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Category: Science

Our Love Affair with Confident Ignorance and Stupidity Has Reached Awful New Heights

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climate science trump

By David DeWitt, Ohio Capital Journal, Used with Permission

Five years ago, I wrote about how the politics of stupidity and crankery in America was degrading us as a society and human beings.

That was January 2020.

Within months, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. It’s only gotten so much worse.

For the remainder of 2020, we dealt with 385,676 deaths from the disease while then-President Trump lived in denial and misled the American people every day. He lied about its danger, how long it would last, treatments and prevention. He would bring in medical experts to speak during White House press conferences and then make stuff up himself out of nowhere and undermine everything that they said.

It was horrifying. People were dying and losing loved ones and the president was spewing an endless stream of strange nonsense, drivel, and dangerous misinformation. Many millions of people believed everything he said without question.

Then Trump lost the 2020 Election. He began lying about that too. Millions believed him again. Coward politicians rolled over for him. His lies exploded in the historic Jan. 6 attack on our nation’s Capitol.

As the COVID-19 vaccine was rolled out to the public at-large in 2021, the anti-vaxxer movement went into overdrive. Currently vaccine hesitancy is near record highs, so the anti-vaxxer movement really made out, a grisly and telling cultural consequence of a pandemic that’s taken 1.2 million American lives.

Regardless, objectively, the covid vaccine was a man-made miracle. Plagues throughout history have lasted up to 20 years or more. We had a vaccine in 11 months thanks to the brilliance of scientific research and modern medicine. It was incredible. It was a tremendous accomplishment of humankind by every historical standard, and people threw the most outrageous temper tantrums over it.

It’s easy to get lost in modern comfort, but I wish more people would just take a few seconds sometimes to recognize that we live in extraordinary times. The fact that we get to take hot showers every day is a monumental luxury compared to the rest of human history.

That we can communicate across the globe instantaneously is anthropologically astounding, if you compare the last 30 years of human history to the 300,000 years before it.

Look around you right now, wherever you are: desks, tables, electronics, electricity, light bulbs, appliances, glassware, furniture, knick-knacks, artwork, paint, carpeting, buildings. All of those things require science, engineering, mathematics, chemistry, physics, logistics, expertise. Experts. Smart people. Smart people gave us all of this.

Intelligence gave us every amazing thing that we see around us and take for granted. The collective education of humankind over millennia has brought us here.

A whole galaxy of humans and human know-how has come together to give us these wild luxuries of daily existence that make the vast majority of us wealthier in health and technology and everyday human comfort than the richest kings and queens and emperors of history.

And yet. We sneer at experts. We spit epithets like “academic elites” at professors dedicating their lives to pursuing discovery that benefits humankind. And we worship flashy internet hucksters selling lifestyle scams.

We mock intelligence and glorify egomania and materialism. We crave spectacle and are voyeurs for anger, confrontation, and violence.

We live in fantasy worlds where what we want to believe is true regardless of whether it is true, because what we want comes first no matter what, certainly no matter any facts, this decadence of mind and body only afforded to us by modernity’s remarkable luxury and technology.

It is in these ways that I regard a very great many adults as simply overgrown children.

Speaking of which, five years later, Donald Trump is president again. He has pardoned the 1,500 rioters who sacked the United States Congress to try to overthrow the last election for him.

Trump also launched a broadside this week against America’s scientific, academic, and medical research efforts, pulling the U.S. out of the World Health Organization and hitting the National Institutes for Health with with “devastating” freezes on meetings, travel, communications.

Trump’s cancellation of NIH grant review panels, as Forbes reports, includes the $7.1 billion annual budget for the National Cancer Institute: “of which more than $3 billion a year is allocated directly towards research for the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of cancer, which causes over 600,000 deaths in the U.S. every year.” The NCI supports 72 different cancer centers.

Freezing national funding for cancer research is sadistic.

It could also be devastating to America’s institutions of higher education.

In Ohio, Republican politicians are piling on. This week they reintroduced a proposal to overhaul education at our colleges and universities.

They seek to install a culture of fear and paranoia over subject matter among Ohio faculty, threatening their livelihoods and banning their ability to strike. They also seek to ban any diversity efforts on campuses as well as any diversity courses.

The clear intent of the bill is to have a chilling effect on freedom of speech and expression, both explicit and implicit, which is an atrocious insult to the entire purpose of education and all of the ideas behind open inquiry in the pursuit of knowledge.

Ohio higher education currently ranks No. 39 in America. Apparently that’s not bad enough for them.

America’s love affair with swaggering ignorance and confident stupidity continues to reach awful new heights. The bill will come due. The piper will need to be paid. The damage will be extensive.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Quote of the Day: Half-Assed Doctors

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half assed

By Dr. Mark Crislip, Infectious Diseased Expert, Science-Based Medicine, Old Doctor Yells at Clouds, January 22, 2024

Half-assed was the term my father often used to describe the result of my chores around the house as a kid. In retrospect, I can’t disagree with his assessment. I wish I had asked him before he died if a good job would be full-assed or zero-assed. I guess it depends on whether the goal is full or zero.

But I have been impressed with how often the basics of medicine are perfunctory. Cursory? Desultory? Superficial? No, I’ll stick with half-assed.

What I am referring to is so many health care providers I am in contact with as a patient or an observer (such as when my wife or mother sees a doctor) do a half-assed history and maybe a quarter-assed or three-quarter-assed physical.

It is sad.

When I have a medical problem, I organize the history before I see the care provider so they get a classic presentation of the history of the present illness, like I learned as a medical student. Six minutes tops, succinct, and perfectly organized. So I know my providers are getting the right information to make a diagnosis. I do recognize there is the problem in that my presentation also includes my bias as to what I think my problem is. I am well aware that, in regards to my own health, I am not the most reliable of historians or clinicians. The doctor who diagnoses himself has a fool for a patient and an idiot for a doctor and all that.

But for some family members, I have witnessed the most superficial of history taking. I know why. The abdominal pain that brought them into the ER? Going to get a CT to see what’s going on. So why bother with a careful history when the technology and blood tests will likely reveal the diagnosis? I am old and old school. I was taught and practiced that a careful history determines the diagnosis and then the tests are ordered to confirm that diagnosis, not to make it.

And when the CT is negative, everyone looks baffled because they have not bothered to make a clinical diagnosis first. Surprise.

I also find that providers rely more on what they read in the chart than what the patient has to say. And that is always a mistake. I learned early that the best approach to a new patient was to go in mostly blind and gather the information needed from the source. I was kind of an asshole, for when I was called for a consult I told them I wanted no more than a 5-word question they wanted answered. I assumed everyone else had it wrong and the approach occasionally paid off.

And the exam?

How many heart /lung exams have I seen that were both brief and through the gown or shirt? Too many to count. One anesthesiologist’s stethoscope was not on my chest for a complete cardiac cycle. It is rare to get a cardiopulmonary exam done that I think would provide any meaningful information to the examiner.

And abdominal exams? Usually, a brief push on the belly while the patient is sitting up. I have yet to see anyone do the classic look, listen, percuss, and palpate.

Most of the time, I just laugh, as I know the exam isn’t likely relevant. I have no cardiopulmonary issues and do not need a heart or lung exam before surgery. It is not like they are going to find an undiagnosed aortic stenosis that might cause an issue with anesthesia. But it might be with the next patient if they bothered to really listen.

So why are the exams so half-assed? I think two reasons. One is that technology is better than the exam, although more expensive. You will get more information from an ECHO or a CT or an ultrasound or an MRI. Or even a chest X-ray. My pulmonary attending years ago said the lung exam is what you do while waiting for the CXR to develop. And I kind of agree with that.

But finding pathology is fun and, on occasion, you will pick up pathology that the technology will miss. Little things, but important. How many times did I note the patient had blue sclera and talking with the patient revealed they likely had Ehlers-Danlos, unnoted for decades? Or the embolic event in the nail bed that meant endocarditis? And the exam can confirm what you think is the diagnosis from the careful and complete history. If you bothered to take one.

The main reason these exams are half-assed? Docs can bill at a higher level if they do them. So even if you have no heart or lung issues, you will get a half-assed heart-lung exam to bump up that billing code. I never did that. I was told many times that I could bill more if I did, but I never thought it was ethical to provide unneeded care for the sole purpose of billing. Everything you do for a patient should only be for the benefit of that patient.

I should add there is a difference between the initial physical and the follow-up physical. An initial evaluation by your HCP should be complete. After that? Likely should depend on what the problem is.

I will say the exam is not always half-assed with all health care providers. The docs I see often do the exam correctly. But they are all old, at least in their 50s. I have found the younger the provider, the more half-assed. And, sadly, MDs are more half-assed than NPs or PAs.

Grumpy old fart grousing about the youngsters today. And get off my grass.

You may read the entire article here.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Quote of the Day: The High Cost of Donald Trump’s Plan to “Drill, Baby, Drill”

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drill baby drill

Excerpted from France 24, Donald Trump’s pledge to ‘drill, baby, drill’ meets the reality of fracking in rural Pennsylvania, January 19, 2025

A double yellow line marks the centre of Route 29, expanding at the top of each rolling hill that sweeps across the frozen landscape of northeast Pennsylvania. From the former coal fields of Wilkes-Barre to the topmost border of the state, the road cuts through sleepy rural neighbourhoods littered with Trump signs and fading Christmas decorations. 

Pulling into Dimock, a majority-White township with just over a thousand inhabitants, wide tyre marks start to form on either side of the yellow line. Hundreds of trucks shuttling equipment and water to fracking wells in the area have become part of the decor. 

Joe Wilson pulls up to his neighbour Ray Kemble’s house in a pick-up truck hauling a 700-litre water tank he filled from a hydrant about a 20-minute drive away.

“You wouldn’t think that in America, people would be delivering water to houses just so they can take a shower,” he says. “This is the kind of stuff they do in Africa.” 

More than two kilometers below his feet, billions of dollars worth of natural gas runs through the veins of the Marcellus Shale – the largest gas field in the United States.

The surface and groundwater used to supply homes in Dimock have become so contaminated with chemicals used during the fracking process that residents have lost access to clean water. As a result, neighbours have had to jumble together innovative solutions to help each other out.

“I deliver to Ray’s house once a week. He lives alone so he doesn’t need as much water. But there are five of us back home, so I have to drive back and forth from the hydrant to my house four times a week,” Wilson says, his face marked with exhaustion. “It becomes a chore.” 

The 39-year-old construction worker siphons the water into Kemble’s basement tank using a long hose and waits for it to empty out. It takes about an hour to finish the whole operation and fill the reserve, which is normally intended for storing and transporting water for livestock.

The tank is attached to a pump which sends water to Kemle’s kitchen and shower, but it is not safe to drink. On top of the thousands of litres Wilson shuttles around each week, he and Kemble have to get additional jugs of bottled water to make coffee, brush their teeth or cook pasta. 

Fracking is slang for hydraulic fracturing, a method used to extract natural gas or oil found in shale by drilling into the ground, then injecting water and other chemicals at high pressure underground to crack open existing fissures. The first company to start drilling for natural gas in Dimock, Cabot Oil & Gas, arrived in 2006 – riding the wave of the US fracking boom that would eventually turn Pennsylvania into the nation’s second-largest natural gas producer.

But shortly after Cabot’s arrival, locals started to fall seriously ill and Dimock saw its water turn brown. The contamination was so severe that people could put a match to a running tap and it would light on fire due to the high levels of methane in the water. A well near a house in the township even exploded as a result. 

Enraged residents began filing lawsuits against the company in 2009 and kick-started what would become a litigation odyssey. A state investigation ultimately concluded that deficient gas wells drilled by Cabot had leaked unfettered amounts of methane into the township’s aquifer. The company was banned from fracking in Dimock in 2010.

Kemble, a former gas trucker who has been at the forefront of the fight from the very start, pulls out a printed report of the water testing done by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) that same year. “I’m not worried about just the methane coming through. Here’s the other 60-plus chemicals that are coming in with that methane,” he says, puffing on his pipe. The report includes arsenic and uranium, the latter of which is an important risk factor for developing chronic diseases. 

A grand jury investigation found Cabot guilty of environmental crimes in 2020. But two years later, the situation regressed. Rebranded as Coterra Energy under a merger, the ban was quietly lifted and the company got permission to open 11 new fracking wells outside a 23-square-kilometre radius drawn around the township. In exchange, Coterra had to pay $16 million for a public water system set to be completed in 2027.

….

The majority of fracking wells are located in Republican counties across Pennsylvania, including here in Susquehanna County, where Trump won over 70 percent of votes in the 2024 election. Even though the environmental and health consequences fracking has had on Dimock shows a darker reality behind Trump’s promise to “frack, frack, frack” and “drill, baby, drill”, locals seem undeterred in their support for the incoming president.

Except for Kemble, who thinks Trump “is a lunatic anyway”. He is still registered as a Republican but contrary to most of his neighbours, Kemble did not vote for Trump in the 2024 presidential election because “he is all in with the industry”. 

Along the main road, a colossal banner pasted on the front of a white, barn-like building reads “Trump coming soon”. Ironically, it was supposed to be a treatment site for fracking wastewater, but the project was put on hold because local authorities deemed it too dangerous. The building has been vacant for years. 

Back at Kemble’s house, the gun-carrying Craig Stevens slaps his contact card onto the long wooden table where Kemble is sitting. It is bright yellow and has a snake coiled around an oil rig in the centre, a reference to the flag used by the right-wing Tea Party movement. The card reads “patriots from the oil & gas shales – don’t tread on me”. Along with Kemble, he is spearheading the battle against Coterra. 

Stevens describes himself as a “former right-wing conservative” and insists that he is “not anti-drill” but rather “pro-clean air and water”, which is why he is also one of the few inhabitants here who didn’t vote for Trump either. 

“Locals here will not talk about fracking because most of them have their hands in the pockets of the industry. They’ve signed gas leases in exchange for money and are contractually forbidden to speak out due to non-disclosure agreements,” Stevens says. 

Trump made promises to boost oil and gas production by opening more drilling permits and increasing fracking leases on federal lands. But in the US, the vast majority of fracking takes place on state and private land. Gas companies can make deals with landowners to drill on their property, often in exchange for monthly payments in the form of royalties.

“It is a very sensitive subject here in Dimock,” a woman living in the community admits. She prefers to remain anonymous because her family has “had some problems” but “can’t talk about it”. There is a gas well close to her property that not only brought noise pollution but also caused “water issues”.

To solve the problems the family was having, they reached “a settlement” with Coterra, who installed a massive filtration system in their house so they could access clean water. In return, they agreed not to speak publicly about the contamination.

She says that money is the reason people will continue supporting Trump regardless of whether they are affected by the environmental and health consequences of the fracking around Dimock. “Some people get most of their income from the royalties [of gas leases on their property],” she explains. “[Those] with a ton of land like farmers have lots of wells on their properties,” and because they have a hard time making ends meet through agriculture, they sign gas leases. 

Coterra has not only put money in the pockets of residents but has also funded local schools and given over $1 million to Susquehanna County for scholarships. A red brick hospital complex located about a 20-minute drive north of Dimock bears an unmistakable Coterra logo on its façade. 

You may read the rest of the story here.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

OMG! I Have Proof That the Rapture is Imminent!

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hicksville ohio earthquake

For 2,000 years, Christian preachers have been saying Jesus is coming to Earth soon. As the 1976 gospel song by Andre Crouch goes:

Soon and very soon
We are going to see the King
Soon and very soon
We are going to see the King
Soon and very soon
We are going to see the King
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
We’re going to see the king

Soon and very soon? Every generation of believers believed that Jesus would return to Earth while they were still alive. And every generation of believers died without seeing Jesus face-to-face. In the 1970s and 1980s, in particular, Evangelicals were certain that Jesus was going to rapture them away, safe from the wrath and judgment God planned to pour on the Earth, as recorded in the book of Revelation. Alas, most preachers who prophesied that the rapture was nigh died, proving themselves to be false prophets. Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impe, Harold Camping, Herbert W. Armstrong, Edgar Whisenant, Jerry Falwell, and Ed Dobson — all pushing up daisies in the cemetery — predicted Jesus’s return in their lifetime.

These days, Evangelicals have largely given up on making predictions about the second coming of Jesus. Tired of waiting for Jesus to show up again, Evangelicals have taken to building a kingdom on earth through raw political power. They do not need Jesus; Trump is their Lord.

Earlier today, Defiance County, Ohio residents experienced an earth-shaking event that I hope will change their minds about the rapture. I spent fifty years of my life hearing Evangelical preachers preach passionate sermons about the imminent return of Jesus. Countless sermons were preached from Matthew 24:

And as he [Jesus] sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

….

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.

….

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

Astute readers of the Bible will notice that I have skipped a number of Bible verses. I did this because that is exactly what many, if not most Evangelical preachers do. Their goal is to make a point or advance an agenda instead of properly exegeting the Word of God. If that was their plan, they would preach this passage of Scripture in context, and in doing so, teach their congregations that Matthew 24 has nothing to do with the rapture.

At 6:48 AM, Defiance County, Ohio, specifically the community of Hicksville (a few miles from our home), felt a magnitude 2.9 earthquake. This is the first recorded earthquake in Defiance County history. No fault lines lie nearby, so experts wonder what caused the earthquake. I suspect some local Evangelical preachers won’t wonder about what happened. Nope, these prophets of the Almighty will turn to Matthew 24, rip out the verses necessary to prove their point, and say that this earthquake is an irrefutable sign of the second coming of Jesus. Yes, siree bob, Jesus is coming soon! What other explanation could there be, right?

In time, scientists will posit likely explanations for the Defiance Earthquake®. And sure as Jesus is still lying in an unmarked Judean grave, these very same preachers will conveniently forget their earthquake predictions and move on to other newspaper auguries, sure, that this time, they will be right.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Quote of the Day: Amish Factory Farms Pollute Land and Water in Rural Northwest Ohio

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amish edon ohio

When people think of the Amish, they think of plain-clothed people, horses and buggies, and idyllic farms. While this picture is largely true, here in rural Northwest Ohio, Amish farmers in partnership with JBS Foods, the world’s largest beef producer, are operating large factory farms. The result? Polluted waterways and land. What follows is a feature story on this issue published by Circle of Blue.

Excerpted from Amish Farmers’ Partnership With Beef Giant Produces Manure Mess by Keith Schneider

Edon, Ohio — For 60 years, this one stoplight Ohio town has been known as a place where time appears to stand still. With more than 400 Amish residents settled in and around the rural community that straddles the Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan state lines, it is common to see large families traveling by horse-drawn black buggies to and from farms where they milk dairy cows and grow corn.

Adhering to a strict religious doctrine that resists new technology, Amish farmers here spent decades largely eschewing industrial farming practices that have become common around the United States.

But that bucolic tableau of plain people earnestly cultivating the rich soil where three states meet has ceased to exist, splintered by an industrial farm alliance between one of the area’s leading Amish farming families and JBS Foods, the world’s largest beef producer. Over the last two years, JBS has forged a partnership to establish a mammoth vertically integrated concentrated cattle feeding operation that is confining more than 100,000 male calves and steers in large concrete, steel, and vinyl-covered feeding barns, and generating thousands of tons of solid manure each day.

Prompted by persistent complaints of odor and contamination, regulators from the Ohio Agriculture Department and the state Environmental Protection Agency investigated earlier this year and cited nine farms for manure mismanagement, and issued fines to three farms for failing to secure proper operating permits.  

The cited farms, most owned by the Schmucker family, are close to each other in Williams County, Ohio. Inspectors from the two state agencies found uncontained manure running off big waste piles and out of barns, and draining into streams and wetlands. Inspectors took water samples that contained high concentrations of nitrogen ammonia, a contaminant of manure. 

The state findings were consistent with those observed by area residents who’ve watched as  Amish farmers piled manure in huge mounds, spread it on farm fields as fertilizer, and taken their own water samples that confirmed it polluted streams, lakes, and the St. Joseph River. 

The widespread contamination caused a deepening schism with the community, which was unprepared for such immense agricultural industrialization and the subsequent environmental contamination. 

Neither Noah Schmucker Jr., the leader of the Amish farm community, nor JBS executives agreed to be interviewed for this report. Executives of Wagler and Associates, an Indiana construction company heavily involved in building the feeding barns, declined to be interviewed. 

When asked about the concerns, Ohio Department of Agriculture Director Brian Baldridge said the agency would continue to “engage with all property owners to ensure they are following Ohio laws and rules.”

What’s unfolded around this farming town of 800 residents in the far northwestern corner of Ohio is the agricultural equivalent of what occurred during the fracking boom in Williston, North Dakota in the late 2000s. Powered by new technology, vastly different production practices, and access to huge sums of capital, a new beef production industry swept into a region unaccustomed and unprepared for such immense agricultural industrialization, or its environmental contamination. 

….

Just as in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Carolina, Missouri and other states that support large industrialized livestock and poultry sectors, concentrated feeding operations are major polluters. Water samples collected by the Steuben County Lakes Council and the Williams County Alliance, two environmental groups, show persistently high concentrations of nitrates, phosphorus, and dangerous E-coli bacteria in streams and lakes in the region that encompass the St. Joseph River watershed. The river serves Fort Wayne with its drinking water, and drains into the Maumee River, the primary source of the pollutants that cause a mammoth annual toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie. The groups also tracked the contamination upstream headwaters of Fish Creek and Black Creek. Both flow through the Amish cattle farms. 

The situation outrages Sandy Bihn, executive director of Lake Erie Waterkeeper, who has worked for decades on regional, national, and binational groups to cure the lake’s annual toxic bloom. 

“How is it possible to let 100,000 animals, and all the nitrates and phosphorus that they produce, come into the watershed that we’re investing millions and millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars to protect?” Bihn said. “This just shows how meat and JBS are able to control the system.”

While the buggies, beards, and plain dress still help to identify Amish farms in Williams County and the two neighboring counties, there is nothing characteristically Amish about the vertically integrated, industrial scale, scientifically advanced calf and cattle production system that has quickly evolved here. 

The financial advantage is plain for the Schmuckers and the other Amish farmers. The most labor intensive aspect of the Amish cattle operation is feeding and caring for calves. Amish families are large. There are plenty of hands available for the work. Latino laborers also are employed to help with animal care and operate the skidders that push manure out of the barns. Judging by the number of new homes, new cattle confinement facilities, and the prices Amish are paying for farmland – $14,000 to $20,000 an acre, according to county records –business is lucrative.

….The civic confrontation between the Amish and English communities started in December 2023 when Noah Schmucker and Wagler and Associates sought a permit to build a $10 million feeding facility for 8,000 calves and cattle in Steuben County. It was the first time the scale of the operation and JBS’s involvement was publicly revealed. Schmucker baldly stated at the hearing that if the county refused the permit he would just build smaller feeding barns that evaded county and state permitting requirements. Ohio does not require a permit unless a barn houses over 1,000 animals. Indiana’s limit is 300.

Hundreds of residents, many of them owners of lakeside homes, protested both options, fearing water pollution from manure. The county rejected the permit, prompting Schmucker to proceed with subdividing land and construction.

Evidence of the industry’s presence, and its profitability, is everywhere now around Edon. Dozens of big concrete, steel, and vinyl cattle feeding barns have already been built, each costing $130,000 or more, and many others are under construction. Trucks hauling calves and cattle crowd the highways and the narrow dirt farm-to-market roads. New Amish homes are under construction. Manure piles rest like sleeping beasts beside confinement barns. Trucks loaded with manure head for dumping sites. The entire region’s scent is an invisible and noxious veil of cattle wastes. 

Following persistent complaints of from residents of pollution and odor state environmental and agriculture authorities in the three states inspected many of the Amish farms. Michigan authorities directed a calf feeding operation to halt the flow of manure draining into a stream that fed a nearby lake. Inspectors from Indiana’s Agriculture Department inspected a Steuben County farm and found that it was in compliance with state rules. 

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency cited nine Amish farms for violations of manure management regulations in August and set a September 1 deadline for fixing them that the farms met. Ohio authorities discovered several feeding sites where the number of cattle exceeded 1,000 animals, and the farms have since some into compliance. The state also ordered the largest mounds of manure, some towering two and three stories tall, to be removed.

The Ohio Agriculture Department issued $20,000 in fines to three Amish farms for failing to acquire the proper state permits. 

Ohio’s action reflects the limited reach of state environmental law to control agricultural contamination. Though modest, the state’s enforcement is the most aggressive against farm pollution since 1999, when Ohio cited an egg farm for fouling water with chicken litter. 

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Why Faith Healing is a Scam

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td jakes

Faith Healing: The belief that sick, addicted, or “possessed” people can be supernaturally healed using prayer, faith, and/or the laying on of hands.

Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. (James 5:14-16 KJV)

Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you with oil in the name of the Master. Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you’ve sinned, you’ll be forgiven—healed inside and out. Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. (James 5:14-16 The Message)

According to James 5:14-16, sick Christians should:

  • Call for the elders/leaders of the church, asking them to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of Jesus
  • If the elders/leaders of the church pray in faith, Jesus will heal the sick, restoring them to health
  • If the sickness is due to sin, their sins will be forgiven
  • This should be a common practice in Christian churches

Are you a Christian? Former Christian? Have you ever witnessed church elders/leaders anointing a sick church member with oil, praying over them, and the person was supernaturally healed? Some of us have, perhaps, witnessed this healing ritual, without healing taking place. I can’t think of one time when a sick Christian was supernaturally healed. Not-One-Time. Typically, clerics blame prayed-over sick people for their lack of healing. “You didn’t have enough faith,” sick/dying followers of Jesus are told. Wait a minute, the Bible says the healing of sick Christians is dependent on the faith of elders/church leaders, and NOT the faith of the sick.

Turn on Christian television — an oxymoron if there ever was one — and what do you find? Programming dominated by Evangelical/Charismatic/Pentecostal/Apostolic charlatans claiming they can supernaturally heal the sick by laying hands on and praying over them. This fake healing has filtered down to countless churches and pastors who week after week claim they are healing people in the name of Jesus.

Have you ever noticed how their practices never square with James 5:14-16; that healings never materialize; that when healings do occur, they are the result of very human medical intervention? If Jesus is indeed a prayer-answering, healing God, he sure is bad at his job. I would argue that MOST healings attributed to supernatural intervention can be attributed to human instrumentation or natural healing, and those few healings that seem to have no medical explanation are not enough for us to warrant giving credit to Jesus, the Great Physician. Not every recovery can be explained by science, but that doesn’t mean God — which God? — should get the credit. Unexplainable stuff happens, but that doesn’t mean we should praise a deity who hides from us for what happened. Sometimes, the answer is, “Hmm, I don’t know.”

Billions of Christians have lived and died since Jesus walked the shores of Galilee. Billions of sick, dying people of faith have desperately prayed — often for months and years — for Jesus to intervene in their lives, without success. Prayer may have a psychological benefit, but it doesn’t affect healing. By all means, pray if it comforts you or gives you hope. but when you find a lump in your breast or feel sharp pains in your chest, the only proper response is to either call 911 or see a doctor. It’s 2024. We no longer need to seek out shamans, witch doctors, homeopaths, or faith healers for healing. Doctors certainly aren’t the end-all, but they should be the first people we contact when sick. Pray if you must, but by all means, get that lump in your breast biopsied or get an EKG for the pain in your chest.

Last week, TD Jakes, an Apostolic megachurch pastor of The Potter’s House in Dallas, Texas, recently suffered a medical emergency while preaching. Jakes collapsed, 911 was called, and emergency medical personnel rushed him to a hospital where surgery was performed. Jakes has not said what caused the emergency, but it was serious enough to require immediate surgery and ICU care. Afterward, Jakes said, and I quote, “Many of you don’t realize you’re looking at a miracle. I faced a life-threatening calamity, was rushed to the ICU unit, I had emergency surgery. Survived the surgery.” Jakes later added, “I’m in good spirits, I feel good, no pain. I’m in peace and tranquility and I want you to know that I can feel your prayers.”

Did church elders pray over Jakes, anointing him with oil, believing in faith that Jesus would instantly heal Jakes so he could finish his sermon? Of course not. They dialed 911. No time for empty religious rituals; no time for anointing oil and prayers. In a lucid, rational moment, church leaders knew that Jakes needed immediate medical intervention lest their pastor die.

A miracle? Nope. Another win for science.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Dear Evangelical Apologists, This is NOT a “Gotcha” for Atheists

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teaching creationism

Several days ago, I received the following email from an Evangelical man:

So where did it all come from. The known universe before the bang?

Over the past seventeen years, I have received scores of emails from Evangelicals posing this very question or something similar. Evangelicals think that this question is some sort of “gotcha” question atheists can’t answer; that by being unable to answer this question, atheists show the bankruptcy of atheism.

I am going to surprise the man who wrote this email by answering his question: I DON’T KNOW! No one knows where “it” came from; where the universe came from before the Big Bang. Atheists can’t answer this question, but neither can Christians. Saying GOD DID IT! is a faith claim, as is quoting verses from Genesis 1-3. To quote the great intellectual and scholar Ken “Hambo” Ham, “Were you there?” Ham loves to use this line of illogic when challenging evolutionists and other scientists. Since these learned men and women didn’t observe firsthand the beginning of the universe (and what became before the Big Bang), they can’t possibly “know” what happened. However, what’s good for the proverbial goose is good for the gander. When Evangelicals say GOD DID IT! it is fair for scientists to ask, “Were you there?” If not, then Christians cannot possibly know whether the Christian God created the universe or exists outside of space and time. These are faith claims, not science.

Of course, Ham and other creationists resort to special pleading to defend and justify their beliefs. The Bible is different from any other book, Evangelicals say. Written by God through human instrumentality, the Bible is inspired, inerrant, and infallible. Thus, we can KNOW who created the universe and when and how he did it by reading the Bible! The problem with this argument is that there is no evidence for the claim that the Christian God wrote the Bible. There’s a plethora of evidence, however, that suggests the Bible is the work of fallible men. Believing the Bible was written by God and is somehow, in some way, a one-of-a-kind divine text requires faith. Deep down, creationists know this, and that’s why Answers in Genesis, Creation Research Society, Institute for Creation Research, and dozens of other groups, spend countless hours trying to make science “fit” the creationist narrative. Faith is not enough for these zealots. They desperately want respectability and are willing to lie, distort scientific facts, and misrepresent science to get it. Yet, despite all their “scientific” work, creationism remains a matter of faith, not science.

Creationists can no more answer the aforementioned questions than atheists can. The difference between Evangelicals and evolutionists (a derogatory term often used by Evangelicals as a label for science in general) however, is that scientists continue to work towards answering the question of how the universe began and explaining what existed before the Big Bang. Science may never satisfactorily and completely answer these questions, and I am fine with that. Not every question — presently — is answerable. Evangelicals, armed with arrogance and certainty, think the Bible reveals to them everything they need to know about life. “The Bible says” becomes the answer to countless complex, difficult science questions. The underlying issue is that Evangelicals need to be right; to have “Biblical” answers for every question. Evangelicals have become the insufferable man at a party who dominates the discussion and has answers for every question. Or at least he thinks he does, anyway.

Let me conclude this post with this: atheism and evolution are not the same, any more than atheism and liberalism are the same. Atheism is defined this way: disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods. While it is certainly true that many atheists are evolutionists and political liberals, that cannot be said of all atheists. Atheism is a singular statement about the existence of deities. From there, atheists go in all sorts of ways.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Quote of the Day: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Plans to Wage War on the FDA if Donald Trump Wins the 2024 Presidential Election

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RFK Jr war on FDA

2024 Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump recently said that, if elected, he plans to turn conspiracy theorist and all-around nutjob Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. loose on the Federal government — specifically the FDA. What could possibly go wrong, right? What follows is an excerpt from an article on the Science-Based Medicine website by one of my favorite Internet doctors, David Gorski. If you are not familiar with the Science-Based Medicine site, please check it out. You will find long-form articles filled with important information/discussion about medicine and science.

By Dr. David Gorksi, Science-Based Medicine, RFK Jr. declares MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] war against the FDA, October 28, 2024

Let’s look at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claims. Basically, it’s a misrepresentation of what the FDA has done and, of course, the promise of all the things listed. Again, I will start by saying that the FDA has never engaged in suppression, much less “aggressive suppression” of exercise or sunlight that I am aware of. Moreover, as we’ve complained about before, the FDA, if anything, has been far too lax in regulating, for example, quackery involving unproven stem cell treatments for conditions ranging from autism (for which quack clinics have even set up unethical and scientifically dubious pay-to-play clinical trials registered with ClinicalTrials.gov to sell their quackery), to stroke, to cancer. There are even profitable companies marketing stem cell quackery without evidence that it works. Ditto chelation therapy, which has never been shown to work for anything except acute toxicity from heavy metal poisoning and has even been studied for cardiovascular disease in two very expensive and unnecessary (and negative) randomized clinical trials. Let’s also not forget that neither hydroxychloroquine nor ivermectin have been demonstrated to work against COVID-19—quite the contrary, in fact—nor ivermectin shown to be efficacious against cancer. As for raw milk, it has no health benefits greater than pasteurized milk, but it does have a much higher risk of food borne infections. (It is, however, “natural,” I guess.)

Of course, nutraceuticals (and vitamins and supplements) are already legal and weakly regulated (if you can call it regulated at all), thanks to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), which we’ve written about here many, many times, most recently how it helped conspiracy theorist Alex Jones fund his media empire. Basically, as long as you are vague enough about the health claims for your supplement, nutraceutical, or vitamin concoction, you can sell it to treat almost anything, and the supplement industry has, through its powerful patrons, prevented any strengthening of the law to deal with all the quacks who claim without evidence that their supplements treat disease. On the rare occasions when the FDA does try to crack down on quacks selling unproven or even potentially harmful supplements, the health freedom movement inevitably portrays it as “fascist” or “jack-booted thugs” trying to “suppress” all those “natural” cures.

….

So what would the FDA look like if Trump were to win next week and actually follow through with his appointment of RFK Jr. to a high-ranking health position? The answer illustrates a bit of the dilemma that the “health freedom” movement has, being, as it is, an uncomfortable alliance between crunchy “all natural” health freedom lovers and more hard core libertarians like Nick Gillespie, who believe that the “power of the free market” will “unleash innovation” if only the nasty old FDA were less strict about its standards for pharmaceutical companies. There is an inherent tension there between wanting to be more strict with the “bad” pharmaceutical companies, while approving modalities (or at least much more weakly regulating them) that alternative practitioners want.

On the one hand, MAHA would seem to want to muzzle the FDA with respect to all the quackery listed in RFK Jr.’s post, basically letting quacks do whatever they want with almost anything. Remember, a lot of what is in RFK Jr.’s list is not “natural.” Certainly extracting and isolating stem cells and injecting them into the bloodstream is not “natural,” nor are chelation therapy and hyperbaric oxygen—and especially ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, peptides, and psychedelics, all of which are manufactured drugs. Again, what “health freedom” really wants is the freedom for quacks to ply their grift without interference from the government.

What will be fascinating to watch is how tensions between the libertarians who believe that big pharma should be unleashed in order to produce “innovation” and cures and the “natural” crunchy crowd and its overwhelming suspicion of anything produced by big pharma will be resolved. Don’t get me wrong, I really don’t want to see RFK Jr. in any sort of official capacity with power over federal health care policy, but, in the unfortunate event that Trump wins and he is appointed HHS Secretary (or, at least, keeps helping Trump pick leaders of the FDA, CDC, and NIH), in particular because his MAHA agenda conflicts with so much of Trump’s other agenda:

RFK’s health mission puts him at odds with Trump’s own track record. As president, Trump heavily subsidized the agricultural industry to alleviate pains he inflicted on farmers with his own tariff policies. His administration peeled back toxic chemical regulations and environmental rules. He undermined school lunch programs and flooded cafeterias with junk food, rejecting the healthy options pioneered by the Barack Obama administration.

The reason is, likely, this:

Being responsive to public opinion doesn’t necessarily make someone smart. It makes them pliable. And perhaps that’s why Kennedy and his followers are willing to take a chance on Trump. They see him as a person who—in his lust for adulation—can be changed or manipulated. 

The challenging thing about being around RFK and his crowd is that while their ideas can be hard to take seriously, the underlying concerns they carry are basically unimpeachable: frighteningly high healthcare costs, the murky relationship between pharmaceutical companies and doctors who prescribe their pills, and a very real decline in overall health among the population. 

But they are seeking solutions to real problems in the wrong places. Looking into the past won’t save us any more than forgoing your vaccine shots, drinking raw milk, or voting for Trump will.

That is precisely the issue. There are very real concerns about US health policy, but, as is the case with the nostrums RFK Jr. champions for disease and to demonize vaccines, he’s applying policy quackery to address these problems in a way that is inherently self-contradicting. After all, the “free market” contingent of the “health freedom” movement that wants to “unleash innovation” by neutering the FDA is good at manipulation too. I hope we never have to see which faction of the health freedom movement will triumph if there is a second Trump administration. I fear that federal health policy will end up being the worst of both worlds, with far less regulation on big pharma and much laxer standards for drug approval, plus a lot more freedom for quacks to peddle quackery like bogus stem cell therapies, chelation, and “repurposed” ivermectin for everything, while NIH is forced to waste even more money studying useless quackery.

As for a “corrupt system,” no one out-corrupts Donald Trump.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Christians Say The Darnedest Things: Scientists Refuse to Humble Themselves and Accept Bible Truth

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Dr. David Tee’s Massive Library

Dr. David Tee, World Renowned Denier of Science, Observations, October 24, 2024.

On the back of the book (Stephen Hawkings — The Origin of Everything), and we are quoting from memory, the book said that scientists have finally got to the point where they understand and know where are origins began. Or something close to that.

As we read those few lines, the first thought was, what a waste of time. The secular scientists still have no clue about our origins because they omit the truth concerning that topic. They have yet to verify that our origins were by natural means.

They come up with different theories but not one of those theories puts the biblical supernatural creative act in jeopardy. The second thought we had and another reason we consider the book and the secular scientific work a waste of time is that God already explained our origins.

The scientists exploring and pursuing an alternative to the Biblical creation act simply wasted their intelligence, time, and money. They have spent years and valuable resources pursuing a topic that has already been answered

That is a waste considering the millions of people who could have benefitted from a wiser use of those three elements. But is the secular world for you. They would rather waste precious time, money, and intelligence pursuing a false idea than humble themselves and accept the truth.

….

As we have said for years, unbelievers always take the wrong paths, in the wrong directions and look in the wrong places for the wrong answers. They never learn or refuse to learn when the truth is presented to them.

Unbelieving scientists need our prayers so that the truth is revealed to them and their eyes are opened once and for all. Those prayers need to include all those Christian scientists and students who listen to the unbelievers and follow their counsel and not God’s

….

Throughout the world Christians can see the difference between the unbelieving world and the believing world. When they do recognize this difference, they will understand why God said to not follow or listen to unbelievers.

Unbelievers do not have the truth and many do not want it. We have read on many occasions where unbelieving scientists say that even if the Bible is proven true, they would not accept it. That is a sad state to be in and shows Christians we still have a lot of work left to do.

The unbelieving world uses its immoral standards and self-righteous attitudes to attack Christians, not realizing how bad off they are. They are merely pawns being used to harm unwary Christians

….

The right information does not come from unbelievers.

It comes from God and the Bible. Learn the truth and teach your children the truth before they come under attack from unbelieving teachers and professors. Giving them the right information is protecting your children.

An Example of How Young Earth Creationism Hinders Rational, Skeptical Scientific Inquiry

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dr david tee's library
Dr. David Tee’s Massive Library

Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen recently wrote several posts decrying teaching evolution — If You Don’t Teach Creation, If You Don’t Teach Creation 2, and Reading Science Books.

Thiessen is not a scientist, and, as far as I know, has no science training apart from what he was taught in Bible college. He is no more qualified to opine on evolution than I am physics. That’s not to say that Thiessen doesn’t know anything about science. He knows enough to make it seem to uneducated Evangelicals that he is some sort of authority figure. This is common in Evangelical churches where preachers are viewed as authority figures in areas in which they have no relevant expertise.

What follows are excerpts from Thiessen’s latest posts. Laugh, ridicule, or weep, but never forget that scores of people agree with Thiessen, even if they might disagree with his ham-fisted approach.

— Begin excerpts

From If You Don’t Teach Creation 2

There is only one single view that all Christians must accept and hold to. That view is the creation act revealed in Genesis 1. Every other viewpoint that alters or disagrees with this one biblical revelation is false teaching.

….

Evolutionary scientists make a lot of assumptions. The reason for this is . . . they cannot replicate claims made about ‘historical evolution’. It is an impossibility as they have no way of developing partial samples to experiment with.

This failure is another piece of evidence showing that evolution is not true. We do not have to worry about scientifically replicating any results of god’s creative act as it is done on an hourly basis every day.

….

No, other approaches do make scientific sense if science would be more open-minded about our origins. Science cannot study the one-time act nor replicate it. But it can prove that all life goes as stated in Genesis 1. That means God’s creative act makes scientific sense.

….

The truth never changes which is why Christian colleges, etc., need to stand with God and the Bible. Neither has changed over the thousands of years this world has existed. Evolution is whatever the evolutionist wants it to be no matter who it hurts.

….

There is no scientific evidence for any alternative to Genesis 1. All scientific evidence for those alternatives is manipulated to show support and read into any experiment they make. Plus, science has not discovered or tested one mechanism they say is involved in evolutionary human development.

….

To many unbelievers and unbelieving scientists, scientific media outlets and organizations evolution is dogma and settled science, not a theory. Evolution should never be taught in any school except to show why it is wrong and never existed. It is a theory that should never be considered for anything else.

….

It [the Bible] also tells us how God created. There is no room for any other theory to explain our origins. We know everything about our origins as the Bible reveals this creative act correctly. The opinion of Mr. Wright is one that is used to justify denying what God wrote about himself and says that God is incapable of writing about himself and his actions.

….

Any form of evolution is not true, it is not honorable, especially towards God, and it is not right or pure. Plus, evolution is not lovely or commendable as it caused great harm to millions throughout history and today, and it is not in any way shape, or form excellent or worthy of praise.

Evolution is nothing but a deceptive lie that has no place in any part of Christianity or its academic institutions. One cannot take science over God as the former is not the ultimate authority over anything.

Science, like many tools, is used to destroy people and Christians need to be aware of it before jumping on board scientific research. Christians can not teach other Christians to accept science over God’s word. If they do, they are leading those students to sin against God. That is very wrong.

From If You Don’t Teach Creation

If you don’t teach creation [ism] as true, then why teach the Bible at all? Or another good question why claim you are a Christian if you think the Bible is in error?

….

Good exegesis does require that everyone accept God’s word and does not hint at him being a liar. There is no evidence in scripture or nature that a process was involved in the origin of everything.

….

The very first biblical verse [Genesis 1:1] does not imply a process. Neither do the words ‘Let there be’ Every step of the creative act supports a supernatural creative act leaving no room for processes.

….

First, there is no evidence supporting evolution. To get evidence, scientists would have to produce the original conditions and let life take its course. With no intelligent being involved in the origination or development of life, scientists cannot be a part of any evolutionary experiment.

Then their ‘experimental’ set-up would have to produce the same results as scientists claim took place in their version of human history. If millions of years are needed for this production of verifiable evidence, then evolution is not true. One does not have evidence to support their extraordinary claims.

….

While the information about the fossilization of life forms is true, evolutionists will ignore this fact and claim the fossil record supports evolution. Unfortunately, for the evolutionist, everything about evolution is read into fossils not taken out of it.

Fossils do not support an evolutionary process. They are pawns in a high-stakes game that evil uses to deceive people.

….

If Christian colleges are not pursuing truth but academic freedom, then the truth is lost and Christians are not getting the right spiritual food to grow strong and maintain their faith. You get what we have today, false teachers teaching false doctrine to vulnerable people. That is not a recipe for success.

From Reading Science Books

After browsing the science books placed on the tables [at a book fair], we came to the conclusion that we do not need to read unbelieving science books anymore.

There are good reasons for following that realization. First, all the authors are telling the same story. They all do not depart from the main evolutionary claims or themes. Thus, they are boring to read. We figure they are writing these works to avoid the perish part of the academic publish-or-perish mentality.

Second, they offer no new evidence especially any that would be considered groundbreaking or history-changing. No new ‘physical evidence’ has been discovered or reported from the evolutionary side of the creation debate.

Anything they would present would be preceded or followed by the words ‘We Think’, ‘We Believe’. ‘it is possible’, ‘we do not know’, and similar phrases all evolutionary scientists cover their theories with. The last one is the most telling as it openly tells everyone they cannot find an alternative to God’s creative act.

Their evolutionary theories, etc., are merely wishful thinking and a waste of everyone’s time. Third, those first two points add up to the fact that it would be a giant waste of time reading those books. 

They are nothing but false teaching and no Christian should be reading them unless they are looking for data and points to refute as well as show students why evolution and the Big Bang are wrong. These books provide no other type of valuable information.

Save your money or use it to buy solid, good Christian books written by true Christian scientists who believe in a 6 24-hour day creation. Remember, unbelievers do not have the truth and that includes all research fields under the science umbrella.

Every alternative to God’s creative act found in the Bible is false and untrue. Find Christian works that support Genesis 1 and 2 and learn the truth about our origins. Learn to strengthen your faith, not undermine it by accepting and adopting false information written by deceived people who are far from the truth.

Only God was there when creation took place and scientists cannot see back in time. It is laughable to think that evidence would survive billions and millions of years untouched by anything else.

— End excerpts

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.