Menu Close

Category: Science

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

8 Comments
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, 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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Why Faith Healing is a Scam

7 Comments
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, 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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

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

4 Comments
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, 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.

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

5 Comments
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, 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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

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

9 Comments
dr david tee's library
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

11 Comments
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, 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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

“Bruce, Have Fun in Hell” Says an Evangelical Man

4 Comments

the missing link

Several years ago, an Evangelical man by the name of Steve left the following comment on the post titled, An Atheist Thanksgiving:

You went from being unsaved to a flat out reprobate buddy. You rejected the God of the Bible to believe you evolved from a rock which came from and explosion 13.8586.678 billion years ago. I agree that these old IFB pastors you pick on all the time have no spine and are just in it for the money but to believe you came from a monkey which nobody has ever seen a monkey turn into a human! Never! You just traded one religion for another. You traded Paul the apostle for that Pedo Richard Dawkins! Have fun in hell buddy

I will leave it to Brian — a former Independent Fundamentalist Baptist preacher’s son — to answer Steve’s comment:

I read Steve P’s post sentence by sentence and tried to find even one sentence that approaches an accurate statement. I was unable to see even one in the lot. Accuracy/truth seems very unimportant to Steve P. Is this true belief in God, this parrot-dull squawking? (with apologies to parrots, who at least make their dull repetitions entertaining!)

Some day, perhaps, Evangelicals will realize that threatening me with their God’s judgment and Hell has no effect on me. The only God I fear is Polly and the only Hell I know is Trump’s America.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Life After Jesus: Moving from a God-Shaped Hole to a Knowledge-Shaped Hole

3 Comments
god shaped hole

Warning to easily offended Evangelicals: Snark and R-rated humor ahead. You have been warned!

Those of us raised in Evangelical churches often heard our pastors speak of every unsaved person having a God-shaped hole in their lives. Where this hole was exactly never was explained. It couldn’t have been in the physical, blood-pumping heart. Surgeons can repair holes in hearts — no God needed. Perhaps, this hole was in the soul — another thing pastors never could explain. Where, exactly, does the soul reside? How can any of us know we have a soul, or a spirit, for that matter?  And I have to ask at this point, if unsaved people have a God-shaped hole in their hearts, does that make them HOLY? 🙂

Regardless of where said hole is located, Evangelical pastors assure sinners that it exists and that God, on purpose, created this hole in every human being. In other words, all of us were born with a birth defect. Supposedly, God created this hole so all of us would one day want and need him. Well, except for the non-elect — according to Calvinists. They go through life with holes that can never be filled by God because God put a steel plate over their holes. (I am restraining myself here. All this hole talk makes me want to talk about sex.) Arminians, on the other hand, believe all humans are born into this world with God-shaped holes in their lives. But, even for Jacob Arminius’ clan, if sinners repeatedly reject God’s plan for hole-filling, God will pour cement into their hole — giving them a hardened heart. Having committed the unpardonable sin, sinners with cement-filled holes can never, ever be saved.

The Bible, of course, mentions nothing about unsaved people having a God-shaped hole in their lives. That unbelievers have one is based on inference; a common way Evangelicals use to construct new doctrines. Take a verse here, a verse there, and another verse over here, and BOOM! there it is. Surely you see it, right? Evangelicals often use inference to prove various points of their eschatological beliefs. For example, the Bible doesn’t mention the rapture — the moment when Jesus will come again (no sex joke here either) in the clouds and gather up all the Evangelicals to take them home to Heaven. You will search in vain for a verse, any verse, that says Jesus will soon return to earth’s atmosphere to catch away the saved. If you start pressing Evangelicals on some of their beliefs you will find that their interpretations are based on presuppositions. We believe that the rapture of the church is imminent, says Pastor I.M. Fullashit, and this and that verse — twisted, contorted, and pressed — proves it! So it is with God-shaped holes.

If unsaved people have a God-shaped hole in their hearts, does that make them HOLY?

Bruce Gerencser

The implication of the God-shaped hole is this: unsaved people live empty, hopeless, desperate, unfilled lives lacking meaning, purpose, and direction. Without God filling the pothole he created in your life, you are vile sinner who hates God. Six years ago, my partner and I went to Promedica Hospital in Toledo to visit grandchild number twelve. Ezra was born seven weeks early so he is in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Here was this precious, wonderful little boy. I shed a tear as I looked at him sleeping, wondering what he would one day become. I wondered about what kind of world he is being born into now that Donald Trump is trying to burn the United States to the ground. So many questions Grandpa had about his future, but today, he’s my grandson, my daughter’s first child, and I love him.

If I were still an Evangelical, perhaps I would have uttered a prayer, asking God to quickly fill my wicked, vile grandson’s life with the presence of the Holy Spirit. You see, Evangelicals believe that infants, too, have a God-shaped hole. King David, a murderous, adulterous man who supposedly had a heart for God, had this to say about himself: Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me. (Psalm 51:5) Evangelicals extrapolate from this verse the belief that ALL children are conceived in sin and shaped in iniquity (the doctrine of original sin). Of course, this is a conclusion without corroborating evidence. All that can be said here is that David thought he was wicked from birth. Press Evangelicals on the notion of original sin and you will quickly find that this doctrine is built upon a rotting foundation; that this doctrine requires playing Bible gymnastics to affirm its teaching. If you want a good illustration of how this game is played, please read John Piper’s post titled, What is the Biblical Evidence for Original Sin? Now, without the doctrine of original sin, there’s no need for human redemption and salvation. Evangelicals need the human herd divided into two groups — saved and lost — for their salvation scheme to work. Without this division, why, we would all just be humans, each capable of good and bad behavior. If there’s no sin, there’s no need for Jesus’ death on the cross or his resurrection from the dead.

Piper sums up his nonsensical defense of infants being born hellions with these two points:

  • Infants die, therefore they are not innocent.
  • If humanity is not born in sin, wouldn’t we expect there to be some people who have “beaten the odds” and never sinned?

Makes perfect sense to Evangelicals. But, to those of us outside of the bubble, we know that infants are fine just as they are; that what they need is LOVE, and not salvation. What, exactly, had my grandson done to need redemption? In the first week of life, all he did was sleep, eat, occasionally cry, poop, and pee. Fortunately, his parents will not be taking him to a Christian indoctrination center any time soon. I had to stop attending religious rituals for my newly-born grandchildren after almost having a stroke when a priest said my granddaughter was possessed by the Devil and must be exorcised — which he promptly proceeded to do. Quite frankly, I wanted to hold that priest’s head in the baptismal font water for about five minutes. There, another demon exorcised!

The only hole Christians have is in their minds; a hole made in their intellect by religion. I am not saying that Evangelicals are stupid or ignorant, though more than a few comments left on this blog over the years might lead me to conclude otherwise. What I am saying is that Evangelical beliefs cripple the minds of believers; that their minds are shut off from certain paths of inquiry. Instead of following the path wherever it leads, Evangelicals, much like the Israelites wandering in the desert for forty years, intellectually wander within what they believe is a God-approved box. Their pastors warn them if they dare to peek over the top of the box or wander from its confines, that they risk falling into heresy or sin; that only within the box will their soul and life be safe and secure.

Evangelicals have created what I call the Christian Ghetto®, a world where Evangelical versions of everything exist. Evangelical congregants are encouraged to only read Christian books, attend Christian movies, and watch Christian TV. I remember one congregant whom I tried my darnedest to convince to read the Calvinistic books I recommended to members. She would take the books home, but never read them. One day, I stopped by to visit her. Usually, congregants would hide anything that would lead me to conclude that they were not following the commands, edicts, rules, laws, and regulations of Pastor Bruce, uh I mean God. On this particular day, this dear woman forgot to hide the reason she wasn’t interested in reading the latest, greatest eighteenth-century book by a dried prune of a Puritan preacher. On her living room table sat a large stack of true-crime books. I looked at the books, picked up one of them, briefly leafed through it, and said nothing. Back then, I could do passive-aggressive quite well. Point made, preacher, point made. You see, she wanted to roam outside of the box. This woman found theology books boring, whereas true-crime books were filled with all sorts of exciting stories.

As an Evangelical pastor, part of my duty was to make sure people stayed within the confines of the box. People who dared to leave the box often did not return, putting their eternal destinies at risk. The Bible says in 1 John 2:19:

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.

Let me translate this from the original Hungarian:

Those people who left our church were not True Christians®. Had they been True Christians® they would have kept their asses in the pew and continued to listen to Pastor Bruce’s Holy Spirit-filled sermons, obeying his every word. But, they left, and this is proof that they never were really True Christians®.

Evangelicalism is all about obedience and conformity. Independent thinking is discouraged and is often taken as a sign of a person who isn’t right with God. Congregants are expected to believe, by faith, that whatever the Bible says is true (inspiration, inerrancy, infallibility). While doubts and questions are tolerated to a small degree, True Christians® are expected to eventually, after being properly schooled and corrected, toe the line. And if they can’t or won’t, these rebellious church members are expected to leave the church. Of course, by leaving they prove they weren’t True Christians®, or at the very least prove that the pastor was right to have serious doubts about their salvation.

Fortunately, an increasing number of Evangelicals (and Christians of all stripes) are propping up a ladder on the inside wall of the box and escaping into the night. Once free, these escapees wander the wild, woolly, dangerous streets of the world. (See The Danger of Being in a Box and Why it Makes Sense When You Are In It and What I Found When I Left the Box.) No longer bound by church doctrine, orthodoxy, and the like, these people are free to follow the path of life wherever it leads. Few ever return to the box. Most of them find homes in progressive/liberal Christian churches, Unitarian Universalist churches, or embrace non-Christian beliefs. Some of them say they are spiritual and have no interest in organized religion. An increasing number of these runners become agnostics or atheists. You see, once you are truly free, life becomes all about the journey and not the destination. Evangelicals fixate on right beliefs and practices because where they spend eternity depends on them believing and practicing the right things. Believe the wrong things and Hell awaits. Believe the right things — by faith — and put those beliefs into practice (good works), and a room in God’s Trump Hotel awaits you after death. Life, then, is just preparation for eternity (Amos 3:3). Life is all about getting ready to meet God and move into the room Jesus has spent thousands of years preparing for you.

god shaped hole 2
Cartoon by Dresden Codak

Once free from the pernicious, intellect-killing, mind-rotting grip of Evangelical dogma, people feel a great sense of freedom, yet, at the same time, they, once again, sense a hole in their lives. This hole, however, is real. It is a knowledge-filled hole; a hole located in the mind that only can be filled with intellectual inquiry. Most former Evangelicals lament the fact that they had so many bat-shit crazy beliefs. Who among us hasn’t said, I can’t believe that I believed THAT! I see all those hands! For those of us who were Evangelicals for years, we realize that we burned a lot of brain cells (and daylight) searching after “truths” that were mirages; “truths” that were passed down from generation to generation by the tribal elders of our blood cult; “truths” that have no grounding in facts and evidence. Once we reach this point, there’s often a mind-flushing of sorts that takes place. For some of us, we had to push the handle numerous times before our minds were free of a lifetime of detritus. Once cleansed of Biblical “truth,” former Evangelicals realize that there’s a lot they don’t know about the world. Spend your life having truth defined by the Bible and God-ordained men alone, and you are going to miss out on a lot of important stuff.

Most Evangelicals are creationists. No need to study science, right? The Bible says, In the Beginning GOD CREATED the heavens and earth. What else is there to know? Come to find out, a hell of a lot of stuff. I have spent the last seventeen years trying to educate myself on matters of biology, archeology, geology, and astronomy, to name a few. The same could be said about history and the social sciences. So much to learn, but here’s the problem: I am sixty-seven years old and in failing health. I do what I can, but I am so grateful for the fact that my children and grandchildren are free from the cult; that they value intellectual inquiry; that they are skeptical — and often humored — of claims made by Christians. It thrills me down to the bottoms of my painful feet that my grandchildren are voracious readers; that they are not held captive by the Bible or Christian books. Freedom, for them, yea, for all of us, comes one book at a time.

The impetus for this post came from an email I received from a friend of mine. She told me of a discussion she was having with a sibling over the plurality of Gods in the Old Testament — specifically the Hebrew words Yahweh and Elohim. Evangelicals, of course, believe that these words are the same name for their God. There is ONE God, Evangelicals say, yet they worship a triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Well, God is three in one, Christians say. Three, yet one. Makes perfect sense, right? Anyhow, my friend, as I do, thinks that the Old Testament Gods were plural in number. A natural reading of the text, without pushing it through a Trinitarian sieve, reveals that Christianity rests on a polytheistic foundation. My friend’s sibling would have none of her “worldly” thoughts, reminding her that pride was man’s first sin, and that pridefully attaining “worldly” knowledge is futile. Her sibling told her that he was focused on his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who is his all-in-all; the only person who can fill the God-shaped hole in his heart.

My friend said to me, “His God-shaped hole is filled with God, but I don’t have a God-shaped hole; I have a knowledge-shaped hole and I am having fun filling it.” She sure hit the proverbial nail on the head! With no thoughts or worries about God or eternity, we are free to read and study that which interests us. The goal is to be a more informed person today than I was yesterday. I will never become as competent in matters of science as younger skeptics will, but I can, by the grace of my almighty intellect, know more about how the world works today than I knew as a card-carrying member of the Ken Ham Were You There? Club®. Much like my friend, I intend to fill the hole in my life with knowledge. I invite Evangelicals to dare to scale the walls of the box. Freedom awaits, as does a library card.

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.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: You Can’t Trust Scientists

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

One cannot trust scientists in any aspect of life. Their conclusions are influenced by their lack of Christian beliefs and adoption of the concept humans are animals, thanks to the evolutionary theory.

Humans are not expendable except in the eyes of scientists and some other people groups bent on wresting power and control from legitimate government processes. it is better to trust God and his word as he is the legitimate authority and he has set forth ethical and moral guidelines he will enforce.

His ethics and morals do not change from year to year or when technology is updated. His rules govern every aspect of life equally and the invention and application of technology is submissive to those regulations. They do not change, ever.

This is why we can say what is right or wrong. We have a set of objective moral and ethical guidelines that are not influenced by money, power, or romance. It is also why we can say you cannot trust scientists. They run by their own flexible rules that only benefit them and their work.

It is the scientist who is wrong, not God or the Bible.

— Dr. David Tee, TheologyArcheology: A Site For The Glory of Scientific Ignorance, Why People Do Not Trust Scientists, September 18, 2024