The people who produce and distribute [pornography] should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.
— Project 2025
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
If humans have free will, that means it is possible, even likely that they will behave in ways contrary to the will of God. This means that humans can thwart the will of the triune God.
Let the cognitive dissonance and circular argumentation begin.
Let’s consult the infallible, inerrant Word of God.
And it came to pass, that when Jesus had finished these parables, he departed thence. And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house. And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief. (Matthew 13:53-58)
Here we find Jesus healing people and working other miracles (mighty works). Jesus wanted to help everyone, but he couldn’t. Why? Because of unbelief. This means, then, that humans can, by refusing to believe or have faith, thwart the will of God.
Conclusion: God does not have free will.
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.
“Woke” generally means being aware of and actively attentive to social justice issues, particularly those related to racism, sexism, and discrimination. It’s often used to describe individuals who are conscious of systemic inequalities and advocate for change. The term has gained popularity in recent years and is frequently used in discussions about social justice movements and activism.
Woke is now defined in this dictionary as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice),” and identified as U.S. slang. It originated in African American English in the first half of the 20th century and gained more widespread use beginning in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. By the end of that decade it was also being applied by some as a general insult for anyone who is or appears to be politically left-leaning.
Woke is a slang term that has made its way into the mainstream from some varieties of African American English. In AAE, awake is often rendered as woke, as in, “I was sleeping, but now I’m woke.”
Like many other terms from Black culture that have been adopted into the mainstream, woke has gained broader uses. Woke soon became associated with performative activism, with people often using the term mockingly or sarcastically to suggest insincerity about one’s expressed beliefs about social issues.
The disapproving sense of woke is today quite common, often used by politically conservative individuals to criticize people who are considered too politically liberal, especially in relation to issues of race and social justice.
Additional broader uses of woke include woke-washing and woke capitalism, with the former referring to the use of social movements by companies to increase sales while failing to actively contribute to social change or address these issues within their companies and the latter similarly being used to describe a company’s public support of and investment in social issues.
Woke-washing creates the appearance of intention without the substance of action. —Vern Howard, Forbes, 15 June 2021
Based on the aforementioned definitions, yes, I am woke. I am “actively attentive to social justice issues, particularly those related to racism, sexism, and discrimination.” My question then is this: why isn’t everyone woke? Shouldn’t all of us be “actively attentive to social justice issues, particularly those related to racism, sexism, and discrimination”?
President Donald Trump, his MAGA administration, and a MAGA congress are anti-woke. Of course, they are anti-woke concerning the woke strawman they have concocted in their minds. Most voting Evangelical Christians voted three times for Donald Trump. It is clear that most Evangelicals approve of Trump’s racist, bigoted, misogynistic, anti-children, anti-worker, anti-family, anti-LGBTQ, anti-environment, anti-global climate change, anti-vaccines, anti-science, Christian nationalist agenda. It’s impossible to square the MAGA agenda with the teachings of the Bible. Trump claims to be Christian, yet he shows no knowledge or understanding of the Bible. His actions reveal an opposition to the teachings of the Bible. The only thing Trump and most congressional Republicans care about is making the rich richer and making it easier for corporations to poison, maim, and kill us.
Go ahead and wear your red hat with a tee shirt that proudly says, 100% Anti-Woke. We will know that you are indifferent or hostile to social justice issues, particularly those related to racism, sexism, and discrimination. It is good for us to know who it is who doesn’t give a shit about his fellow human beings. But, don’t try to tell us you are followers of Jesus. The Bible condemns your behavior, as does Jesus himself.
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.
Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, shares with his readers how to reach sinners, unbelievers, and atheists for Jesus. What follows are quotes from his recent posts. These should give Christians and unbelievers alike a snapshot of how he interacts with and responds to unbelievers.
Maybe he’s not interested in evangelizing sinners as much as he is being right. This doesn’t surprise me. Christian Fundamentalists like to talk about winning souls for Christ, but it seems to me that what they really care about is being absolutely right.
Let me know you think in the comment section.
Dr. David Tee, In His Own Words
Unbelievers like taking common and legitimate aspects of writing and distorting them into something they are not.
BG at the end of his post gets upset that we have ‘impugned’ his character. Yet, he should not do it to God if he doesn’t want to have it done to him.
Another misunderstanding and misrepresentation of God and his actions.
Another wholesale misrepresentation and a personal attack thrown in.
Another misrepresentation and distortion. BG generalizes the commands to make his point, which undermines his credibility and ruins his honesty. He is not being honest even after being told the correct explanation about God’s commands.
The unbelieving moral standard is inferior and allows for sin and corruption to flourish.
The unbeliever is not in any position to judge God and His commands. Their idea of morality is worse than what they accuse God of being. Their definitions of the acts commanded are just as subjective and fluid as their moral code. The unbelievers’ moral code is not infallible nor omnipresent like God’s.
Not one of those accusations thrown against God is true.
At this point, we stop responding and addressing the falsehoods and misrepresentations written by BG. At the end he makes this claim that he has not murdered or raped so he must be a good man and we are impugning his character. Our response to that silly claim is HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!
He does it to himself by purposefully lying, misrepresenting the facts, the Bible, God, etc., distorting the topics, and being dishonest in his points. We are not impugning his character but pointing out where he is wrong. Which we are allowed to do.
The only way to continue these types of discussions is if the unbeliever is honest, has an open mind, and will listen to your facts honestly and sincerely. Close-minded people like BG and MM only hear what they want to hear, then look for ways to misrepresent what was said.
Speaking of MM, he wrote a response to our mind your own business and his only point was– ‘I will write on any topic I want to’– such a stubborn, close-minded individual who does not get the fact that what he has to say means nothing because he is not qualified to speak on many topics.
They do not use all the facts, just the ones that support their deceptive point of view. They are not honest.
it is not the Christian who is ignorant, but the unbeliever who does not do very good research and only cherry picks the information they will use in their faulty attacks on God, the Bible and Christians.
When believers say things, it is often the case that unbelievers will ‘fact-check’ them. Then when the fact check turns up different information, they label Christians as liars.
This is another lie, as using corporal punishment is not beating a child or a student. But BG will not agree with that as he seeks to paint a false picture of us and what we believe. We could say that Bg does not care about innocent teachers or that teachers are being assaulted in the classrooms just by using his logic, but we won’t.
BG should know better than to lie about us, especially when he was not there nor knows anything about the topic he writes.
What a crock!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. This discovery only says that despite their claims to be rational and logical, scientists are great fairy tale writers.. They spin a good yarn that deceives millions of people, and that is wrong.
The scientists are not getting to the truth at all, but making everything up as they go.
But unbelievers like to think they get to dictate who will do what and do it according to their views. They forget there are others in the world who have the same rights and do not want them infringed upon.
This is another headline we came across, and we know the author [Bruce Gerencser] likes to word his headlines in a way that distorts what is going on.
The unbelievers’ solutions have been to remove God, prayer, specific punishments, and other similar aspects of school life and replaced them with ideas that do not work.
This is another ridiculous thing to say, as the unbeliever takes them out of context and misapplies them to whatever troubling thought they have on their minds. The unbeliever writing those words has no concept of what human flourishing means as he wants sin and corruption to abound at the expense of those doing what is right and moral.
But the unbelieving writer [Bruce Gerencser] of those quoted words does not care if he writes the truth or not. He just wants to justify his departure from God. He also wants to misdirect people’s attention away from what the unbelieving world is doing.
Anything that the writer accuses God of doing, his side of the world is doing with less than holy and pure motives, and on a far grander scale. He and other unbelievers are in no position to accuse God of anything.
Unbelievers do not make distinctions between true and false preachers/teachers. They lump everyone into one category, then continue to make false accusations against all Christians.
Only in the minds of unbelievers and atheists is this done. They always need something to fuel their hatred of Christ, even by exploiting the nonsense spoken by false teachers.
Unbelievers and atheists will go to any length to justify their decision to reject the offer of salvation, even by extrapolating false claims made by false teachers to others not guilty of doing such a thing.
If they [unbelievers] were honest, they would separate the true from the false teachers and be more open-minded to the former while closed to the latter. But rarely are unbelievers and atheists honest when it comes to Christ, Christians, and those who pose as Christians.
These comments can be labelled as ‘they will never learn’, ‘they will never listen’, ‘they will complain no matter what’, and by they we mean unbelievers and atheists. We like to distinguish between the two even though they are all categorized under the unbelievers label.
Ignoring is the best option because unbelievers and atheists rarely accept the truth as the answer.
Unbelievers continue to deny God the right to punish people and animals for their disobedience, even though they do the same thing as parents or supervisors, etc. They will punish people for violating their rules or the rules of a company, which affects the loved ones and animals of those punished.
The unbeliever and atheist fail to see the entire side to these issues they complain about. They only want to have their desired results, even though it leaves sin and crime sin place. In their complaints, there is no option to punish those who disobey or commit crimes. The sinner is free to act as they will without fear of physically paying for their crimes.
Also, the unbeliever and atheist will attack and punish those who are living by the rules, making them nothing but toothless hypocrites. They will do exactly what they complain about and act the same as God acts. Only the target is different.
The unbelievers go after those who disagree with/disobey their views and rules and condemn themselves by the very complaints they make against God. Their complaints hold no water and do not lead anyone to a better way or paradise.
Leave it to unbelievers to get the opposition to trans ideology and practice wrong, and then twist it into something it is not. This is what MM [Ben Berwick] has done with his recent post.
No religious right individual or organization are attacking trans people. They are trying to relieve them of the delusions that enslaves the latter. There is no right for fake women to invade real women spaces. There is no right to call themselves women when they are not.
The only small minded bigots we find are trans people. You can see their bigotry any day of the week as it is recorded endlessly in the different news cycles as well as other media outlets.
He [Ben Berwick] deludes himself, as do many others, into thinking he is right when all he is doing is helping erase the lines of right and wrong, and what is defined as sin. He leads people to sin and that is wrong.
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.
Recently, Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, responded to my post Should Christians ALWAYS Obey God? I suspected one of my Fundamentalist critics would respond, and Thiessen was the first one to respond. What follows is my response. All spelling, grammar, and punctuation in the original. Thiessen’s response is in bold font.
There are many factors that play into our not taking a break. Right now, we have had a rainstorm and are still waiting for a project to be sent our way. So we need something to do. The question in the title is not ours. It comes from BG’s website, and it reflects the attitude of MM and his question: would we kill him if God commanded us to?
Thiessen, as he is wont to do, drags my friend Ben Berwick into the debate. While Ben and I agree on this issue, I will leave it to him to defend himself. Is it fair to ask questions about whether an Evangelical Christian would kill someone if God commanded him to? Absolutely. It is, after all, in the Bible. God repeatedly commanded his chosen people, the Israelites, to commit violence and murder against individuals and people groups. If Thiessen has a problem with our observations and conclusions, his real problem is with God, not BG and MM (as he likes to call Ben and me).
Both are ridiculous questions because the answer to the title question is yes, and the answer to the annoying second question is that God does not give that command anymore.
Wait a minute, I thought the Bible says that Jesus (who is God) is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is a deity that doesn’t change his mind, though other passages of Scripture say he does. On what basis do we conclude that God doesn’t expect his followers to obey everything he commands them to do? Is Thiessen saying God changed his mind; that he figured out bloodshed, violence, and murder are not effective ways to get your point across — especially when innocent people get caught up in the carnage — including women, children, babies, and fetuses?
I asked in my post:
If God commands a Christian to do something, should he obey? How does a Christian determine that it is God commanding him to do something? What if God’s command runs contrary to the Christian’s personal moral code? Should the Christian obey, anyway?
The answer to the first question is, yes, he should, as the Bible teaches us that to obey is better than sacrifice. The second question is a bit more difficult to answer, as confirming God’s command takes several steps.
Thiessen’s position is that Christians should, without exception, obey God’s commands. Never mind the fact that he doesn’t practice this himself, He’s more of a “do as I say, not as I do follower of Jesus.
The first step is to confirm that the command is in line with God’s word
Thiessen believes the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. He believes every word of the Bible is straight from the mouth of God. Thus, in his mind, if God commands it, obey!
The second step would be to confirm that God is sending that command.The Bible tells us to test the spirits, and we should test that command to make sure God is giving it.
How could someone possibly know it is God commanding him to do something? How does a Christian determine whether it is God, Satan, or self telling him to do something? As far as I am aware, there’s no empirical test that can be used to confirm it is God giving a believer a command. As far as I know, all that Evangelicals have to go on are their feelings. How do Evangelicals know God is speaking to them? They allegedly feel it in their heart of hearts.
Third, the nature of the command must be analyzed to make sure the Christian is not being commanded to violate God’s other commands, laws, and instructions. Murder and rape etc., are certainly not commands coming from God.
And here is the crux of the issue. The Bible does indeed make moral claims. However, the Bible also records not only God, but his followers, ignoring and violating these moral claims. What’s up with that? Surely Thiessen is aware that God commanded the Israelites to murder and rape those he determined were his enemies. If Thiessen wants to debate me on this issue, I’m game.
Fourth, one must be careful not to confuse the commands given in the OT as commands to be followed today. For example, God commanded certain activities to be done as punishment for the other people’s sins. Those commands are very people and era specific and are not in force today.
Does Thiessen really believe that every act of violence God commanded Israel to do is moral? What did the innocents murdered and raped by the Israelites — as commanded by God — do that deserved such punishment?
Thiessen wants us to believe that God went to anger management classes, and now he behaves differently. However, the book of Revelation reveals a God who is still very much a vicious monster. Richard Dawkins was right when he said:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
As far as we know, God does not command anyone to kill others as punishment for their sins in the modern age. Those types of commands come from evil, and we know they come from evil because they violate God’s laws, instructions, and so on.
If these commands “come from evil,” logically God and the Israelites committed evil acts. I conclude, then, that the God portrayed in the Bible is evil.
Thiessen has no evidence for this claim. We humans cannot know God’s mind, the Bible says, yet Thiessen thinks he can discern and know the mind of God.
Then, we have NT instructions to guide us in how we obey God. Galatians 5 tells us:
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Thiessen might want to meditate on these verses and change his ways. My interactions with Thiessen suggest that he doesn’t think these verses apply to him.
We are also told in Romans to obey the laws of the land and murder, rape, pedophilia, etc., are against the law of the land and a Christian cannot disobey those laws. As you see by the quoted verse above, we are instructed to live according to the Spirit, which does not have any evil or evil doing in it.
Evil is evil, right? So if certain behaviors today are evil, those same actions were evil in the Old Testament too. Thiessen cannot have it both ways.
As for the question, if God commands something against a Christian’s personal moral code, would that person obey God? First, a Christian should not have a moral code that contradicts God’s or his instructions. etc.
But, every Christian does. No two Christians have the same moral code, and that incudes Evangelicals who claim that the Bible is their rulebook.
Second, it is better to obey than sacrifice, so the Christian must always obey God, as long as it is God giving the instructions. Disobedience is sin and wrong. Third, we do not go by the unbelieving world’s standards for commands or obedience . . .
Again, how can an Evangelical Christian infallibly know that it is God commanding them to do something? They can’t.
….
I wrote:
Does genocide, child sacrifice, and slavery promote the well-being of others and human flourishing? Of course not. Yet, when God commands such things, all of a sudden, Christians lose all sense of what’s best for themselves and others.
This is another ridiculous thing to say, as the unbeliever takes them out of context and misapplies them to whatever troubling thought they have on their minds. The unbeliever writing those words has no concept of what human flourishing means as he wants sin and corruption to abound at the expense of those doing what is right and moral.
Contrary to Thiessen’s assertion, I know exactly what human flourishing means and what we can do to make our world a better place to live. Again, I am more than happy to debate him on this issue.
I find it funny coming from a man with a sordid past that he says “sin and corruption to abound at the expense of those doing what is right and moral.”
I wrote:
The good news is that most Christians do not obey God. As cafeteria Christians, they pick and choose which commands to obey. That’s why they oppose genocide, child sacrifice, and slavery.
That is not good news but bad news. Christians are not free to pick and choose what they will obey. As Jesus said, ‘Why do you call me Lord yet do not do the things I say’. People need to look at what Jesus says honestly and implement his instructions correctly.
All Christians, including Thiessen, pick and choose the commands they want to obey. If someone obeyed every command, teaching, and precept in the Bible, you know what would happen? He would be arrested and thrown in prison.
At no time does Jesus teach to own slaves, commit genocide or do child sacrifice. Those activities are practiced by the unbelieving world as the sinful world aborts innocent children, keeps sex slaves, and kills people just because they do not like them.
Thiessen forgets the fact that Jesus is God. I have challenged him on this point before. I have concluded that he is heterodox on the nature of Jesus and the Trinity.
Everything that God commanded in the Old Testament, was also commanded by Jesus, the second person of the Trinity. Thus, Jesus commanded the Israelites to murder, rape, and commit genocide. To say otherwise is to deny the divinity and nature of Jesus.
We can point you to Hamas, Boko Haram, and other examples that show it is not the Christians that is doing this. Abortion is the biggest genocide taking place,e yet the unbelieving world practices it without guilt or shame.
The Christians are the ones trying to stop these things. But the unbelieving writer of those quoted words does not care if he writes the truth or not. He just wants to justify his departure from God. He also wants to misdirect people’s attention away from what the unbelieving world is doing.
Thiessen does what he always does: he attacks my motives and says I am a liar. I will leave it to readers to decide if I am a truth teller.
Anything that the writer accuses God of doing, his side of the world is doing with less than holy and pure motives, and on a far grander scale. He and other unbelievers are in no position to accuse God of anything.
It is best that he refrain from speaking, as his world is far worse than anything God has done.
Is this the best argument Thiessen can offer? God and his followers may have commited sinful, evil acts, but Bruce and his fellow atheists do worst things. Really? Whom have I murdered or raped? What immoral, evil acts have I committed. No, Thiessen objects to the fact that I speak my mind about Evangelical Christianity and people agree with me. His only response is to attack my character and lie — both of which, if the Bible is to be believed, means Thiessen is not a Christian.
What say ye readers? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Recently, Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, said:
Growing up in a world where bible reading and prayer were in school, school life was a lot better for everyone. All the students and teachers knew there was a higher power than they, and they took the time to make sound decisions.
From what we have seen in today’s schools and experienced in the classroom ourselves, the school world would be better off if everyone acknowledged God and his presence. We did not see the school violence that we see today, and school was very enjoyable during those years.
One was not afraid to walk to school, attend class, or even play outside. if we had a say in what is going on in Ohio, we would support it wholeheartedly. The unbeliever does not know what it takes to make school life better. They have no solutions to the problems kids face today, thus, they should not be so quick to oppose these measures.
The unbelievers’ solutions have been to remove God, prayer, specific punishments, and other similar aspects of school life and replaced them with ideas that do not work. We were in South Korea when the Gyeonggi-do head of education removed corporal punishment from the schools.
The violence against teachers rose so much that he had to do an about-face and return corporal punishment to the schools. We know what happens when punishment is a slap on the wrist or less. Social workers do not help here, as they are incapable of providing real solutions for students today.
Knowing that God exists and that he punishes bad behavior and is incorruptible does stop a lot of bad behavior among students.
Thiessen, an Evangelical preacher who lives in the Philippines, blogs at TheologyArcheology: A Site for the Glory of God. Over the years, Thiessen has repeatedly said that if schools were allowed to beat students they would behave. In his minds, schools are out of control because prayer, Bible reading, and corporal punishment were banned. This claim is patently untrue, both statistically and anecdotally.
In the aforementioned post, Thiessen told a whopper when he stated:
We were in South Korea when the Gyeonggi-do head of education removed corporal punishment from the schools.
The violence against teachers rose so much that he had to do an about-face and return corporal punishment to the schools. We know what happens when punishment is a slap on the wrist or less. Social workers do not help here, as they are incapable of providing real solutions for students today.
When I first read this, I thought, is this true, Did South Korean schools really return to beating children? A quick Google search revealed that Thiessen’s claim is false, Not only did South Korea ban corporal punishment in schools, it also banned parents from beating their children in 2021.
The Republic of Korea has become the 62nd country to prohibit corporal punishment against children, and the fourth in the Asia Pacific region. With a child population of nine million, the Republic of Korea’s prohibition means 300 million children worldwide are now fully protected from violent punishment by law.
“Congratulations to the government of the Republic of Korea on its prohibition of corporal punishment against children – and to all of the organisations, institutions and partners who contributed to this important milestone for children,” said Dr Howard Taylor, the Executive Director of the End Violence Partnership. “In a world where more than two in three children experience violent discipline at the hands of their caregivers, this is not just a critically important step for children in Korea, it’s also a good example to other countries around the world who have yet to take this important step to protect children.”
This prohibition came into effect with the amendment of Civil Act 1958 (Act. No 17095) and the repeal of Article 915, which gave adults “the right to take disciplinary action” against children. With this repeal and revision, there is no longer a legal provision that can authorize the use of corporal punishment.
“A ban on the corporal punishment of children by their parents is the most fundamental stipulation in preventing child abuse,” said the Government of the Republic of Korea while announcing the amendment of the Civil Act. “The passage of the legislative amendment through the National Assembly is expected to provide an opportunity to fundamentally improve the social awareness towards the corporal punishment of children and child abuse.”
This law reform was a result of a collaboration between the government and child rights partners. Save the Children Korea spearheaded a campaign to prohibit corporal punishment in May of 2019 – and in January of 2021, the government announced that a promotion campaign to raise awareness of violent discipline had been included in the country’s Complements of Child Abuse Preventative System.
“We warmly welcome the amendment of the Civil Act and the early measures taken by the Government to support the implementation of prohibition,” said Dr Sonia Vohito, Legal Policy Specialist at the End Violence Partnership. “Still, huge numbers of children around the world are waiting for the realisation of their basic human right to protection from violent punishment, and we call on all remaining governments to enact prohibition without delay.”
Learn more about this prohibition by exploring the Republic of Korea’s country report. A global look at our progress on prohibiting corporal punishment can also be found at our corporal punishment countdown.
It doesn’t surprise me in the least that Thiessen supports beating children. His beliefs on the matter are common among Fundamentalist Christians. As an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) pastor, I taught parents that God required them to beat their children; that beatings were God’s chosen form of discipline. I provided Bible verses that justified and supported corporal punishment. God said it, end of discussion. I later repented of my promotion of violence against children, and I now oppose beating children, without exception. I deeply regret beating my children, having apologized to them several times.
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.
More stunning images of deep space have been released, once again highlighting the vast and awe-inspiring reality of the universe—one that stands in stark contrast to the ancient cosmology described in the Book of Genesis.
According to that account, the universe was a small, flat Earth covered by a solid dome, fixed and immobile at the centre of creation. The sun, moon, and stars were imagined as small lights affixed to the underside of this dome. Surrounding it all, above and below, were the primordial waters—and somewhere within or beyond this structure lay a magical, supernatural realm inhabited by divine beings bearing a striking resemblance to capricious, tribal warlords, and winged men (Genesis 1:1–18).
And, according to the Bible narrative, it has only existed for 6-10,000 years!
Since the invention of the telescope, and as our instruments have grown ever more sophisticated, our understanding of the universe has revealed a reality far removed from the one imagined by the authors of Genesis. The cosmos is not only vastly older than they could have conceived, but also incomprehensibly immense. Earth itself is far larger and older than they believed, a spherical planet orbiting the Sun—which is just one of perhaps half a trillion stars in our own galaxy. And that galaxy is, in turn, just one among perhaps a trillion others. Altogether, this vast universe is nearly 14 billion years old.
The most recent images are from the James Webb Space Telescope, of a region of deep space, between twelve billion and one billion lightyears away, so showing how the universe has evolved since it was about one billion years old – younger than Earth is now.
Rubicondor presents facts, facts that only a young earth creationist would disagree with. As I was reading the aforementioned post, it dawned on me that there’s an easy test we can use to show the ignorance of the men who wrote the Bible. Are you ready?
The universe according to the Bible, as interpreted by young earth creationists.
The universe according to modern science, as revealed by the Jame Hubble Space Telescope.
You may view other photos from the James Web telescope here.
Maybe the real ignorance here is the ignorance of young earth creationists who treat the Bible as a science textbook.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
I was reading the verses in Genesis and the story of the Noah and the Ark. I was wondering: how did he fit all the animals on the Ark? The Ark was not big enough for all the animals was it? — Martha in Walkertown
Hi Martha in Walkertown,
The Ark was about 500 feet long and about three stories high. It was build with three decks and thousands of square feet for storage and cages for animals. Go and visit the Ark Encounter in northern Kentucky if you get the chance. So what about the animals? All of the animals were not required to enter the Ark, only some of them. And the Genesis account refers to “kinds” of animals. “Kinds” means species, and there are only about 7,000 different specials of animals. Canines or dogs is a species, and so is felines or the cat families. But only two dogs, a male and female, entered the Ark. And all the dogs that exists now came from those two dogs. Likewise with all the species. It is speculated that the Ark could have held around 50,000 animals. Keep in mind that baby dogs, giraffes, and dinosaurs, would have been on the Ark, so the cages were still pretty small. This also means that each person on board (8 total) would have cared daily for about 6250 animals. Can you imagine?
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
If God commands a Christian to do something, should he obey? How does a Christian determine that it is God commanding him to do something? What if God’s command runs contrary to the Christian’s personal moral code? Should the Christian obey, anyway?
According to the Bible, God is holy, a divine being that cannot sin or do anything contrary to his character. However, the Bible also reveals that God can and does do immoral things. Knowing this to be true, shouldn’t Christians worry when God commands them to do something immoral? God commanded Abraham to murder his son, Isaac, on an altar — an immoral act if there ever was one. What if God commanded you, dear Christian, to put your child on a BBQ grill and offer him up as a sacrifice to God? Would you do it? Some Christian apologists suggest that God never intended Abraham to kill Isaac, but when asked to provide evidence for their claim, none is forthcoming.
I listen to several atheist call-in shows that ask Christians to call in and provide evidence for the existence of God, or to defend God’s approval of slavery, or God’s command to commit genocide. The Bible is littered with immoral commands from God, yet countless Christians defend God by saying, If God commanded it, it’s moral. Who are we to call the righteous, holy God of the universe immoral? God’s ways are not our ways, and God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, Christians say when defending the name of God. This, of course, reveals the fact that religious faith can and does make an adherent less moral. I don’t know of an atheist who defends genocide, child sacrifice, or slavery. As a humanist, I believe we should want and desire the well-being of others; that we should support laws and policies that promote human flourishing. Does genocide, child sacrifice, and slavery promote the well-being of others and human flourishing? Of course not. Yet, when God commands such things, all of a sudden, Christians lose all sense of what’s best for themselves and others.
The good news is that most Christians do not obey God. As cafeteria Christians, they pick and choose which commands to obey. That’s why they oppose genocide, child sacrifice, and slavery. Sadly, some Christians think that they should obey God regardless of the morality of said command. In their minds, whatever God commands is moral. How could it be otherwise, these Christians say?
Often, obeying God without question leads to abominable behavior; behavior that can and does land people in jail. Since there is no empirical way to determine whether God is commanding something, Christians should be aware of the fact that God will not be testifying at their trial when they are arrested for committing crimes. That voice in their heads telling them to “obey” is their own, not God’s. How could they possibly know otherwise?
Explicitly following every command in the Bible will land you in jail, as will your thinking the voice in your head is God Almighty. Most Christians have heard the ditty: God said it, I believe it, and that settles it for me. What a dangerous statement, one that leads to all sorts of immoral and criminal behavior.
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.
This series, titled Trump Dump, features outlandish, untrue quotes from Donald Trump, MAGA supporters, and Right Wing media. If you come across a quote for this series, please send it to me with a link to the news story that contains the relevant quote.
“Walmart should STOP trying to blame Tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain,” Trump posted. “Walmart made BILLIONS OF DOLLARS last year, far more than expected. Between Walmart and China they should, as is said, “EAT THE TARIFFS,” and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!”
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.
