The upcoming Halloween celebration dates back to the Druids, who used the holiday for various pagan religious practices including human sacrifice. There is nothing Christian about it.
Yet there is one interesting story about the Halloween celebration that illustrates how the pagans tried to appropriate the stars into their religions. It is the story of the jack-o’-lantern, that pumpkin with a face carved out and a candle inside. This seemingly benign decoration represents a much more gruesome picture from the rituals of past ages: A frightful severed head. And the picture comes straight from the Star Bible, even though the real meaning is very different.
The “jack-o-lantern” in the sky is the star Algol (“evil spirit”). It is part of the constellation Perseus, (the breaker), which is a picture of Christ who breaks open a way for us (Mic. 2:13) and breaks open the seals in Revelation 5. Algol pictures the severed evil head of the nations, the Antichrist, whose head is cut off from the nations when Christ returns (Rev. 19:20). So the frightful jack-o’-lantern is really a picture of the return and triumph of Christ.
The star Algol would have been near the zenith point on Halloween after midnight in druid times 3,000 years ago. Now it can be seen at zenith closer to 11:00 p.m. It is also an interesting object because it is a variable star decreasing in brightness about every 69 hours, with the nearest visible minimum at about 5:00 a.m. on Nov. 4.
During the first week of November the planet Venus appears in the morning sky after disappearing from the western sky into the sun on Oct. 26. The planet represents Christ, the Bright Morning Star (Rev. 22:16), and will be visible in the early morning during the minimum of Algol on Nov. 4.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
They’re lying. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and his wife Fran cut a homey anti-Issue 1 ad with warm lighting and soft music that features the couple as honest-to-goodness people with heartfelt concerns about the abortion rights amendment on the ballot Nov. 7. Then the lovely pair proceed to lie through their teeth.
“Everywhere we go, folks tell us they’re confused about Issue 1,” begins the governor. (That’s because Ohioans just voted for another Issue 1 three months ago deliberately labeled by Ohio Republicans to confuse voters in an attempt to undermine the original Issue 1 on Nov. 7.) DeWine skips that inconvenient truth and presses on.
“So, Fran and I have carefully studied it.” (Trust the anti-choice extremist who vowed “to go as far as we can” to prohibit reproductive rights in Ohio for fair assessment.) Fran’s takeaway of the constitutional amendment — that essentially restores the pre-Dobbs protections Ohio women enjoyed before June 24, 2022 — is heavy on fear-mongering and fabrication.
“Issue 1 would allow an abortion at any time during pregnancy,” she intones, knowing full well the proposed amendment allows for the same reasonable abortion restrictions after fetal viability that now exist with exception for incredibly rare cases that threaten the life or health of the pregnant patient. She leans into the “late-term” anti-abortion fallacy to suggest that Issue 1 could lead to full-term infanticide in the state.
“Simply lies created to push a false narrative,” countered Ohio House Rep. Anita Somani, a practicing OB-GYN for 31 years. This is her take:
“Late-term abortions is actually not a term used in medicine. However, the gestational ages they are referring to make up less than 1% of abortions, and all of those are before 22 weeks. In fact, you won’t find data showing abortions after this age because those are deliveries and are recorded as such with birth or death certificates. If there is a birth defect that is incompatible with life or a maternal condition that is life-threatening, labor is induced and the child is then given comfort care. If the child is viable (i.e., after 24 weeks) neonatal care is provided.”
Back to the governor’s missus. And more deception. “It [Issue 1] would deny parents the right to be involved in their daughters making the most important decision of her life.” No, it wouldn’t, Fran. Nothing in the amendment, providing constitutional protections for abortion access in the state, even addresses parental rights, concluded Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. (The same phony arguments about minors were raised before Michigan’s nearly identical abortion rights amendment passed with its parental consent laws intact.)
DeWine closes his commercial against Issue 1 with patronizing father-knows-best drivel. “I know Ohioans are divided on the issue of abortion, but whether you’re pro-life or pro-choice, Issue 1 is just not right for Ohio.” But a draconian six-week abortion ban DeWine immediately imposed on Ohio women as soon as the Supreme Court rescinded half a century of protected reproductive freedom in the country is??
Fran’s sign-off is blunt. “Issue 1 just goes too far.” But a near total ban on access to abortion, with no exceptions for rape or incest which forced a pregnant, 10-year-old rape victim to seek out-of-state emergency medical care after it was prohibited in her home state doesn’t?? The grotesque gaslighting by the DeWines is, unfortunately, not an anomaly in the concerted disinformation campaign running to deny women a constitutional right to abortion and other reproductive health care in the state.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, the sinister partisan who tried to subvert voters’ majority rights in the August election and who flagrantly distorted ballot language on the upcoming abortion rights amendment to defeat it, called Issue 1 a “sinister” plot of the “abortion industry” that was “shrouded in the clever mask of reproductive freedom.”
The slippery elections chief also falsely claimed the amendment would green-light “taxpayer-funded abortion” throughout pregnancy and “long after viability when the unborn child would survive outside the womb.” Piling on the deceptive innuendos of legalized infanticide were extremists in the Ohio Senate who posited the ballot initiative will “allow the worst atrocities imaginable,” including “the dismemberment of fully conscious children,” in an adopted resolution.
The bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland tied all the prevailing lies about Issue 1 together and preached “it will put women at risk, it will take away parental rights, and it will allow for late-term abortions of fully-formed babies in the womb.” Not true. None of it. Read the full text of the proposal to amend Article 1 of the Ohio Constitution for yourself.
The 211-word amendment, simply titled “The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety,” is pretty straightforward. Issue 1 asks voters to reinforce the right of every individual to make their own deeply personal and difficult decisions about their own bodies without politicians, anti-abortion lobbyists, the Catholic Church, or the governor and wife butting in.
It doesn’t change parental consent laws, doesn’t cover sex-change surgery, and doesn’t force underage girls into unwanted abortions. Those who disseminate those myths — or misleading messaging that imply a suspended abortion ban isn’t a court ruling (or defeated ballot initiative) away — are lying through their pearly whites.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Gerber’s Poultry, a poultry plant in Kidron, Ohio, which produces Amish Farm Chicken, is under investigation after federal agents found more than two dozen minors illegally employed in meat processing and sanitation.
“The discovery of yet another meat processing facility in the U.S. relying on child labor is the latest reminder of the harms that industrial animal agriculture inflicts at every turn, with the most vulnerable — children, people of color, immigrants, and nonhuman animals — paying the highest price,” Delcianna J. Winders, associate professor of Law at Vermont Law and Graduate School told Truthout.
The plant was raided on the evening of October 4 by Homeland Security Investigations and the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents following reports about the plant illegally employing children. A local resident told NBC News that the children, mainly from Guatemala, work the plant’s second shift after attending school during the day.
….
It is illegal under the Federal Code of Regulations and the Fair Labor Standards Act for anyone under the age of 18 to work in hazardous occupations, such as in meatpacking plants. Despite these labor protections for children, there has been a 69 percent rise in child labor in the United States since 2018 and recent data released by the Department of Labor (DOL) has found that child labor violations have risen to their highest level in nearly two decades. In fact, the DOL currently has more than 800 child labor investigations underway and has uncovered 5,792 minors working in violation of child labor laws in the past year.
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In an attempt to circumvent the pressure from labor and youth advocates, as well as DOL investigations to ensure compliance with federal child labor laws, Republicans in Florida, Arkansas, and Iowa are working to erode child labor protections at the state level.
“Cumulatively, the Republican Party is embracing policies that would take U.S. labor protections back to the early 20th century,” Sasha Abramsky wrote for Truthout. “The GOP, which, absurdly, still fashions itself as the party of good old-fashioned family values, as the pro-life and pro-child party, repeatedly embraces policies that hurt children, especially those who belong to low-income families.”
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Newly elected House speaker Mike Johnson is a Christian nationalist (Southern Baptist), a right-wing Evangelical. He thinks Gilead is a wonderful place to live.
Mike Johnson’s election clearly shows that the MAGA wing of the Republican Party and its fascist leader Donald Trump are in control of the GOP.
Our democracy will not survive the re-election of disgraced felon Donald Trump. We are on the threshold of the collapse of the United States and its democratic institutions.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and his wife deliberately lie in their “Vote No on Issue 1” TV ad. Not a difference of opinion — lies, lies, lies.
Mike Johnson wants to criminalize abortion and arrest, prosecute, and imprison women who have one.
Israel continues to slaughter innocent Palestinians in Gaza. Joe Biden says nothing of substance as hundreds of Palestinian children are bombed and killed every day. It seems Biden is intent on letting Israel get their pound of flesh from largely innocent people.
Apple raised its monthly streaming fee by 43 percent to $10. Other streaming services are doing the same, forcing users to jump from one service to the other to manage costs. So much for streaming being “better” and cheaper.
I am no longer a Democrat. I may, on occasion, hold my nose and vote Democrat, but I no longer support the party.
American bombs, bullets, and armament are killing innocent people in Palestine. The West is outraged over Hamas’ use of Iranian weaponry, but silent over Israel’s use of American designed and manufactured weapons of mass destruction. All of us have blood on our hands.
Despair. That’s what I feel right now. I see little to cheer about these days.
Bonus: Gastroparesis is an incurable stomach disease. I plan to have a pyloroplasty procedure done in November. Last ditch effort to lessen the nausea and vomiting. It would be nice to have just one day when I didn’t have to worry about what I ate or running to the bathroom to vomit. Where’s God when I need him? 🤣 It is what it is, but I’m tired and worn out from daily battles with nausea, vomiting, bowel pain, and loss of appetite. Some days, in moments of despair, I find myself thinking, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Yesterday, I received the following email from an Evangelical Christian named Kelli Ritter. My response follows.
Hello Bruce, do you really believe that a God that created you a human has to reveal Himself to you to be real?
God didn’t create me, so there’s that. Just because Genesis 1-3 says God created everything doesn’t mean he did. That’s a claim. If you want me to accept and believe your claim, you must provide evidence to support your claim. That’s how the real world works. People make all sorts of claims — including people from my own tribe — that are not true. They are free to believe whatever they want — including religious beliefs such as yours that I consider irrational and lacking in empirical evidence.
Religion is best served when people recognize that religious beliefs are based on faith, and not science. Either someone has faith, or they don’t. In my case, I don’t. If God wants me to believe in him and embrace the central claims of Christianity, he must give me verifiable reasons to believe. So far, no reasons have been forthcoming. Instead, all I see is an ancient tribal religion — a blood cult. Currently, Israel and Palestine are at war over what verses in the Old Testament allegedly say about land given to the Jews thousands of years ago. Thousands of people have died, and for what? A myth. There’s no evidence for the existence of Abraham (or Moses), yet Jews and Palestinians alike are willing to die over words spoken by a mythical deity to a mythical tribal leader. My God, it’s 2023, yet people are dying over interpretations of the Bible.
If salvation is the end-all, it seems to me that God would be clear about the matter. He’s not. Christians can’t even agree on the basics: salvation, baptism, communion. Talk to a hundred Christians and you will find just as many beliefs about God, the Bible, and salvation. Who is right? You? The Catholics? The Baptists? Which Baptists? The Presbyterians? The Mormons? 2,000 years of nonsense and confusion. You would think God would want to settle this once and for all. Instead, according to you, he deliberately hides from us and obfuscates what should be clear to all of us.
God doesn’t require you to believe in Him for Him to be real.
While that certainly is true, I must believe in him to be saved and have life eternal. Religion can and does have value. Religion need not be true for people to benefit from it. Religion — including your flavor of Evangelical Christianity — has helped countless people, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. Religion can and does have a placebo effect. If that’s what gets you through the night, so be it. I just don’t happen to need a mythical religion and God to have meaning and purpose in my life.
And He couldn’t anyways because God is so holy and perfect that seeing that kind of perfection would kill us instantly.
God could reveal himself by actually involving himself in the affairs of the human race and creation at large. As things now stand, there’s no evidence that God is involved in our lives at all. At best, he is a deity who created the universe and then said, “There ya go boys and girls, do with it what you will.”
The world looks exactly as it should without the existence of God. We are on our own.
He doesn’t hide himself to play games of believe or non belief. God hides Himself because in our fallen state we can not see His form and live. That’s why He sent His Son. So we would know everything He said from the beginning was true.
How do you know what the Bible says about Jesus is true? Again, you are making all sorts of claims — without evidence.
God’s hiddenness, in my opinion, is an insurmountable problem for Christian apologists. If God wants me to “know,” he knows where I am. He can call, text, or write me or stop by and invite me out to lunch. Instead, all I hear is silence. Well, that and the droning, preachy words of Christians like you.
God doesn’t want your religion and Christianity isn’t a religion although it’s classified that way. Christianity is a relationship with God.
Christianity is a religion, and you embarrass yourself by saying otherwise. While certainly there is a relationship aspect to Christianity, you can’t disconnect it from the fact that Christianity is a 2,000-year-old religion comprised of tens of thousands of sects with countless (and often contradictory) beliefs and practices. The Bible says there is “one Lord, one Faith, and Baptism,” yet history suggests this verse is untrue. If Christians can’t figure out what is “true,” how can they expect the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world to do so?
God saved us from Himself. God has saved us for Himself . And God has saved us by Himself through Jesus Christ. If Jesus really did do all the things the Bible says He did and He really did rise from the dead, then our quest for God stops with Him. If you’re searching for evidence you will never find evidence for God except in scripture.
Well, let’s talk about the Bible, then. You make all sorts of claims and assumptions about the Bible. I am confident I can show you that your claims are false; that the Bible is an error-filled, contradictory ancient religious text; and that its words are largely irrelevant. If you haven’t read any of Dr. Bart Ehrman’s books about the history and nature of the Bible, I encourage you to do so. His books will disabuse you of the notion that the Bible is inerrant or infallible. I will gladly ship one of his books to you, without cost.
When you read the word daily it has a power in it and it starts to reveal things to you. Heavenly things. And it is an amazing feeling to be revealed things from heaven. I hope that you will consider my words and consider Jesus Christ more seriously your spirit depends on it. I will be praying for you. God bless.
I daily read the Bible for most of the first fifty years of my life. As a pastor for twenty-five years, I spent over 20,000 hours reading and studying the Bible. I can’t imagine there is much of anything left to learn. The Bible is no different from any other book. With so many new, interesting books to read, why spend your lifetime reading the Bible over and over and over again? That said, I have done my homework, and I am more than happy to discuss the Bible with you.
I found your words annoying, little more than a sermon. On my contact page, I ask people NOT to send me preachy emails like yours, yet you ignored my request and emailed me anyway. Why is that? Why do feel the need to seek out a complete stranger on the Internet and preach at them? What did you hope to accomplish? You didn’t say one thing that I haven’t heard countless times before. Thousands of Evangelicals have come before you, each thinking the Holy Spirit was leading them to email me. If God wants to “reach” me, I wish he would stop sending arrogant, preachy people like you (that’s sarcasm) and contact me directly.
I don’t have a “spirit.” I have a body that is broken, frail, and dying, but no soul, spirit, or other magical entity. Do you have any evidence for the existence of the “spirit?” That’s a rhetorical question. I know the answer is no. Your religion teaches you that you have a spirit or a soul (depending on whether you are bipartite or tripartite), but provides no evidence for their existence apart from a handful of Bible verses.
Thank you for taking the time to contact me. Let me know if you are interested in receiving one of Bart Ehrman’s books.
Saved by Reason,
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Over the weekend, I received an email from an Evangelical man named Richard Johnson. What follows is my response.
To be perfectly honest, I do not know exactly how I stumbled upon your webpage. I do not know you, nor do I desire to pick a fight with you.
You stumbled upon this site either through a web search or social media post. No one “stumbles” upon my writing by accident. Further, if, as Christian orthodoxy states, God is the creator of all things and the sovereign ruler of the universe, he is to blame for you reading my blog.
Not only do you not know me, your email reveals that you have no regard or respect for me as a person. I specifically asked you NOT to email me (please read the Contact page), yet you chose to do so anyway. Why is that? Did you seriously think that you were going to tell me something that I did not already know about God/Jesus/Bible/Christianity? Your email treats me as if I am clueless about what Evangelical Christians believe. I assure you that a have a working knowledge of all things Evangelical.
I am 71 years old, so that makes me around five years older than you. I am an evangelical Christian that has studied the Bible extensively for a number of years. Although I have never been trained in a seminary or been a pastor, the Jesus I know differs greatly from the Jesus you thought you knew at one time.
“Knowing” Jesus does not require studying the Bible “extensively” for a number of years.” Jesus never studied the Bible (as you are using the term), and neither did the apostles. The early church took hundreds of years to compile what you call the “Bible.” In fact, most Christians had limited reading and writing skills, and early gatherings consisted first, of worshiping in the Temple, and later gathering in homes to pray, fellowship, and listen to readings from the Old Testament and other religious texts. You may not know this, but early Christians did not own leather-bound Oxford King James Bibles. They relied on oral transmission of religious teachings.
Speaking of Peter and John — two of the men in Jesus’ inner circle, the Bible says in Acts 4:13: “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.” Unlearned and ignorant, Jesus’ two closest disciples were, yet their behavior demonstrated that they were followers of Jesus.
How do you KNOW your Jesus is the right one? How do you know I worshipped the wrong one, a false Jesus? Do you know anything about the lifelong trajectory of my theological, political, and social beliefs? Or, have you cobbled together in your mind a strawman of the beliefs of one Bruce Gerencser — an Evangelical-pastor-turned-atheist? How much of my autobiographical material did you actually read before hitting “send?” I suspect a post or three before you felt “led” by the Holy Ghost to preach at me. To this, I say, “Answering before listening is both stupid and rude.” (Proverbs 18:13)
The Jesus I know is the epitome of grace.
Jesus is God, right? I assume you are Trinitarian, so you can’t divorce Jesus from the actions and words of his Father. Thus, Jesus, the epitome of grace, is directly responsible for drowning millions of innocent men, women, children, babies, and fetuses in Genesis 6-9.
Richard Dawkins had this to say about the Old Testament God: “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.”
This God is Jesus. Surely you know this, right? Christians love the Jesus of the gospels, but that Jesus is one and the same as the God of the Old Testament and the God of the book of Revelation who will one day slaughter most of the human race and make earth uninhabitable.
The reason why He left heaven was because He regarded our helpless estate as human beings. We are His creation. Satan deceived Eve. Adam chose to willfully sin, and every human being thereafter was infected with a sinful nature. That was why Jusus told Nicodemus he needed to be born again. When someone is born again, that person has a new entity that lives inside him/her that contends with the old sinful nature. In order for the “born again” entity to prevail over the old sinful nature, the born again entity must be fed more than the old sinful nature. Amy Grant once sang a song called “Are You Living In An Old Man’s Rubble. You can find it on Youtube should you care to listen to it. If you choose to do so, please find the version with the lyrics.
Outside of the Bible, what evidence do you have for these claims? Just because the Bible says something doesn’t mean it’s true. The Bible is a book of claims. If you want me to believe what you are peddling, you are going to have to provide actual evidence for your claims, starting with the notion that we are broken sinners who need fixing.
The Jesus I know and serve is a Gentleman.
The Jesus you know is one you have concocted in your mind, just as millions and millions of other Christians have done. I find it amazing that the Jesus you know looks like you, thinks like you, and believes the same thing you do. How can unbelievers know which Jesus is the right one? Christians can’t even agree on the basics: salvation, baptism, and communion.
He died a painful and degrading death on a Roman cross to give us the choice to accept or reject Him and His offer of salvation.
Jesus was executed because he was considered a threat by the Roman government. Your statements about his death are claims for which you provide no evidence. Further, even when I consider your claims from an Evangelical perspective, it is evident you lack a comprehensive understanding of Christian orthodoxy.
Jesus died on the cross to atone for sin. Before the world began, God predetermined that Jesus would die at an appointed time for the sins of the elect. Jesus was a lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. Libertarian freewill is not taught in the Bible. Well, the Bible can be used to prove anything, but most Christians believe that salvation is of the Lord; and that no one is saved unless God regenerates, draws, calls, and redeems them. Jesus said in John 6:44: “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.”
As far as Jesus’ suffering is concerned. He suffered for all of 12 hours or so. Sure, his suffering was painful, but I know people who have been suffering horrible, debilitating pain for decades. Compared to their suffering, Jesus’ was just a minor inconvenience. Please see I Wish Christians Would Be Honest About Jesus’ Three Day Weekend.) Jesus knew deliverance awaited just around the corner. Not so for these people, many of whom who have spent years without success begging Jesus to heal and deliver them
In your listing of 16 reasons why you are not a Christian, reason number eight was simply not true. God sends no one to hell. People who reject God’s free gift of grace are the ones that send themselves to hell. God will honor the decision of anyone who chooses to accept or reject Him.
It is “simply not true” because you say so? Who created the universe? Who is the sovereign Lord over all? Who is the Kings of kings and Lord of lords? Who knows the end from the beginning? Who knows our every thought, word, and deed? Who created Adam and Eve? Satan?
Matthew 24 and the book of Revelation make it clear that it is God (Jesus) who will one day cast all non-Christians in the Lake of Fire. He alone determines who is saved and who is not. I can easily argue that God determined who would be saved before the world was created; that no one goes to Hell unless God sends him there (and the same can be said for Heaven/God’s eternal kingdom).
You want to believe in libertarian free will because it makes God (Jesus) look good and absolves him of all culpability for human behavior and the state of the world. You want to give him all the credit for the good in the world, but none of the bad. God=good, Satan=bad.
In the book of Job, it was Satan that did all the tormenting of Job. God showed the devil and anyone else who read the book of Job the true nature of Satan. The Bible says that Satan will one day spend eternity in hell.
Who created Satan? Could Satan have done anything without God’s permission? Of course not. You seem desperate to protect God’s “good name,” so much so that you are willing to go to great lengths to distort the words of the Bible. Go back and actually read the book of Job without reading your peculiar theology into the text. You will find a God is front and center in Job’s suffering, none of which would have happened without God’s permission.
Satan is responsible for all the pain and suffering in this sin-sick world of ours. He was the one who oversaw the torture, suffering, humiliation, and death of Jesus on the cross.
Again, you are making claims — without evidence. Satan, much like God, is a mythical being. He can’t be responsible for anything because he doesn’t exist. Humans alone are to blame for what happens in the world. It was the Roman government, at the behest of the Jews, that oversaw the “torture, suffering, humiliation, and death of Jesus on the cross.” Not Satan.
Jesus did not die in vain, but He overcame death and the grave. I serve a risen Saviour and His name is Jesus.
I know you “believe” this, but you can’t expect others to believe it without providing convincing evidence for your claims. Just because the Bible says something doesn’t mean it’s true. Coming to this site and preaching at me and my readers accomplished what, exactly? Your words are no different from those of thousands of Evangelicals who have come before you. Same old shit, new day. Instead of preaching — listen. Instead of preaching — show respect to people you differ with.
I am more than happy to answer whatever questions you might have. However, I have zero interest in sermons or Bible quotations. I know all I need to know about God/Jesus/Christianity. With eyes wide open, I reject the central claims of Christianity. I am not low-hanging fruit; someone who is a prospect for Heaven. I have weighed Christianity in the balance and found it wanting.
Saved by Reason,
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
For 82 days last year, the impacts of Ohio Republicans’ six-week abortion ban threw our state’s medical community and patients into chaos, confusion, and nightmare scenarios that made international headlines.
Ohio’s abortion ban law that includes no exceptions for rape or incest was held up in court after being signed by Gov. Mike DeWine in 2019. It came crashing back following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision on June 24, 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Less than an hour after the decision, Attorney General Dave Yost filed to have a federal court lift an injunction on Ohio’s six-week ban. That night, the court granted the motion and DeWine signed an executive order permitting the Ohio Department of Health to set up rules for enforcement.
Three days later, a 10-year-old rape victim had to flee Ohio to Indiana for abortion care. The story made national news, but instead of acknowledging the devastating consequences of the extremist law Ohio Republicans had worked for decades to pass, they instead attempted to erase the 10-year-old’s story.
Yost went on Fox News to raise doubts about whether the story was true. Alex Triantafilou, who has since become the chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, went on Twitter to call the case, “A garbage lie that a simple google search confirms is debunked.” Ohio U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan tweeted, “Another lie. Anyone surprised?”
With the injunction currently still in place, abortion is legal in Ohio up until 22 weeks. If the Republican Ohio Supreme Court majority lifts the injunction, then Ohio’s six-week ban comes roaring back once again.
That is, unless Ohio voters decide to pass Issue 1 on Nov. 7, putting protections for reproductive rights such as abortion care, miscarriage care, contraception, fertility treatment, and continuing one’s pregnancy in the state constitution. The amendment would protect access to abortion care up to the point of fetal viability, and would only be allowed after that point to protect the life of the mother.
The nightmare scenarios during the nearly 12 weeks that Ohio’s extremist abortion ban was in place did not stop with the tragic story of the 10-year-old.
Ohio’s own abortion statistics show that it’s disturbingly possible for children to become impregnated. In 2022, 42 girls aged 14 and younger had abortions in Ohio, according to the state department of health. In 2021, it was 57. In 2020, it was 52. Ten-year-olds who become pregnant are by definition rape victims, but again, Ohio’s six-week abortion ban law doesn’t make exceptions for rape or incest.
The traumatic consequences of the law that prevented child rape victims from receiving abortion health care stretched well beyond them. The doctors’ affidavits also described more than two dozen other instances in which the abortion law put Ohio women under extreme duress.
They included two women with cancer who couldn’t terminate their pregnancies and also couldn’t get cancer treatment while they were pregnant.
Other women had partially delivered fetuses too undeveloped to survive only to see the delivery stall. In that condition, with the fetus partly out, they had to sign paperwork — and then wait for 24 hours, or for the fetus’s heart to stop.
Women suffering other complications such as a detached umbilical cord faced similar intrusions just after they were devastated to learn they would lose a child they dearly wanted. They, too, had to wait a day or for fetal demise. In one instance, that took 14 hours, a doctor said.
Still other women — shattered to learn that the baby they’re carrying lacks vital organs necessary for survival — were told that in Ohio they had to carry that baby, possibly for months, only to see it be stillborn, or to watch it quickly die.
“Being forced to go down the path is just an unequivocal nightmare, especially if you think of someone going through an entire pregnancy against their will when they know the fetus is going to die,” said Dr. David Hackney, maternal fetal medicine specialist in the Cleveland area, and chair of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologist’s Ohio chapter.
Under the six-week ban, Ohio doctors faced potential felony criminal charges and risks to their medical licenses because of what they said are unclear regulations and specifications on abortion stemming from the law.
“These are dire pregnancies,” said maternal fetal medicine doctor Tani Malhotra. The mothers “are so devastated as it is. And we are just re-traumatizing them over and over again. And it’s heartbreaking to watch them already going through the movements of accepting the loss that they’re about to have and then we come in and say ‘Sign these papers’ so we can add insult to injury.”
For doctors, when and whether the law permits abortions is not an academic exercise: If they violate it, they can be charged with felonies, be sued in civil court, and subjected to professional sanctions. Nevertheless, Yost failed to provide medical practitioners any legal guidance around the law.
The pain, suffering, chaos, and confusion described above is the reality that Ohioans experienced from June 24, 2022 until Sept. 14, 2022 under the six-week abortion ban that opponents of Ohio Issue 1 are fighting to keep as Ohio law.
Ohio voters now have less than 20 days to decide if they want to help revive that reality, or pass a proposed amendment that would prevent it.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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“As for evidence, you might be aware of Israel. That nation has been in the news much of late. So, without being flippant at all, I present Israel as evidence. Think about it. They are living the script written thousands of years ago. Not by chance.“
— Don, A Christian Apologist
Israel as evidence for the existence of God. I’m thinking about it as Don suggests.
Where did it all begin, this bizarre notion that one tribe in the Middle East was chosen by God to be his special people? According to the Genesis myth, it was when YHWH promised Abraham he’d be his best buddy forever and ever, so long as he mutilated his body and those of his sons in perpetuity. They would also have to keep every one of this bullying god’s 365 rules and regulations, including the petty and piffling ones. So far so good, apart from the fact it was all very one-sided, and the mutilation of course. You’d think this would’ve been a sign that things weren’t quite kosher, but no; Abraham and his descendants buy into it and almost straight away, YHWH begins to let them down.
God’s Chosen Ones soon find themselves slaves in Egypt. A second mythical character is needed – up pops Moses – to get them out of this scrape. Unfortunately, after Moses has finished chatting with YHWH, who identifies as a burning bush on the top of a mountain, the sulky deity feels slighted by something the Israelites are doing. As is his way, he has many of them slaughtered and the rest he forces to troop around the same small plot of land for 40 years. This is how best buddies treat each other!
Later, the Jews find themselves defeated by the Babylonians and are carted off into exile. This exile, which YHWH does nothing to prevent, lasts 70 years. Still, it leads to a pleasant song made famous by Boney M in 1978 so I suppose it was worth it.
For the next few hundred years, Israel fell under the rule of other nations more powerful than itself. Not to worry though, YHWH is still ‘looking after them’, particularly those who are slaughtered in the rebellions that ensue. As Robert Conner says in a recent comment on Debunking Christianity, ‘If Yahweh ever threatens to bless you and your children, just kill yourself and get it over with.’
Fast forward to the Roman occupation of Israel. YHWH, having undergone a makeover, reneges on his promise to take care of his Chosen Nation forever and ever and comes up with a different plan to save people from his own cussedness. Now, if they want to continue as his friend, they have to believe a supernatural being has returned from the dead.
Abandoned by God, as he now wants to be called, Jews who haven’t defected to the new faith see their sacred, eternal temple destroyed by the Romans in AD70. Thousands of them are massacred and the Jewish nation ceases to exist.
This sets the pattern for the next two millennia in which God’s new friends organise pogroms, massacres, and vicious persecution of Jews. This culminates in the Final Solution of the Third Reich which seeks to eliminate the Jewish people entirely. While awaiting extermination in a concentration camp, Andrew Eames scrawls on the wall of his prison: ‘If there is a God, He will have to beg for my forgiveness.’ God allows six million of his Chosen People to die at the hands of the Nazis.
Following the Second World War, Israel took possession of the area surrounding Jerusalem, then occupied by Palestinian Muslims who are themselves descended from earlier immigrants. Thousands on both sides are slaughtered in the conflict that follows. In 1948, after almost 2,000 years, Israel became a nation once again; not through any miracle of God but as a result of human endeavour and bloodshed.
Tension and further skirmishes followed, leading to the present day when Israel finds itself under attack by Hamas terrorists. Thousands of innocents – women, children, and babies – have been slaughtered without mercy. Israel is, as I write, retaliating and intends to enact further vengeance. And where is God in all this? You guessed it: nowhere to be seen.
According to some – including the naive writer at the top of this post – all of this serves as evidence of God’s existence. That Israel has persevered for so long, despite opposition, persecution and the holocaust is not, however, evidence of God, any more than the great cathedrals of the world are. It is instead testimony to the resilience, resolve, and sheer bloody-mindedness of the people themselves. Perhaps their belief in YHWH (they don’t, of course, recognise his Christian counterpart) has fuelled their persistence, as it has their territorial claims.
Jewish beliefs and history are not evidence that YHWH exists. If anything, his apparent abandonment* during their many trials and tribulations is evidence to the contrary.
*Of course a non-existent entity can’t actually abandon anything, any more than it can lend its support or favour one group of people over another.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
President Biden says we must hold Russia, Iran, and Hamas “accountable.” No one bothers to ask who will hold the United States accountable.
Biden continues to say Hamas doesn’t represent Palestinians. Are we sure about that?
Biden says the United States opposes all forms of hate. Really? What about our own hate; hate that left hundreds of thousands of people dead in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Americans are building the “arsenal of democracy,” Biden says. Evidently, democracy comes through violence and bloodshed.
American leaders wrongly assume that our form of democracy, with its commitment to militarism and capitalism, is the cure for what ails the world.
Why can’t the U.S. military pay with available funds for arming Ukraine and Israel? Instead billions will flow from our coffers to fund war as Republicans tirelessly work to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP. American children will go hungry whileweapons manufacturers get rich.
When it comes to military weaponry, there’s no such thing as defensive weapons. Defensive bullets and bombs kill just like offensive ones do. Dead is dead.
If it is morally wrong to slaughter Jewish children, it is morally wrong to bomb, shoot, maim, and kill Palestinian children.
It’s disheartening to see Biden conflate the Ukraine War with the war between Israel and Palestine. And then throw in Iran to get an “axis of evil.”
Ron Klain, former Biden chief of staff, says there are a lot of weapons in the world. No shit, Sherlock. And who is the largest arms dealer in the world? The United States.
Bonus: Joe Biden might believe in a “two state solution,” but Israel doesn’t. It is the only solution, but seventy-five years later, we are no closer to a sovereign Palestine. In 1948, Britain gave Israel land that belonged to the Palestinians. Does anyone seriously think Israel will remove their illegal settlements from occupied Palestine, and allow the Palestinian people to chart their own future?
Children have always suffered the most from human thirst for dominance, power, and control. Governments and political leaders regret their deaths in war, but see them as necessary collateral damage in their quest for real estate. Fundamentally, the war between Israel and Palestine is about a promise the Jewish God allegedly made to a storybook character named Abraham. Thousands of years later, Israel demands the world accept as fact that God gave them all the land (and more) that currently makes up Palestine and Israel. Countless people have died and will continue to die as Isaac and Ismahel continue to fight over whom the land belongs to.
Israeli and Palestinian children bleed and die without difference. Yet, for some reason, many Americans think Palestinian children “deserve” suffering and death; that they must pay the price for the sins of others. Of course, this should not surprise us. The Old Testament is a written record of God commanding his chosen ones — Israel — to slaughter his (their) enemies. Why should we expect Israel to do anything differently today? Hamas can be brought to justice without destroying Palestine, but Israel has no interest in doing so. Much like the United States did after 9-11, Israel plans to kill anyone and everyone — including children and civilians — who stands in their way of destroying Hamas (and by extension, Palestine).
And so Israeli and Palestinian children will continue to die.
Thousands of miles away, Ukrainian and Russian children will continue to die.
Syrian children will die.
Yemeni children will die.
African children will die, both from war and starvation.
The world says it cares about children, but the actions of major world powers and militia leaders alike suggest that children are an inconvenience; their deaths are a necessary consequence of humankind’s endless fight over real estate.
Americans wept over the children killed on 9-11, yet when it comes to Afghan, Iraqi, and Palestinian children, their deaths are considered necessary consequences of the war.
As long as the blood of innocents flows in the streets, don’t tell me about the justness of your war and the greatness and rightness of your God. All I see are bloody hands.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
