
I hear you say face masks are unnecessary.
I hear you say social distancing is unnecessary.
I hear you say science doesn’t matter.
I hear you say the CDC and the WHO are agents of China.
I hear you say peaceful protesters are thugs and terrorists.
I hear you say that white supremacists are your kind of people.
I hear you say that the United States is a Christian nation.
I hear you say that separation of church and state is a myth.
I hear you say the media is fake news.
I hear you say it’s okay to use racist, bigoted language.
I hear you say that soldiers killed in action or captured by the enemy are suckers and losers.
I hear you say global warming is a hoax.
I hear you say the law doesn’t apply to you.
Every time you voice your support of Donald Trump, you are telling me that turning a government by the people and for the people into the president’s personal fiefdom doesn’t matter; that turning the executive branch into a family-owned and -operated business doesn’t matter; that the justice department exists to harass and prosecute the president’s enemies and protect his friends; that everything is all about him.
Every time you post memes about communism and socialism, it tells me you don’t understand what communism and socialism are; that truth doesn’t matter to you; that you have no interest in truly understanding why an increasing number of Americans support democratic socialist policies; that the United States has ALWAYS had socialist programs and policies.
So, you see, I can’t agree to disagree. An arsonist by the name of Donald Trump is trying to burn down my family, my home, my community, my state, my country, and the world I live in. I love my neighbor as myself, and hope for a better tomorrow for my wife, children, and grandchildren. As long as Donald Trump and his enablers control our government, we have no promise of a better tomorrow, no hope of peace and prosperity.
These things are not matters of opinion. Anyone who can read knows the threat Donald Trump poses to the human race. That YOU, dear Trump supporter, refuse to see this, is the problem. Why do you continue to embrace, support, and enable ignorance? Surely, truth matters, right? By all means, convince me that despite all these things Donald Trump is the better candidate for president. By all means, convince me that our great republic can withstand four more years of Trump. And let me ask you one last question, are we really better off today than we were when Barack Obama was president? Be honest . . .
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Not even this kind of dancing was permitted in the IFB church
In September 1971, I began my ninth grade year at Central Junior High School in Findlay, Ohio. At home, my parents argued constantly, and seven months later they divorced. A few months after that, Mom married her first cousin — a recent Texas prison parolee — and Dad married a 19-year-old woman he met at the local dirt race track. She brought a toddler girl into our new “blended” family.
Needless to say, life at home was anything but love, peace, and harmony. I hated my parents for getting divorced. I hated my Dad for marrying a girl who was only four years older than I.
I stayed away from home as much as I could. Dad was busy with his “new” family, so my siblings and I were left to our own devices. I spent a lot of time at the local YMCA. I didn’t have the money for a membership, so I learned the fine art of sneaking into the Y. The Y became my home away from home.
Dad started G and B Train Shop with Gary Zissler, a fellow deacon at the church. The store mainly sold Lionel, American Flyer, Marx, and HO trains. I worked at the store in the evenings. Dad paid me twenty-five cents an hour, minus the cost of the pop I drank. Since we rarely had pop at home, I became a pop-a-holic while at the train shop. I also spent a lot of money buying comic books at the next-door drug store. I quickly learned how to sort the till to fund my habits.
Our family attended Trinity Baptist Church in Findlay, Ohio. Trinity was a large Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church pastored by Gene Milioni. Ron Johnson was the assistant pastor and Bruce Turner (please see Dear Bruce Turner) was the youth pastor.
After Pastor Milioni married my dad and his second wife, Dad and my siblings stopped going to church. I, however, immersed myself in the church, attending every time the doors were opened.
The church became my family. Most of my close friends attended Trinity, and the church provided me with everything I found lacking in my home life. Even though I am now an atheist, I will forever be grateful for the support and social connection the church provided for me.
In the fall of 1972, my tenth-grade year at Findlay High School, Al Lacy held a revival at Trinity Baptist. One night, I came under great conviction and I went down to the altar, confessed my sins, and asked Jesus to save me. A week later I was baptized, and not too long after that, I publicly confessed before the church that I believed God was calling me into the ministry. I was fifteen.
My life changed dramatically after I got saved. I started carrying my Bible to school, and I regularly witnessed to my non-Christian friends. My non-Christian friends, those I played sports with, thought I had lost my mind, and some of my Christian friends did too.
I have always been an all-in kind of person. I don’t do half-way very well, so when it came to being a Christian, I was 100% committed to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I took seriously what I heard the pastors preach. In my young mind, I saw the pastors as speaking for God. After all, everything they preached about came straight out of the Bible, God’s inspired, inerrant, infallible Word — KJV-1611.
Trinity was an IFB church, affiliated with the Baptist Bible Fellowship. The pastors preached against rock music, premarital sex, mixed swimming, going to movies, short skirts and pants on women, and long hair on men. Remember, it was the early 1970s, and mini-skirts and maxi-dresses were popular and men wore their hair long. The pastors at Trinity were anti-culture, believing the love and peace generation was destroying America.
Like a good Baptist boy, I tried to follow the rules to the letter. God (or the pastor) said it, I believed it, and that settled it for me. One sin the pastors were against was any kind of dancing. Not just some types of dancing, they were against ALL dancing.
I vividly remember ninth-grade year at Central Jr High. The Phys Ed teacher decided to teach square dancing. I was all for learning to square dance. This would be my only opportunity to touch the cheerleaders. Unfortunately, Pastor Milioni put an end to my carnal desires. He came to school and made a fuss about the square-dancing class. Next thing I know, I am being forced to sit with the fags (talking as we did in the 1970s — I do not use such language today) who refused to take Phys Ed. This was a punishment worse than death. Pastor Milioni would later come to my school to complain about the choir singing Jesus Christ Superstar. I had to quit choir.
Both my junior high and high school held dances, social events that everyone attended — well everyone but this good Baptist boy. I went through a period of time when I was really upset about all the rules and restrictions, so I would stay overnight with non-Christian friends so I could go to the dances with them. I did this numerous times. I don’t know if my parents ever caught on. If they did, they never said a word.
I came through the 1970s with my Baptisthood intact. I never smoked cigarettes, drank, or toked marijuana. I didn’t listen to rock music, I kept my hair cut short, and I successfully made it through high school as a virgin. Not that I didn’t want to have sex — I did — but I was afraid of what might happen if I did, and I didn’t think any of the church girls I dated were “willing.” I found out a few years ago, after talking to some of the girls I went to church with, that they were more “willing” than this naïve Baptist boy thought they were.
The first time I danced was at the wedding of one of my children. This was the first time for my wife too. My daughters-in-law cajoled us into dancing. Oh, what a sight we were. We may have been years away from our Fundamentalist youth, but it was quite evident that we didn’t know the first thing about dancing.
How about you? If you were raised in a Fundamentalist Christian home and attended public school, how did that affect your ability to be a normal student? Please share your experiences in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I am often asked questions about my life post-Jesus: questions about children, marriage, and the effect of my unbelief on my relationships with family and friends. I am also questioned about my worldview, morality, and politics, along with my view of religion and Evangelicalism. Simply put, people want to know: how different is my life today from the wayit was twelve years ago when I admitted to myself and the world that I was no longer a Christian?
I can safely say that leaving the ministry and leaving Christianity has affected every aspect of my life. How could it have been otherwise? I was in the Christian church for fifty years, and for twenty-five of those years, I pastored Evangelical churches. I married Polly in July 1978. We planned to graduate college, go to a community and start a church, live in a white two-story farmhouse with a white picket fence, have two children — a boy named Jason and a girl named Bethany, and live happily ever after. Boy, was that a fantasy.
I pastored seven churches in three states. We lived in Pontiac, Bryan (twice), Montpelier, Newark (twice), New Lexington (twice), Glenford (twice), Frazeysburg, Fayette (twice), Clare, Stryker, Yuma, and Ney. All told, we lived in more than 20 houses. Two children became six, and now we have thirteen grandchildren.
I left the ministry in 2005, and in November 2008, Polly and I joined hands together as we walked away from Christianity, never to return. At that moment, we burned our lives to the ground and began rebuilding them again. This process continues to this day.
While I am comfortable with the atheist moniker, Polly self-describes as an agnostic, even though her life is every bit as godless as mine. Our children have their own stories to tell, and I will leave it to them to share their journeys. None of them is an Evangelical. One son, however, seems to be moving towards Evangelicalism, having embraced Trumpism, white supremacy, and is a gun-toting militia member. The rest of my children are politically liberal/progressive, so I am sure they disagree with their father on many of the finer points of political discourse. My children, much like their father, remain an ongoing renovation project.
All of my Christian friends and colleagues in the ministry have cut ties with me, save two people. I literally lost hundreds of friends, ministerial colleagues, and acquaintances over the past twelve years. Some quietly slipped away, while others took flamethrowers to my life as they walked out the door. Awful, ugly, nasty things have been said about me by those I once considered dear friends.
Walking away entails walking towards something else. I treaded water for a time, trying to figure out exactly what life post-Jesus might look like. Today, I am comfortable in my atheist skin, proud to be numbered among the godless heathen of this world. My worldview and morality continue to evolve. When asked what I “believe,” I reply, I am a (secular) humanist. It is the humanist ideal that gives me a moral and ethical foundation for my life. After fifty years of having the Bible as my guide, it has been a challenge to rebuild the foundation of my life. At first, it seemed impossible to do, but with time, and lots of reading and thinking, I now see the scaffolding of life rising up, providing the structure by which I can live my day-to-day life.
Polly and I recently celebrated forty-two years of marriage. That young Baptist preacher and his bride are long gone, and in their place has grown a relationship that rests on love and mutual respect. While we continue to deal with patriarchal hangovers — I want to be the boss and Polly is all too happy to let me — I can say that our marriage is rock solid. Not perfect, and we still have occasional (about nothing) fights, but we don’t, to quote the Bible, let the sun go down on our wrath. We are in no way an example of a model marriage. We are just two people who happen to love each other, and really, really, really like each other too (and anyone who has been married a long time knows how important “like” is).
And that is the rest of my (our) story, for now. Each day, Loki-willing, provides us new opportunities to grow and mature; to be better people than we were the day before. And that’s our goal.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Why do some people [Bruce Gerencser] apostatize, who at one time professed faith in Jesus Christ, even those who were pastors, ended up leaving Jesus Christ? These false converts even believed that they had the Holy Spirit before they fell away from the faith.
An apostate [Bruce Gerencser] shows us that they never understood the Holy Scriptures because to understand the Bible, they had to have the Holy Spirit living inside of them in the first place. [According to Evangelical orthodoxy, only Christians have the Holy Spirit living inside of them. Yet, Spaniard VIII says unbelievers must have the Holy Spirit inside of them to understand the Bible. Which is it? Talk about circular reasoning.]
….
If an atheist [Bruce Gerencser] ever says to you that he knows more than you, referring to the Bible, or that he once had the Holy Spirit, it just shows how deluded they are and continues to be. Unless they humble themselves in the sight of Christ, they will continue to walk in darkness straight to the multiple pathways to hell. Atheists are one of the proudest people you will ever encounter. The reason for this is that they went through a traumatic situation that got them so bitter towards God that all they can do is curse at Him and His followers. People like that make me feel sorry for them. Only prayer can break their hardness.
Marques Jeffries left the following comment on Spaniard VIII’s post:
Amen, brother! Bruce [Gerencser], Andrea, John Arthur, and the rest of their Atheist friends’ angry words against God are just a cover-up for either a panful event from their past, or because there is a sin that they are committing that they don’t want to let go of. [Yes, I love fucking space aliens.]
The Holy Spirit allows us to see through all of their angry words, and know that it is Satan manipulating them to behave in this manner. The God that they reject is the only One who can supply the pure love that every person longs for.
Like you said, all we can do is witness to them, and pray that they will have a life experience that softens their heart to enable the Holy Spirit to come in and do a loving work within them…But salvation is a choice that God leaves to each of us.
Personally, accepting Jesus is the best thing that ever happened to me. (Marques needs to get out more often.]
Spaniard VIII replied:
Their hatred is pure evidence that they are full of bitterness towards Jesus Christ. Bruce has been reblogging me because I have been saying the truth [No, I have been quoting you to show that you are a Liar for Jesus®.], regarding atheism and it hurts him and the rest his blind followers, sadly. [Yes, your words have really, really, really hurt me.] The more they talk about me, the more blessed I feel. When you get slandered for the sake of Christ by these atheists, you will have treasure in heaven. I welcome it. Win-win for me.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Why is the belief of atheism so dangerous for the atheist? The reason it is so dangerous is that Satan blinds them and convinces them that God is not real, which keeps the person from pursuing spiritual truth, like the afterlife and the Creator of the universe. That type of persuasion keeps them in the dark.
When a person doesn’t believe that something is real, they won’t try to investigate it to see if it is true. If they presume to seek the Bible for evidence, they go about it with complete doubt making it useless and a waste of their time.
The devil persuades these people from even thinking about searching God through the Bible by luring them away through worldly lust of all kinds. The devil tells them, “if you become a Christian, you cannot enjoy your sinful desires that you live for and must give them up.” He will keep them from the truth, which will send them to hell because they won’t seek redemption from their state by asking Jesus Christ for salvation.
I could dismantle Spaniard VIII’s post line by line, but I am too weary to do so today. I do, however, want to address his false claim that atheists are ignorant of Christianity/God/Satan/the Bible. While I cannot speak for all atheists, I can say that most of the unbelievers I know are actually quite conversant in the teachings of the Bible. Many of them were committed followers of Jesus: pastors, evangelists, missionaries, deacons, Sunday school teachers, or Christian college professors. It can hardly be said of them that they are “ignorant” about Christianity and the Bible. With full knowledge and understanding of the faith once delivered to the saints, these atheists and agnostics with one voice say the Christian God is a myth.
Spaniard VIII knows my story. He knows I attended an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) Bible college; that I pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years. He knows I spent thousands and thousands of hours reading and studying the Bible. In fact, I’m certain that I have far more Bible study hours under my belt than Spaniard VIII. All told, I preached over 4,000 sermons. Surely, based on my education, study, and experience, I know the Bible quite well. Yes, I am an atheist, but unless Spaniard VIII wants to claim that all my theological knowledge magically disappeared the moment I deconverted, I remain quite knowledgeable of Christianity and its divine religious text.
I will leave it to readers to address Spaniard VIII’s other claims. I just wish he would stop misrepresenting atheists.
As usual, Span shows that he is terrified of atheists. Our mere existence shows him that he is nothing special, and his version of Christianity is just like the other thousands of versions out there.
Poor Span, no satan either. No demons or devils, just sad humans who need to lie about others.
Unsurprisingly, humans have been looking for this god for quite a long time and have found nothing to show that it exists. Just like every other theist, Span tries to claim his god is the only real one, but he has no more evidence than the rest.
Since Christians can’t agree on what sin is, we only have Span declaring that what Span doesn’t like is sin. No god involved. And, alas for Span, sharks do exist. We have evidence.
We don’t have evidence for Span’s god. So his analogy fails again. All we have are scared little men like Span who try to pretend to be a hero when all he desperately wants is external validation for his delusions.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
John MacFarlane is the pastor of First Baptist Church in Bryan, Ohio. First Baptist is an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) congregation. I attended First Baptist in the 1960s and 1970s. First Baptist was my home church when I left to attend Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan in the fall of 1976. John, at the time, was a young boy.
I have written several posts about First Baptist Church and its present pastor, John MacFarlane:
Last month, MacFarlane wrote a blog post titled, When Is An Atheist Really Not An Atheist?
I do not believe that the average person claiming to be an atheist is really an atheist at all. Their venomous attacks and rantings against God, Christians, and churches betrays their heart. Let me illustrate.
There are some very interesting people out there who believe in UFOs. They believe they’ve seen UFOs hovering in the sky and that the sudden appearance of a light in the sky is the lights on their spaceship. They believe the government has covert hangers in the desert somewhere, housing their alien ships and that there are laboratories where experiments are being performed on alien bodies. There are even some who believe they have personally been abducted by aliens into their spaceships and returned.
These UFO experts are more than willing to share their story and experience with anyone who listens. They write books about it and reputable bookstore chains like Barnes & Noble or Amazon will carry them. If UFO believers find other believers out there, they quickly join forces in sharing what they “know”.
Now, I hope I’m not shocking anyone with this confession but I’m an “a-UFO-eist.” I am not a believer – in UFOs, extraterrestrials, little green men, or any such thing. There’s nothing in me that wonders, questions, ponders, or is remotely concerned that all of a sudden, E.T. is going to ride a bicycle across my night sky and want me to phone home. And, while I love a good Star Trek marathon, I have no concerns that there just might be a shred of reality to their fictional, Hollywood portrayals of life in other galaxies.
Am I bashing the UFO believers? Am I attacking them at every opportunity? Do I blog or write against them? Do I have a website dedicated to the demolition of their belief system? Is their hatred or animosity in my heart towards them? Not in the least!
Why? Because I do not believe extraterrestrials exist, therefore, there is no rhyme nor reason to rail against those who do, wasting time and precious energy.
In Psalms 14:1, David writes, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God…” The definition of atheism is the belief that there is no God. If a person is truly an atheist, they will live a life reflecting this. The Psalmist goes on to say, “… They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.” The atheist will do what they want without regard to some “moral code” established by an invisible, intrusive God. They will do “that which is right in their own eyes.”
If you ask a professing atheist if there is a God, they will tell you that there is no God. But the moment that the “atheist” starts a diatribe against a God that they believe is non-existent, are they not revealing what’s really in their heart? Are they not expressing that, deep down, they know the truth? They KNOW God is real. Why else would they get all bent out of shape over something they say they do not believe really exists? The content of their heart has been exposed.
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Rather than feeling threatened, offended, or embittered against those who would claim to be atheists and would attack us, let us look on them with love and compassion. They are fighting a battle they cannot win. Pray that God would give us a tender heart towards them and wisdom in winning them to the Lord. Be like the Apostles and continue to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Where, oh where, do I begin? I am the most outspoken atheist in this area, and I wrote a letter to the editor of the Bryan Times which was published shortly before MacFarlane wrote his post (please see Letter to the Editor: The Rotting Corpse of American Capitalism), so I think I can safely assume that the atheist in question is yours truly. If so, why not just call me out by name? That’s exactly what I am doing in this post. When public figures make negative (and ignorant) statements about atheists, agnostics, and unbelievers, I think it is important to attach their names to said beliefs.
Out of the gate, MacFarlane says that “atheists aren’t really atheists at all.” How does he know this? Well, he doesn’t, he just believes it to be true.
In MacFarlane’s Bible-sotted mind, atheist “attacks and rantings against God, Christians, and churches betrays their heart.” MacFarlane believes we only talk about that which we believe to be true. Evidently, he’s never met any Trump supporters. They are totally disconnected from reality, yet they believe everything the president says, buying into countless conspiracy theories that are demonstratively false. I suspect MacFarlane, along with his congregation, will likely vote for Trump come November. Using the good pastor’s “logic,” I can conclude that most of his church believes things that are untrue.
MacFarlane says he doesn’t spend time talking about UFOs because he knows there’s no other life out there beside what’s on the earth created by his peculiar version of God, 6,023 years ago. He just KNOWS this to be true. As is common among Evangelicals, THE BIBLE SAYS kills scientific curiosity. It is likely there is life beyond our planet, yet MacFarlane rejects such a notion because it conflicts with his literalistic interpretation of the Protestant Christian Bible.
But, I could also say that just as MacFarlane doesn’t spend any time talking about UFOs and aliens because he KNOWS they don’t exist, I could say the same about God. I see no evidence for the existence of MacFarlane’s God, so I don’t spend any time talking about it/him/her. Wait a minute, Bruce, you talk about God all the time. Nope, my focus is on organized religion; not the said deities they worship. There is no God, so why would I waste my time talking about him? However, billions of people worship some sort of deity, be it Allah, Jehovah, or Jesus. My focus is on the beliefs and practices of believers, not God itself. (Please see Never Underestimate the Power of Jesus.)
MacFarlane believes that because I write about God, Jesus, Christianity, and the Bible, deep down in my little ‘ole heart-of-hearts, I still believe in God. I am surprised that MacFarlane doesn’t think I am still a Christian. Surely, his once-saved-always-saved soteriology demands that the unrepentant atheist Bruce Gerencser go to Heaven when he dies. Or maybe that is just a theological bridge too far for MacFarlane. Several years ago, I attended a funeral service of a family member held at First Baptist. MacFarlane did his darndest to preach the man into Heaven, all because he walked the aisle at a revival meeting as a teen. This man hadn’t attended church in 40 years. He was a misogynistic pig and a rapist. Yet, Pastor MacFarlane rolled the man right up to the pearly gates, helped him out of his wheelchair, and escorted him into Heaven. Surely, if this piece of shit made it into Heaven, I should make it too, right?
MacFarlane quotes Psalm 14:1: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.” MacFarlane believes atheists and other unbelievers are:
Fools
Corrupt
Do abominable works
Do not do good
This claim, of course, is absurd. Atheists, agnostics, humanists, pagans, Buddhists, and other “unbelievers” are every bit as moral and ethical as Evangelical Christians. If MacFarlane has evidence to the contrary, he should provide it. Quoting a Bible verse doesn’t count.
MacFarlane makes an unsubstantiated moral claim:
“The atheist will do what they want without regard to some “moral code” established by an invisible, intrusive God. They will do “that which is right in their own eyes.”
MacFarlane, of course, believes morality is established and defined by the Bible God. How many times have Evangelicals used this argument? More times than I can count.
Lacking good reasons or armed with weak ones, many will object that their moral beliefs derive from their Gods. To base your ethical views on Gods you would need to know: 1) if Gods exist; 2) if they are good; 3) if they issue good commands; 4) how to find the commands; and 5) the proper version and translation of the holy books issuing commands, or the right interpretation of a revelation of the commands, or the legitimacy of a church authority issuing commands. Needless to say, it is hard, if not impossible, to know any of this.
Consider just the interpretation problem. When does a seemingly straightforward command from a holy book like, “thou shalt not kill,” apply? In self-defense? In war? Always? And to whom does it apply? To non-human animals? Intelligent aliens? Serial killers? All living things? The unborn? The brain-dead? Religious commands such as “don’t kill,” “honor thy parents,” and “don’t commit adultery” are ambiguous. Difficulties also arise if we hear voices commanding us, or if we accept an institution’s authority. Why trust the voices in our heads, or institutional authorities?
For the sake of argument though, let’s assume: that there are Gods; that you know the true one; that your God issues good commands; that you have access to those commands because you have found the right book or church, or had the right vision, or heard the right voices; and that you interpret and understand the commands correctly—even if they came from a book that has been translated from one language to another over thousands of years, or from a long-ago revelation. It is almost impossible that you are correct about all this, but for the sake of the argument let’s say that you are. However, even in this case, most philosophers would argue that you can’t base ethics on your God.
To understand why you can’t base ethics on Gods, consider the question: what is the relationship between the Gods and their commands? A classic formulation of this relationship is called the divine-command theory. According to divine command theory, things are right or wrong simply because the Gods command or forbid them. There is nothing more to morality than this. It’s like a parent who says to a child: it’s right because I say so. To see how this formulation of the relationship fails, consider a famous philosophical conundrum: “Are things right because the Gods command them, or do the Gods command them because they are right?”
If things are right simply because the Gods command them, then those commands are arbitrary. In that case, the Gods could have made their commandments backward! If divine fiat is enough to make something right, then the Gods could have commanded us to kill, lie, cheat, steal and commit adultery, and those behaviors would then be moral. But the Gods can’t make something right if it’s wrong. The Gods can’t make torturing children morally acceptable simply by divine decree, and that is the main reason why most Christian theologians reject divine command theory.
On the other hand, if the Gods command things because they are right, then there are reasons for the God’s commands. On this view, the Gods, in their infinite wisdom and benevolence, command things because they see certain commands as good for us. But if this is the case, then there is some standard, norm or criteria by which good or bad are measured which is independent of the Gods. Thus all us, religious and secular alike, should be looking for the reasons that certain behaviors should be condemned or praised. Even the thoughtful believer should engage in philosophical ethics.
So either the Gods commands are without reason and therefore arbitrary, or they are rational according to some standard. This standard—say that we would all be better off—is thus the reason we should be moral and that reason, not the Gods’ authority, is what makes something right or wrong. The same is true for a supposedly authoritative book. Something isn’t wrong simply because a book says so. There must be a reason that something is right or wrong, and if there isn’t, then the book has no moral authority on the matter.
At this point, the believer might object that the Gods have reasons for their commands, but we can’t know them. Yet if the ways of the Gods are really mysterious to us, what’s the point of religion? If you can’t know anything about the Gods or their commands, then why follow those commands, why have religion at all, why listen to the priest or preacher? If it’s all a mystery, we should remain silent or become mystics.
Geoff asked, What are your views on objective morality?
The question asked by Geoff is complex and filled with nuance. Anytime I have addressed morality in the past, my writing has elicited all sorts of comments from atheists and Fundamentalists alike. It seems few people like or appreciate my worldview and my understanding of morality. As a Christian, I believed that the issue of morality was settled for me: God hath spoken. Shut the hell up and do what he commands! As a dutiful follower of Jesus, I attempted to follow not only the teachings of the Bible, but the direction of Holy Spirit who lived inside of me (or so I thought at the time). Once I deconverted, I had to rethink my worldview. What was it I believed about morality in general? What was I I believed about specific moral statements and standards? My understanding of morality has evolved over the past decade. I am, in no way, a finished product. I still have many questions about morality, and it is impossible to fully answer them in a blog post.
I readily admit that Christianity has deeply affected my understanding of morality. I was in the Christian church for fifty years. I spent twenty-five of those years pastoring Evangelical churches. As a result, Evangelical morality has seeped deeply into the dark recesses of my mind. While I try to distance myself from my past, its effects linger. Thus, there are times my moral views line up with those of Christians. This doesn’t mean, then, that I am a Christian. My views also, on occasion, line up with Buddhism and other religions. All this tells me is that religions have, in the past, played a big part in the evolution of human morality.
When someone asks me whether I believe in objective morality, what I hear them asking is whether I believe there are moral standards or moral absolutes. In the strictest sense, my answer is no. Morality is always subjective. Now that doesn’t mean countries, states, and tribes can’t have absolute moral standards. They can and do. All I ask is that believers in objective morality admit that their absolutes have changed over time, and that, in fact, the changing nature of their absolutes suggests that their morality is actually subjective. For example, there is a push in the United States to make eighteen the minimum age for marriage. This law, if passed, would be considered an objective moral standard. However, in the past, people were permitted to marry as young as age thirteen, and in some countries, children are betrothed to one another when they are still primary school age. If there’s such a thing as objective morality, then shouldn’t the age for marriage have been fixed from day one? That it hasn’t been shows the subjectivity of moral beliefs.
Morality is affected by tribal, cultural, and sociological influences. This means that all morality changes with time, including absolute, never-changing, God-said-it, it’s-in-the-Bible Evangelical morality. Evangelicals now do things that were considered sins — violations of objective morality — fifty years ago. Even Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) morality continues to change and evolve. Only those who are deliberately deaf, people with fingers in their ears who say, nah, nah, nah, I can’t HEAR you, fail to see that morality is inherently subjective.
All of us belong to certain countries and tribes. As a U.S. citizen, I live in a country that supposedly values the rule of law. I say supposedly because Donald Trump’s abhorrent behavior and his penchant for ignoring the rule of law makes me question whether we indeed are still such people. Fascism is on the rise, and when it comes in full force it brings law by force, instead of WE THE PEOPLE deciding the laws that will govern us. For now, though, we are still a nation governed by laws shaped and enacted by legislators elected by voting Americans. These laws establish what we as a people believe is moral. These laws, over time, change. For example, at one time it was illegal to have an abortion; then in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized most abortions. Today, with the prospect of a right-wing Catholic being added to the Supreme Court, it is possible that laws regulating abortion will change, and women will be forced to revert to the days of coat-hanger, back alley abortions. The same can be said for much of the progress made on social and church/state issues over the past six decades. And the same can be said about slavery. There was a time when Christians believed it was permissible to own other people, and even had BIble verses they used to justify their immoral ownership of Blacks. Even worse, slaves were considered 3/5ths of a person for census purposes. This ebb and flow of moral beliefs shows that morality is subjective.
Theocrats, of course, despise the give and take of the legal process in democratic countries. They want a dictatorship, with the Christian (or Muslim) Holy book as the objective standard for morality. Theocrats demand that laws reflect their Fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible (or Koran). In their minds, their interpretations are one and the same with God’s will and commands. But, even for theocrats, their interpretations change over time, thus proving, once again, that morality is subjective.
Not only do governments establish moral norms, so do the tribes to which each of us belong. Whether at the group or family level, certain moral standards govern behavior. Now, keep in mind I am using the word moral in as broad of a way as possible. Divorce your mind from the religious constructs you have been taught, and see morality as the rules/laws/precepts by which we govern behavior. I suspect your family has certain moral standards, and those standards may or may not be different from mine. For example, I have lost readers over my refusal to stop using curse words in my writing. In their tribes, cursing is verboten or is considered in poor taste. In my tribe, it is okay to curse, except when young children are present or Polly’s IFB parents are visiting (though there have been times when a few damns, shits, and assholes have slipped out). When it is only adults in the room? Cursing is permitted, and be prepared to be schooled in sexual innuendo. Were the readers who demanded that I sanitize my writing “wrong”? Who determines what words are appropriate and what words are not? It should be clear to everyone that the words writers choose to use are subjective. Each tribe to its own.
My children are known for having what is called the Gerencser work ethic. This ethic was taught to them by their parents. Work hard. Eight hours pay for eight hours work. Do your best. Do it right the first time. Never accept good enough as a standard for acceptance. The reasons for these maxims are many, but regardless of how they came to be, they are deeply ingrained into the psyche of my adult children. My oldest son has taken one personal day at work in twenty years. His mom has taken zero. My younger children are not as zealous as their older siblings, but they still are known for being no-nonsense hard workers. This tribal ethos often brings them into conflict with other employees who have different work standards. For example, one son works in a department where the majority of the workers have already used half or more of their personal days. My wife supervises people who are already out of personal days with six months to go before they accrue new days. Years ago, my two oldest sons were asked by their fellow employees to slow down. Why? They were making less industrious employees look bad. My sons ignored their critics, choosing instead to follow the Gerencser work ethic (an ethic that can be found in many families, by the way). Both now hold management positions with their respective employers, as do their younger brother and mother. Does this make the Gerencsers better than other people? Depends on how “better” is defined, I suppose. All I know is that this very subjective work ethic is deeply embedded in my tribe. We behave this way because that what we have been taught to do.
Each of us also has personal moral standards; certain things we will and won’t do. I don’t expect other people to live by my moral standards. These rules of behavior — ever-changing — help me navigate the road of life. As a humanist, I look to the humanist ideal to provide moral guidance. This ideal, crafted by men and women, is inherently subjective, but it does address and support my worldview. I have no problem with Evangelicals wanting to live by their personal interpretations of the Bible. Go with God, I say. It is when Evangelicals demand that others live by their interpretations I have a problem.
As a post-Evangelical, I have been forced to reexamine my morality and worldview. For example, I am a pacifist. More specifically, I am a proponent of non-violent resistance. Sounds like a moral absolute, right? I would like it to be, but the world is too messy for it be so; too gray, too challenging for me to say that I am, without reservation, a pacifist. Generally, I oppose violence, yet I love and support American football — organized violence. I wouldn’t take up arms to defend the United States, but I would defend my family against attack and harm. I face this same struggle with most moral issues. It’s too easy to write Ten Commandments and say obey. I choose, instead, to think about each issue, and then come to a reasoned conclusion.
Most people agree that we should avoid harming others. I think that’s a good place to start. But, even here, it is impossible to ever live a life that does not, at some point, harm others. Take vegans. They don’t eat meat for moral reasons. They don’t want to cause animals pain and suffering. Yet, providing vegans a non-animal diet still causes pain, suffering, and death. Earthworms, insects, and other animals die so farmers can provided vegans with yummy (I am being sarcastic here) soybeans. The goal, then, should be to promote the greatest good while at the same time causing the least harm. We can then build on this foundation, asking “what is the best way for humans to govern themselves and live lives of love, peace, and harmony — pass me a joint, bro.”
Human morality is inherently subjective; a work in progress; a work that will never be completed; a work that will hopefully lead to a kinder, gentler tomorrow; a work that places great value on justice and kindness. Nirvana, it will never be, but we can have a better tomorrow if we want it badly enough. Unfortunately, internecine warfare between countries and tribes leaves me wondering if human progress is but an illusion, a pipe dream. Perhaps it is, but I see no other option than to work towards a better future for my progeny. This work requires of us hard discussions and debates about morality. Holy books or trade paperbacks are not the answer. We the people remain the captains of our ships, the masters of our destinies. God’s not coming to save us.
Now that I have dispatched with MacFarlane’s ignorant claims about atheist morality, I want to address his uninformed definition of atheism. MacFarlane defines atheism this way:
The definition of atheism is the belief that there is no God.
….
If you ask a professing atheist if there is a God, they will tell you that there is no God.
Atheism is in the broadest sense an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.
Had MacFarlane researched atheism a bit further, He would have learned about The Dawkin’s Scale:
I am an agnostic and an atheist. On the God question, I am an agnostic. I can’t know if some sort of a deity exists. The extant data tells me there is no God, and I am confident that the deities presently worshiped by humans are human creations and no gods at all. I am confident that MacFarlane’s God is a myth, that the claims made for God and Jesus are untrue. It is “possible,” but unlikely — based on probabilities — that a deity of some sort exists. Maybe we will learn one day that what we call “life” is a game simulation played by an advanced alien species, or that somewhere “out there” — right Mulder? — lives our creator, a deistic sort of God. Again, unlikely, but since I don’t possess absolute knowledge — and neither does Pastor MacFarlane — I remain agnostic on the God question.
Since it is improbable any sort of God exists, I live my day-to-day life as an atheist — as if there is no God. In fact, the only times I think about God/Jesus/Bible is when I am writing for this site. Contrary to MacFarlane’s claim, I don’t spend my waking hours raging against the Christian God and attacking Christian churches.
MacFarlane claims that the fact I talk about God is proof that I believe in said God. Really? I talk about big penises too. Trust me, all the talk in the world ain’t going to change average into John Holmes. The focus of my writing is on organized Christianity — specifically Evangelicalism and the IFB church movement. You see, what matters to me is what is done in the name of God/Jesus/Christianity. What matters to me is the damage done to our society, government, and individuals by Fundamentalist preachers who believe God talks to them and the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God; preachers with theocratic tendencies who demand non-Christians bow in fealty to their God and follow their interpretations of the Bible. What matters to me is the psychological, at times, physical, harm caused by “Biblical” preaching. And finally, what matters to me is the clergy sex abuse scandal roiling over Evangelical churches: the denials, the cover-ups, the justifications.
MacFarlane implores his congregants to look on “those who claim to be atheists” (he just can’t accept people really ARE atheists) with love and compassion. You mean fake, means-to-an-end, love and compassion? No thanks. What atheists want is respect. We want the right to tell our stories and have them accepted at face value. We ask that you let atheists define atheism. We won’t decide who is and isn’t Christian, and we ask you do the same for atheists.
MacFarlane says atheists are fighting a battle they can’t win. Evidently, he is unaware of the fact that atheism and agnosticism are on the rise in the United States; that the NONES, those who are indifferent towards religion, is the fastest growing religious demographic. It seems that we are winning the battle, Pastor MacFarlane, and it is expected that the United States will become increasingly secular in the years to come.
Let me conclude this post by saying John MacFarlane and I actually have something in common: both of us are atheists. That’s right, John MacFarlane is an atheist. He, indeed, believes in the existence of the Christian God, but what about the other extant deities? MacFarlane confidently preaches that these Gods are no gods at all, that there is one true God, and his name is Jesus (actually MacFarlane is a polytheist, believing in three deities: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). The only difference between Pastor MacFarlane and ex-pastor Bruce Gerencser is that I just believe in one less God than he does. Well, one more thing, I am more handsome too. ?
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 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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