A friend and I are both deconverted Christian fundamentalists. We both wonder what we might do in the situation I’ll describe below. I’d love for the wonderful commentariat here, or our leader, Bruce Almighty, to give us some very clever — or witty — responses to this.
We live in a town that has the longest High Street in Wales. Like most High Streets, the main shopping streets in UK towns, it’s a sea of closed up shops these days. This one has only 30% of its shops still open. The city fathers have appointed a ‘czar’ to revitalise it. The local newspaper reported this and asked shop-owners how they are faring. They replied — badly. It’s unusual for anything Evangelical to be reported on in the UK. Still, prominence was given to the owner of the ‘Heavens Above’ Cafe on the High Street, whose picture had him smugly sporting a sweater with John14:6 on it. He claimed they were thriving and said, “We hold a monthly healing service and lots are healed.”
I commented that if this is so, why didn’t he and his fellow god-botherers travel two miles to our local large hospital and empty it and send patients to their cafe instead. Just think how wonderful our country would be if it didn’t have to finance the National Health Service (NHS). Patients could go along to ‘Heavens Above’ and, for the price of a sandwich and a coffee, get healed. My comment was up for about two hours, then it was deleted as ‘not adhering to community guidelines. ‘ So, apparently, lying-through-your-teeth for Jesus does adhere to them.
My friend has waited six months already for a major operation under our very overstretched NHS. She would love to go into ‘Heavens Above’ to challenge this arrogant assertion, but she can’t bring herself to give them any custom by even buying one coffee. But we’d both love to just go along and challenge their claim to miracles of healing and for them to explain to us why they aren’t down at that hospital.
Any witty repartee, any snarky put-downs, or irrefutable arguments that we could use would be most welcome. We’re open to suggestions from all you clever people! Help us out here!
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 been in a better place mentally and emotionally since I left my religious beliefs behind me. I’ve had more peace as well. I’m not saying that I don’t have problems, down days, or worry. It’s just that I have fewer worries, fewer down days, more effective methods of dealing with life’s problems, and a little more peace overall. Looking back at my life, I realize that I’ve gone through bouts of depression here and there, probably since I was a child. I grew up in an abusive home where I rarely felt safe. I never got any counseling or was put on any medication that might have helped deal with that stress. It just wasn’t something that was widely accepted back in the 70s. So, I developed whatever coping skills I could. I stayed busy with hobbies like reading, art, music, and martial arts. We considered ourselves Christians in my home, but we didn’t attend church regularly, read the Bible, or pray.
One thing that often bothered me growing up was the question: What am I supposed to do with my life? I got through college and worked a couple jobs that I really hated. I lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the time, surrounded by Christians, many of whom were Bible college students. They seemed happy and excited about life, so eventually, I started attending a large church there. This church told me that God has a good plan for my life, and all I have to do is ask him what he wants me to do and follow his directions. For a rule follower like me, that sounded great!
I wound up going to Bible school and eventually in part-time ministry as an associate pastor and youth pastor and traveling minister. Things were great for a while. I had arrived at a place where I thought God wanted me to be. Eventually, I became unhappy and depressed. I went through the worst depression of my life during this time. I prayed, spoke in tongues, read the Bible constantly, and was prayed for in every way you can imagine. And nothing helped. I finally found a good psychiatrist who diagnosed me properly and got me on some medicine that helped. During this time, I started noticing things in the Bible that just didn’t line up. I started asking questions. Also, during this time, a friend of mine sent me a short booklet on how the brain works and how to get out of the rut of depressing thoughts all the time. Basically, I had to retrain my brain. Another friend recommended a book called Living Buddha, Living Christ. I was hooked! I started learning more about mindfulness and meditation. I studied secular Buddhism and Taoism. I started seeing more improvement in my life doing a few simple things than I ever did with all the prayer and Bible study. There is no more magic in any of these practices than there is in me eating healthier and exercising to lose weight.
Fast forward to where I had left my Christian beliefs behind. I’m still mostly a closeted agnostic/atheist; not even my wife knows the extent of my deconversion. She is still a very devout Christian. Maybe more so than ever. I have not attended church in years. So far, we’ve made it work. I used to hate the jobs I worked, thinking they were just temporary until I could go full-time in the ministry. Now that I no longer believe that I have some sort of divine calling on my life, I can focus on where I am now and how good I really have it. My job gets pretty stressful sometimes, but I’m good at it and mostly enjoy it. I used to be pretty uptight. Depending on my mental and emotional state, little things could easily stress me out. But now that I use the tools available to me, I’m much more chill. I try to apply Buddhist principles like the understanding that there is suffering in this life, but there are ways to not add to my suffering. I know that the only constant in this world is change. I still don’t like change, but I’m getting better. Less attachment. Seeing situations as not good or bad, just as they are (as much as I can). I still take medication that helps me, but without the guilt of “If I just had more faith” bullshit. These things help me so much, where religion left me high and dry, so to speak. I also have much less fear in my life. Religion is so full of fear! Life is not perfect, but it’s better without religion. My wife asked recently, “How do you stay so calm now?” I mentioned the practices that I wrote about above. She gets confused because these things are “ungodly” — basically meaning that god doesn’t seem to be in these practices. I get that. When I was full on drinking the Kool-Aid, I wouldn’t have understood how those things help someone either. Or, I would think that yes, they might help, but they still need Jesus on top of that.
Nope. Not anymore.
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.
In fact, this piece should not appear on your screen or any form of paper. It should not exist at all. If you believe that the words you are reading—and the person who wrote them—are real, you are suffering a delusion or actively denying reality. Perhaps you are drunk or high. Or, maybe, those illicit, uh, transformative, substances you took in your youth produce flashbacks for even longer than you ever imagined possible.
Whatever the case may be, you must disabuse yourself of the notion that what you are reading is real. It isn’t because its author isn’t.
That’s right. I do not exist.
Who made such a determination? Not the folks who investigate paranormal phenomena. Nor did the American Psychiatric Association or American Medical Association. Members of both august bodies, in fact, have confirmed my existence share your delusion.
Understandably, they would. After all, they don’t know what the highest authority in this land knows. He’s had more hands-on experience than all of them put together. So, who is more qualified to say whether or not I exist?
According to the FuhrerTan Fuhrer President of the United States, I—and people like me—don’t exist. Whatever a doctor decided I was on the day I was born, that’s what I am. Now, to be fair, that OB-GYN on a military base where my father was stationed late in the Eisenhower Administration had no other means but my external anatomical features for determining my sex. He would have had no way of knowing about the hormonal imbalances and other “problems” that would manifest themselves later, sometimes much later, on.
Of course, our Dear Leader, with his Bachelor of Science in Economics, and such respected advisers as Dr. Oz, knows more than that army doctor could have. (Oh, and he has more military training.) Moreover, he has seen more of those “immutable biological realities” of female anatomy being a woman than, well, most people.
So who better than a self-proclaimed king a duly elected leader to tell you what’s real and what isn’t.
That means, not only this article, but everything else I’ve ever written, is an illusion. So are all of the knowledge and skills my students acquired in my classrooms, or later when they applied them in the “real world.” Oh, and I never worked the other jobs I had before I became a college instructor: artist-in-residence, high school teacher, journalist, copywriter, publicist, tour leader, bicycle messenger (in New York City), bicycle mechanic, and sales clerk. And my service in the Army Reserves never happened. No, all of the work that got done and all of my interactions with students, colleagues, co-workers, editors, clients, and customers is as illusory as I am.
Of course, that means I never earned the degrees and diplomas or won the citations and awards that have my name on them. And that child my parents thought they were raising—well, I was as much an illusion then as I am now. That means they must have been just as delusional in believing that I was their child as you are for thinking that you are reading something that, because I don’t exist, can’t exist.
So, remember: You didn’t read this. Even if the previous sentence is self-contradictory.
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 always interested in having people write guest posts for this site. If you are interested in writing a guest post, please use the contact form to email me or text me at 567-210-1145. You can choose any subject. If you are an Evangelical Christian, you can even write a post about how wrong I am about God, Christianity, and the Bible. No subject is off limits.
Have a story to tell about your life as a Christian and subsequent deconversion? Testimonies are always welcome. I have found that readers really appreciate and enjoy reading posts about the journey of others away from Evangelicalism. Perhaps you are someone who has left Evangelicalism, but still believes in the existence of a deity/energy/higher power. Your story is welcome too.
If you worried about grammar, punctuation, or spelling, don’t be. Carolyn, my ever-watchful friend, editor, and blog wife, edits every guest post before it is published. If she can turn my writing into coherent prose, trust me, she can do the same for yours.
Anonymous posts are okay, as are articles previously posted elsewhere. If you have written something for your own blog and would like to post it here, please send it to me.
If you have previously written a guest post, I am more than happy to publish another one from you. Some readers have become regular contributors. It’s important for readers to hear from other writers from time to time. As a pastor, I knew people would tire from hearing me week after week, so I would schedule guest speakers to preach. Guest posts give readers an opportunity to hear new, different voices. Will that voice be yours?
Several readers have emailed me in the past about writing guest posts. I am w-a-i-t-i-n-g. 🙂 Seriously, if you have something you would like to say, I am more than happy to post it here. The ball is in your court.
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’d be interested to know, of those of you who are no longer Christians, what led you to become one in the first place.
There are thousands of websites and books that argue philosophically for the validity of Christianity, presenting their evidence for the resurrection and generally taking an intellectual approach to promoting the faith.
I’d be very surprised if this ‘evidence’, which is poor at best, and Christians’ philosophical arguments lead anyone to Jesus/God/faith.
My own experience is that conversion is an emotional experience. As a teen I listened to speaker after speaker at the YMCA I attended tell me how their sins had been forgiven and how getting to know Jesus had given them a great sense of peace and purpose. I originally went along to the Y, as we called it, to meet friends, play table–tennis and drink coffee while listening to the jukebox. I had no idea I was a sinner, nor that I needed forgiven, but I liked the enthusiasm – they said it was ‘joy’ – that the speakers conveyed. I thought too I could maybe do with a sense of purpose though I was, as a fifteen-year-old, quite happy drifting along relatively aimlessly.
The persistent drip feed of what Jesus could do for me (and others) was persuasive. It sowed the seed, as the Christian cliché has it. It took a lively young American evangelist from Arthur Blessitt Ministries to convict me. Jesus had turned his life around and he was on his way to Heaven. Denying Jesus, he said, was to crucify him all over again. So I prayed the sinner’s prayer and gave my life to Jesus too.
Nowhere in any of this was there anything philosophical; no ’proof’ of the resurrection; no explanation of how the Bible was the Word of God. All the talks were appeals to emotion: how I could feel forgiven, how I could know love, joy, and peace, how I could live forever after I died, up there with God in Heaven.
All the rationalisation came later, like it always does. Psychologists tell us that the intuitive part of the brain makes decisions ahead of the rational part, which seeks to catch up afterwards, supplying the reasons why the decision we’ve made is a good one. We’ve all done it when we’ve bought that item we don’t really need and have justified it all the way home. Religious conversion follows this pattern.
The thinking mind only becomes involved afterward, hence ‘post hoc rationalisation’. We then become complicit in our own indoctrination: Bible study (both group and individual), listening to sermons, learning from more mature Christians, worship (all those song and hymn lyrics reinforcing the mumbo jumbo), reading Christian books, immersing ourselves in the complexities of the religion. This is how it’s always been. As Paul puts in 1 Corinthians 3:2, we move from milk to meat as we delve further into ‘the mysteries of Christ’. Or, more accurately, we become more deeply indoctrinated.
But all of this comes later. The emotional experience is first, as it was for Paul, C S. Lewis (who described it as being ‘surprised by joy’), George W. Bush, and millions of other converts. In my Christian days, I personally ‘led people to the Lord’ by ‘sharing my testimony’ (I’ve still got the jargon!) and can assure you, those involved felt the Holy Spirit with a profound intensity. Only kidding. They became pretty emotional.
I know of no one who became a Christian by assessing the evidence for the resurrection, reading Paul’s theobabble, or analysing the central claims of Christianity. I suppose there might be some who, like Lee Strobel, insist they ‘came to faith’ this way. But faith and rational analysis are incompatible. When the writer of Hebrews (11:1) says: ‘faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,’ he is oblivious to the fact that there isn’t any ‘evidence’ of unseen spiritual ‘things’. There are only our own feelings and emotional confirmation bias.
So that’s how it was for me. How was it for you?
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.
Over the years, we [I] have written more than enough articles proving that the theory of evolution is not true.
….
Evolution is what anyone decides it to be and then changes the physical evidence to fit their particular version.
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The Bible has the theory of evolution beat no matter how you look at this issue.
Geoff Toscano, a long-time reader of this blog and a personal friend replied:
Oh brother, I’ve wasted at least 5 minutes of my life reading Tee’s article! Just when I thought the fool couldn’t get any more stupid, he proves me wrong, once again! The irony is that he accuses evolutionary scientists of creating fairy stories along the lines of Hansel and Gretel, when it’s actually a book of fairy tales that he seeks to defend.
He misses the most basic understanding of why evolution must be true, and that is its explanatory power. Take away all the evidence we have in terms of DNA, the fossil record, variation, adaptation, and so on, and still we have the explanatory power. Evolution provides an explanation of features we observe in every life form that special creation cannot begin to approach. It explains biodiversity, vestiges and atavisms, bad design (if god designed humans then he did a terrible job!), and especially the manner in which life forms seem strangely to conform to their varying environments. An educated person cannot deny evolution: they are mutually exclusive.
Thiessen refuses to comment on this blog, choosing instead to “answer” comments on his site. Of course, Thiessen refuses to let people comment on his blog, nor does he have a contact page. You can, however, email Thiessen at kinship29@yahoo.com.
Titled Responding to Comments 4, Theissen “answered” five comments from this site. He had this to say to Geoff:
The person missing the point is the quoted commentator. Explanatory power means absolutely nothing. There is nothing to support the ‘explanatory power’. If you remove the made-up evidence, then the explanation makes no sense.
Also, explanatory power is not exclusive to evolution. Any alternative can have the same explanations credited to it. In fact, creation has the exact same explanatory power with one exception. Creation has all the evidence supporting it.
Like the late George Carlin, the commentator is judging God from only seeing humans and creation from the results of the fall and corruption that entered in at Adam’s sin. he did not and cannot see humans and creation as God created it.
God did a perfect job, but sin and corruption ruined what he did. The quoted commentator should blame evil not God. He also says that creatures adapt to different environments.
We have yet to see humans adapt to living underwater and fish to living out of water. Those are different environments. Moving to a different place on the dry surface of the Earth is not moving to a different environment.
It is simply moving to different weather patterns and temperatures. Nothing needs to change for adaptation to take place in that situation. Also, we have not seen one person adapt to the environment on the moon or in space. They still need protective gear to live.
This fact proves evolution false.
Geoff sent me a response to Thiessen that follows below. Geoff responds to Thiessen’s reply to him and several other commenters.
David Tee’s first comment makes no sense. I pointed out the explanatory power of evolution, and he countered with “There is nothing to support the ‘explanatory power’. If you remove the made-up evidence, then the explanation makes no sense.” He either didn’t read my comment properly or he didn’t understand it. Explanatory power IS the evidence so his reference to other evidence for evolution being made up is irrelevant. For example, the laryngeal nerve is explained perfectly by evolution, but makes no sense in his creation beliefs. That is the evidence, end of story.
As for his nonsense about humans adapting to living under water, he gets to be equally silly. Animals adapt to their environment, humans included. Life originated in the sea, then slowly started to move out of it onto dry land many millions of years, perhaps billions, of years ago. Animals that emerged evolved until they were able to live on the land without recourse to water. This explains why humans still have vestiges of gills (tail bones also, I might add). He’s also ridiculous in saying that different parts of dry land on Earth do not represent different environments. Really? Arctic versus the Sahara Desert? They aren’t just different weather patterns or temperatures, they require adaptation in a way almost as great as leaving the sea.
His point about not adapting to living in space or on the moon? (Ignoring that we’ve been able to access space for only a very few decades, whilst evolution requires thousands of years to make significant differences on the scale required). He really knows nothing about evolution. In fact, this comment is perhaps the most stupid I have ever seen from a creationist! It’s precisely because we haven’t adapted to such hostile conditions that we are unable to live in them! Should we be forced through circumstances one day to live on the moon then our bodies would adapt to the conditions, especially the gravity, but it’s unlikely we would ever be able to adapt to the lack of oxygen, which is essential for human existence, indeed all life (there are apparently tiny multi cells that exist without oxygen in parts of the ocean, but these aren’t relevant to Tee’s point). Plus, of course, we’d need water. There are technical ways of producing these but then we’d be adapting the environment to us. We can do this because we’ve evolved to be able to do it!
He says there are thousands of Christian biologists who reject evolution. False, there are almost none. Stephen Meyer of Discovery Institute is the only seemingly qualified scientist who makes the claim and he’s not a biologist. Michael Behe, who really formalised Intelligent Design, has since retreated and I think has either reverted to accepting evolution or at least gone very quiet. The thing is there are always outliers. People who are anti-vaxxers, or moon landing deniers, flat earthers, and many others can appear to be carrying some kind of qualification to lend them credibility. Even so, they remain outliers. They aren’t taken seriously by the scientific community, not because the scientific community is conspiring against them, but because the scientific community exists only because it is historically the only method whereby humanity progresses. Science works (and I define science widely in this regard, to include all methods of reasoning), where faith does not. Faith recently murdered a small child in Australia, a child who had every right to depend on her parents and other guardians for protection, but who was betrayed because her protectors thought the power of God was greater than the power of medicine.
Tee claims that unbelievers seek to exclude God from their work. Ignoring the fact that a very large proportion of scientists are themselves religious believers (though it is a much lower proportion than that found in other areas of life) the fact is that science excludes nothing, not even God. The point is that good science leads where it leads. Isaac Newton was a great scientist, but he was also a fervent believer. When he constructed his theory of gravity it was hailed as, rightly, one of the great scientific achievements of all time. Even so, he knew there was a small error for which he couldn’t account, so he attributed this to God keeping ultimate control of his creation. He was wrong because he didn’t know, and at the time couldn’t possibly have known, of relativity, something Einstein demonstrated centuries later. So God figured in the thinking of one of the greatest scientists of all time, but unfortunately God proved not to be the answer. If God is ever the answer, then science will discover this, it won’t be through faith.
On top of this, many attempts have been made by science to ‘find God’. There have been four peer-reviewed studies that have attempted to establish whether prayer is of any benefit in assisting ill patients to recover. Three indicated it provided no benefit greater than chance, whilst one suggested there may even be negative benefit. Indeed, every aspect of supernatural claim has been carefully investigated by science. Miracle claims, so-called paranormal events, weeping statues, hauntings, exorcisms, NDEs, etc., all have been studied and no evidence of anything other than perfectly natural explanations has ever been found.
Matt Ridley’s main claim to fame is that he was chairman of the bank that initiated the financial collapse in the UK in 2007 (a full year before Lehman Brothers failed) and had to give evidence to a Parliamentary Committee that wanted to know where he was whilst all this happened. He admitted that he didn’t really involve himself, rather it was his name that was important to the bank (he is actually Sir Matt Ridley, and part of a wealthy landowning family). He’s written some good science books aimed at children, but he’s verging on denialism in much of what he writes. His religious beliefs, however, are irrelevant to his science writing.
It is easy to conclude that Tee is simply delusional (which he undoubtedly is) but it’s much more than that, and I think he has to be regarded as an outright liar. He keeps insisting that there’s no evidence for evolution. He’s simply wrong. Evolution is supported by more evidence than any other branch of science. It is now such a vast subject that it has to be subdivided for study purposes. No serious scientist in the world denies it, and certainly no biologists, whether religious believers or not. He insists the bible is true, in the face of all the evidence that proves it is not, other than in minor, trivial, ways. Most believers, and certainly most religions, have come to terms with the realisation that evolution is a stark fact.
Tee yet again demonstrates the impossibility of his ever having obtained a legitimate doctorate. I’ll go further and allege that he’s never passed any formal academic examination in his life. It’s significant that he chooses to limit his reply to the comfort of his website, protected from comments, and certainly not daring to risk direct interaction on Bruce’s forum.
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.
When most people describe volcanic eruptions, the type that is most often depicted is that of what geologists call a Vesuvian-type eruption, named after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE that destroyed the region of Pompeii. This type of eruption is also commonly called a Plinian-type eruption as it was described in great detail by Pliny the Younger in two letters to his uncle.
Pliny described a dark cloud rising rapidly upward from Mount Vesuvius and being lit up by flames and large flashes of lightning. He then described thick, hot cinders and ash raining back down near the mountain, while further away the ash spread out resulting in a lurid darkness spread over the region. Strong earthquakes were also described.
Pliny’s wonderfully complete description of this type of eruption earned him the honor of having all subsequent eruptions of this type bear his name. Some geologists prefer to name geologic events after a type location however, which is why some refer to this type as a Vesuvian eruption.
But was Pliny the first to fully describe such an eruption, or does a more ancient author deserve this honor? Science has a long history of memorializing the first, and yet in this instance, the first has been overlooked. The eruption of Mount Sinai in 1459 BCE, give or take a few years, was fully described by Moses. Therefore, this type of eruption should, by convention, be called a Mosaic- or Sinaian-type eruption.
Pliny’s description is considered to be a first because it contains certain criteria, all of which are also found in the description by Moses. These are:
1) a rapidly rising, hot cloud of ash and other volcanic material
2) lightning caused by static electric charges as the material is ejected upwards
3) flames or burning material known today as lava
4) thick darkness covering the surrounding region as the ash settles
5) strong earthquakes
“…the mountain burned with fire to the midst of heaven, with darkness, cloud, and thick darkness.” Deuteronomy 4:11
“…there were thundering and lightnings… Its smoking ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly.” Exodus 19:16,18
The necessary criteria appears to be only lacking a description of ash. However, the Hebrew word used here for darkness, is the same Hebrew word used to describe the plague of darkness that settled on Egypt just a couple of months before. That darkness was described as a “darkness which may even be felt” (Exodus 10:21) indicating the presence of particles in the air causing the darkness—in other words, ash.
One potential point of controversy in renaming this type of eruption after Sinai might be that the exact location of the mountain has been lost to history and is only known to be somewhere in Arabia’s rift region where such eruptions have been documented. Not knowing the exact location should not be a problem as scientific convention still honors the first description even when the type is lost. There are many examples in biology where the type specimen of a new specie has been lost.
Another argument for its rejection would be that acceptance of the historicity of this event is limited to the realm of believers in Judeo-Christian religions. However, outside of the Bible, the Quran also portrays this event as historical.
“We made the mountain tower high above them at their pledge…” An Nisa 4:154
“…when his Lord revealed Himself to the mountain, He made it crumble…” Al Araf 7:143
Not only does the Quran affirm the historicity of the account, but just like the Torah, it marvels at the ability of the Creator to manifest Himself within such awesome displays of power within His creation. Will the skeptics also one day marvel when the whole earth is bathed in a thick and gloomy volcanic darkness? A future day is described by two later authors who use the same Hebrew word for darkness that Moses used (Joel 2:2 and Zephaniah 1:15). In Revelation, John also describes a future plague of darkness that is painful (Revelation 16:10). Could these prophecies be hinting at a future time of significant volcanic activity? Maybe then fellow geologists will accept calling these Sinaian-type eruptions.
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.
David Tee/Derrick Thomas Thiessen is the tall man in the back
Derrick Thiessen (who sometimes uses the pseudonym Dr. David Tee) is a retired preacher, English teacher, and currently works as a freelance writer. He has several graduate degrees in theology, archaeology and history and has authored several books.
As a believer, we desire to win as many people to Christ as possible. Our specific ministry has been to bring Christians past square one to spiritual maturity. We have accomplished that through our two websites and books.
We have also sought to help pastors, missionaries, and Christian workers through the same avenue. Christians of all levels must be fed the proper spiritual food. They need to strengthen their faith and have the right information to defend what they believe.
Those actions are not a waste of time. But is it a waste of time and energy to prepare data, verifiable and credible physical evidence, and other historical, astronomical, and scientific information and present it to most unbelievers, atheists, and former Christians?
Why go to all that work and trouble when you know that those people groups will do what Dr. Phillip Davies did when he was presented with the evidence proving ancient Israel was as the Bible said?
All he did was close his eyes, shake his head, and repeat over and over that ‘it did not happen’. Are there any members of those people groups who are open-minded and who will take an honest look at what has been gathered and presented?
It is our experience that very few members of those people groups will be that way. Also, we have learned that even if believers discover the real ark used during Noah’s flood unbelievers will find something to criticize and justify their decision to reject it as physical evidence for the flood.
So what is the point in Christians meeting the demand of unbelievers to present evidence when they will only receive a cold reception and blind dismissal?
We understand that unbelievers are afraid of seeing the Bible proven true. If they were not afraid or if the atheists were right and there is no God, they would have no trouble honestly examining the evidence.
One example of this fear is a comment made in a Patterns of Evidence video posted to YouTube. The scholar providing the upcoming response hit the nail on the head, and we do this from memory when he said that unbelieving scholars and archaeologists do not want to prove the Exodus true.
He said ‘If they do, then they have to confront the reality of the Bible and make wholesale changes to their lives and bodies of work.’ Regular unbelievers can have peace that they are not the only ones who are afraid of seeing the Bible proven true.
This is one reason why they make so many unrealistic demands. One militant atheist we have known for a long time once told us to ‘go and dig’ when we talked about the evidence for Noah’s flood.
The problem with that is we cannot dig every square inch of the earth to uncover all the evidence he wants to see. Even if we present that evidence he is incapable or unwilling to accept it and convert.
There are two problems with providing evidence for Noah’s flood. The first is that a myriad of researchers have uncovered verifiable physical evidence for it. Graham Hancock has been one of those researchers as have Drs. Charles Hapgood, Ryan, Pittman, and Rehwenkle to name a few.
Their failure to recognize this evidence stems from problem number two. The majority of researchers and other folks do not know what evidence for a global flood would look like.
There has been only one and that event is difficult to excavate due to the construction, wars, natural disasters, and other events that change the nature of the evidence or remove it from existence.
When Sir Leonard Woolley declared he had found the flood layer in UR, the mainstream archaeologists at that time said he was wrong because the layer was not uniform. But does the flood layer have to be uniform to be evidence of the flood?
An honest person, taking into account all the variables that would change the design of the flood layer, would say no. A person who is not honest would close their mind and say yes.
The failure to accept the mitigating factors surrounding the discovery of evidence means that the person or persons hearing the evidence will not listen and waste the presenter’s time.
It is not that there is a lack of credible and verifiable physical evidence for the majority of biblical events. The internet is full of both Christian and secular websites that present this evidence and they are all easily accessed.
The key to all of this is the one word scientists, atheists, and other unbelievers hate. God created the equation to prove that he exists and his word is true. That word is faith. The Bible tells us that by faith we please God.
Thus God is not going to provide all the physical evidence anyone wants to see or demands. God is not going to destroy what pleases him. This means that we will only get enough physical evidence to strengthen our faith, not ruin it.
This is why there is no scientific evidence for the creation of the world. Creation was a one-time supernatural act that was not enacted using any scientific method.
The way science is constructed, it is impossible for that research field to analyze creation. It will not produce any evidence for that act. Science can study the results of creation and see that God’s word is true but that is as far as science can go.
Those who demand scientific evidence are merely using that demand to hide from the truth. Those who make unrealistic demands do so for the same reason. They do not want the Bible to be true for they would have to deal with the information like the archaeologists and other scholars mentioned earlier would have to do.
God uses faith to help divide the sheep from the goats. His equation tells him who believes him and who does not. Faith is merely believing God and the physical evidence is nothing but a supporting cast member.
So the question is, are you an honest, open-minded unbeliever or are you one of those dishonest, closed-minded ones that will not even give the evidence a fair hearing?
If you are the latter, don’t waste Christians’ time. Just stop making unrealistic demands for evidence that you will never listen to. If you want evidence then you should be prepared to give it a fair hearing and careful consideration.
Note: Thiessen refuses to comment on this site, nor does he allow comments on his main blog. Derrick said in his email to me:
Same instructions apply. It does not need your editor/assistant’s help. I will take the heat for any mistakes alleged or otherwise. I will also read all comments and respond on my own website if the need to respond is there.
Thank you for publishing it as is.
The only thing changed on Thiessen’s post was the title. It originally said, “Is It a Waste of Time” without proper punctuation. His chosen title was unspecific and ambiguous. I changed it to reflect its content. The body of the post was unchanged. I also shortened the bio and provided proper links.
BG opened his website to submit guest posts. He made the offer that anyone can send one in so we did. We asked God first to help us write what needed to be written and told him to publish it as is without his assistant doing any editing.
We shall see if that instruction is met and if he publishes our entry. We kept a copy to compare if and when it sees the light of day.
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.
“As for evidence, you might be aware of Israel. That nation has been in the news much of late. So, without being flippant at all, I present Israel as evidence. Think about it. They are living the script written thousands of years ago. Not by chance.“
— Don, A Christian Apologist
Israel as evidence for the existence of God. I’m thinking about it as Don suggests.
Where did it all begin, this bizarre notion that one tribe in the Middle East was chosen by God to be his special people? According to the Genesis myth, it was when YHWH promised Abraham he’d be his best buddy forever and ever, so long as he mutilated his body and those of his sons in perpetuity. They would also have to keep every one of this bullying god’s 365 rules and regulations, including the petty and piffling ones. So far so good, apart from the fact it was all very one-sided, and the mutilation of course. You’d think this would’ve been a sign that things weren’t quite kosher, but no; Abraham and his descendants buy into it and almost straight away, YHWH begins to let them down.
God’s Chosen Ones soon find themselves slaves in Egypt. A second mythical character is needed – up pops Moses – to get them out of this scrape. Unfortunately, after Moses has finished chatting with YHWH, who identifies as a burning bush on the top of a mountain, the sulky deity feels slighted by something the Israelites are doing. As is his way, he has many of them slaughtered and the rest he forces to troop around the same small plot of land for 40 years. This is how best buddies treat each other!
Later, the Jews find themselves defeated by the Babylonians and are carted off into exile. This exile, which YHWH does nothing to prevent, lasts 70 years. Still, it leads to a pleasant song made famous by Boney M in 1978 so I suppose it was worth it.
For the next few hundred years, Israel fell under the rule of other nations more powerful than itself. Not to worry though, YHWH is still ‘looking after them’, particularly those who are slaughtered in the rebellions that ensue. As Robert Conner says in a recent comment on Debunking Christianity, ‘If Yahweh ever threatens to bless you and your children, just kill yourself and get it over with.’
Fast forward to the Roman occupation of Israel. YHWH, having undergone a makeover, reneges on his promise to take care of his Chosen Nation forever and ever and comes up with a different plan to save people from his own cussedness. Now, if they want to continue as his friend, they have to believe a supernatural being has returned from the dead.
Abandoned by God, as he now wants to be called, Jews who haven’t defected to the new faith see their sacred, eternal temple destroyed by the Romans in AD70. Thousands of them are massacred and the Jewish nation ceases to exist.
This sets the pattern for the next two millennia in which God’s new friends organise pogroms, massacres, and vicious persecution of Jews. This culminates in the Final Solution of the Third Reich which seeks to eliminate the Jewish people entirely. While awaiting extermination in a concentration camp, Andrew Eames scrawls on the wall of his prison: ‘If there is a God, He will have to beg for my forgiveness.’ God allows six million of his Chosen People to die at the hands of the Nazis.
Following the Second World War, Israel took possession of the area surrounding Jerusalem, then occupied by Palestinian Muslims who are themselves descended from earlier immigrants. Thousands on both sides are slaughtered in the conflict that follows. In 1948, after almost 2,000 years, Israel became a nation once again; not through any miracle of God but as a result of human endeavour and bloodshed.
Tension and further skirmishes followed, leading to the present day when Israel finds itself under attack by Hamas terrorists. Thousands of innocents – women, children, and babies – have been slaughtered without mercy. Israel is, as I write, retaliating and intends to enact further vengeance. And where is God in all this? You guessed it: nowhere to be seen.
According to some – including the naive writer at the top of this post – all of this serves as evidence of God’s existence. That Israel has persevered for so long, despite opposition, persecution and the holocaust is not, however, evidence of God, any more than the great cathedrals of the world are. It is instead testimony to the resilience, resolve, and sheer bloody-mindedness of the people themselves. Perhaps their belief in YHWH (they don’t, of course, recognise his Christian counterpart) has fuelled their persistence, as it has their territorial claims.
Jewish beliefs and history are not evidence that YHWH exists. If anything, his apparent abandonment* during their many trials and tribulations is evidence to the contrary.
*Of course a non-existent entity can’t actually abandon anything, any more than it can lend its support or favour one group of people over another.
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.
If you’ve seen parts of the first Republican Presidential debate, you likely noticed the brash young neophyte (and obnoxious) Vivek Ramaswamy. Not only is he a practicing Hindu, he’s also the highest caste in the Hindu religious system. So I found it interesting when he makes a list of “truths” (many of which are not or are nuanced to the point of not being a “truth”), the first being “God is real.” This does have a strategic value to him. He can stave off questions about his, let’s face it, alien religion and does so because his audience isn’t thinking about sacred cows and the non-person Hindu god Brahman. By doing this he can cauterize the political wound his religion will no doubt have on the evangelical base of the GOP. Americans are so unacquainted with Hinduism that at least for now he’ll likely get a free ride on his religion. There is no religious test to be President, but since he seems to be wearing his religion on his political sleeve, I think it is fair game. Ramaswamy also gets a free ride on the caste system which no doubt has been part of his success. While he is asked questions about American racism based on skin color, the media aren’t even primed to ask about the Hindu caste system that is based on societal traditions. I suppose one question that one might ask is this: Will American evangelicals tolerate a polytheistic Hindu so long as he kisses Trump’s keester? After all, Trump is not and never will be an evangelical. In addition, can Ramaswamy “hide” his Hinduism in plain site by proclaiming “God is Real dammit!”? For those of us who’d like to see less church in our state, I’m sorry to say Ramaswamy would be as bad as Trump or Pence. The best way to hide this deficit is to overcompensate–he will overtly and loudly be a cheerleader for evangelical church-state entanglements. Hopefully, it doesn’t get that far, but I’ll be interested to watch and we need to make sure the media is asking the right questions to take Ramaswamy to task.
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.
