Have you ever wondered about how to become an online Evangelical Christian apologist? Tim Sledge, a former Southern Baptist pastor, shares how anyone can become an expert apologist.
Above all else, remember this: You are right. They are wrong. You are coming from a superior position. You have God on your side. They don’t.
Never, never think about the possibility that you might sound arrogant and condescending when you keep asserting that God has led you to the real truth.
Accept uncritically and parrot the answers well-known Christian apologists give about challenges to belief. Never check these things out for yourself.
Do not listen to ex-Christians when they tell you why they left and how life feels after leaving faith. Turn off all curiosity about an ex-believer’s life experiences. Listen only to what the Bible tells you about why people leave and how it feels to them when they leave. This enables you to know more about how their lives feel than they do.
Always assume that individuals who never believed will be immediately convinced when you quote Bible verses as proof of your beliefs.
Ignore the feedback of ex-believers when you are quoting Bible verses to convince them, and they tell you you’re quoting verses they memorized or quoted when they were believers.
When someone surprises you by responding with a Bible passage that disagrees with your position, tell them they are not interpreting the passage correctly.
If you find out that an ex-believer has studied the Bible more than you, confidently assert they were never a true believer and consequently all their study was in vain.
If all your arguments fail, attack the character of the person who disagrees with you! Tell this individual that there’s no way his/her life can have meaning, and there’s no way s/he can live any kind of moral life. Top it off with the warning: “You’ll be sorry when you burn in hell!” And be sure to convey that you see that destiny as a just reward.
Remember that you’re not just an apologist for Christianity, you’re also an apologist for your brand of Christianity. Confront Christians whose theology is different from yours with the same intensity that characterizes your confrontations with atheists.
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.
Several weeks ago, I watched a YouTube video of an Evangelical apologist dismissing arguments atheists make against Christianity. He said Christians shouldn’t bother answering atheist objections. Why? “I read the last chapter of the Bible, and we [Christians] win!”
First, this apologist provided no evidence for why we should believe anything the Bible says. He claims the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God, but what evidence does he offer up for his claims? None. He’s a presuppostionalist, so he thinks he has no obligation to defend his claims. In his mind, the Bible says it is God’s Word — end of discussion. Atheists KNOW this to be true. They just suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Or so apologists say, anyway.
Second, the book of Revelation — the last book of the Bible — is a widely disputed book among Christians. Church fathers debated whether it should even be part of the canon of Scripture. Many Christians believe that Revelation is allegorical history, fulfilled centuries ago. Evangelicals tend to read Revelation literally. Thus they see the book as a chronology of human history, much of which has not yet been fulfilled. Evangelicals really do believe that the events recorded in Revelation will literally come to pass, and soon (even though their lived lives suggest otherwise).
Third, when this apologist says “we win” what does he mean? He means that God has slaughtered everyone on the face of the earth. He means that ninety percent or more of the humans who have ever lived on the face of the earth will be suffering endless torture in the Lake of Fire. Saying “we win” is his way of laughing in the faces of all those who challenged his Fundamentalist beliefs. “Ha! Ha! Ha! motherfuckers, I was right. Bring me a stick and some marshmallows.”
If this apologist really believed what Revelation says about the future of his unsaved family, neighbors, and friends, along with billions of non-Christians, he would spend every waking hour pleading with sinners to get saved. Instead, he spends his time making YouTube videos and arguing with atheists.
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.
Fake Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, continues to write about me on his blog, even though he refuses to mention me by name. Today, Thiessen wrote a post titled Christian Counselors. He used my 2019 article titled Beware of Christian Counselors as the foundation for his post. Instead of mentioning me by name or properly linking to my article, he instead linked to a counseling site that I gave permission to republish my article.
As I read Thiessen’s latest screed, it dawned on me that the post provided a good example of his apologetic method. The subject doesn’t matter. Thiessen has used the same apologetic method in every post he’s written about me: accuse, attack, discredit.
Never feel bad about graduating from a Christian counseling program or even taking a few classes. The secular world never accepts anything that is remotely connected to Christianity, especially Evangelicalism.
….
How would pushing your faith and answers to the side help the persons needing counseling? It doesn’t. It is a technique used by unbelievers to hide from any truth and answers. They do not want God in the counseling room just like unbelieving scientists do not want God in the science lab.
….
This is the core of the problem. It is that little word ‘objectively’ that causes a lot of problems for Christian counselors. The author certainly does not know what the term actually means or how it is applied.
….
However, it must be noted that there is no such thing as true objectivity. Everyone is on a side. The unbeliever is on the side of evil and their perspectives are often skewed by their unbelief and the deception in their lives.
The Christian is on God’s side and often has the answers the people need. If the author wanted true objectivity, he would have to allow the fact that Christians have a perspective and that perspective is valid.
But he is not objective when it comes to Christian counselors. His bias against these people colors his perspective and leads him to trash people most of whom he will never meet or know. In his analysis and thesis of this topic, his bias is in plain sight.
….
He is not being objective nor is he being honest. He only takes his experience and paints with a very broad brush. There are many good Christian counselors who know how to use their faith correctly when counseling others. They do not follow the demands of the unbelieving world and provide actual help to the afflicted.
Just because he could not do it, doesn’t mean others cannot. Just because he had no answers, doesn’t mean others do not have the right answers. His attack on Christian counselors, in general, is wrong and misleading. It also hurts innocent people.
….
The Christian has the advantage as they know right from wrong and can effectively counsel the woman so that she sees that getting an abortion is not the right thing to do. The Christian, with God’s help, can easily counsel this woman and stop her from making a mistake.
The unbeliever can’t because they do not always accept the fact that the unborn child is truly human. They also do not accept what is truly right and truly wrong and replace God’s standards with their own. That is failing the client, not helping them. It is not great counseling either as it is done unobjectively.
….
There is nothing wrong with this as the unbelieving way is not the right way to do counseling. The Christian has knowledge that the unbeliever does not have and they should be allowed to be employed where they want.
Also, the Christian has compassion and caring that unbelievers do not have Barring the Christian counselor from any job is discrimination and illegal but that does not stop the author from recommending that action.
When it comes to counseling, the Christian has far more answers and insight than the unbeliever has and if the unbeliever wants to be truly objective, they have to let the Christian and their perspective practice their counseling training and knowledge.
The unbeliever does not have all or any answers for hurting people.
….
God knows the heart of men and women and who is better at arriving at an answer- the unbeliever who has their own personal preferences when it comes to counseling and doe snot know if the client is lying to them or not or where the truth lies? Or the Christian pastor who has God on his side showing him what is actually wrong with the person and providing the answer to the pastor?
….
It is not up to the unbeliever to determine who can or cannot counsel and in what way that they counsel. Pastors are to obey God, not unbelievers. Spiritual answers are better than the many non-answers that unbelieving counselors give.
Plus, counselors are to provide the truth, not some theory or some false answer that keeps them coming back to the counselor for years of therapy.
….
No, there are very few complex problems in this world. Most of them can be resolved if unbelievers accepted the fact that evil exists. But they don’t thus they are not good counselors, they are just people keeping others trapped in their problems.
….
Pastors are not dangerous, it is the unbeliever that is dangerous as they try to hide the truth and the answers from people.
….
This is not true and the bias of the author is clearly seen as he disqualifies people with the answers simply because they disagree with his religious viewpoint. He is not qualified to write this type of article because of his prejudice and bias against God, the Bible, and Christians.
There are a lot of personal statements made in that article that we will not deal with right now. Suffice it to say, that those topics came about for a specific reason or two. Maybe in the next parts, we will address those issues.
….
This is the problem with going to unbelieving counselors. Their bias against Jesus, Christianity and the church has them robbing people of their faith. They are unqualified to handle spiritual problems or those issues that require faith building.
Everything the author said against Christian counselors applies to unbelieving ones as well. They are not qualified to handle spiritual problems. The unbelieving counselors make God, Christianity, the Bible, and its content the problem when in reality it is evil creating the problem.
The unbeliever cannot help the believer because they do not share the same beliefs or perspectives. One comes from sin, while the other has been freed from sin. When you open yourself up to unbelieving ideology and teaching, then your believing side suffers and you are separated from God eventually.
What the author failed to do in this article was be honest. He knew what the Bible says and he ignored it in his attempts to bash professional people who do not believe as he does. To do counseling correctly, one needs wisdom.
Thiessen has a simplistic worldview: I am right and everyone else is wrong; Christianity is right, secularism is wrong; non-Christians, especially atheists, have nothing to offer the human race. Theissen has spent most of his life immersed in Fundamentalist thinking. As time goes on, Theissen becomes more certain that he is absolutely right. In his worldview, there is no place for nuance, shades of gray, doubt, or honest differences of opinion. In fact, in recent months, Theissen has intimated that he is just like Jesus, in thought and deed; that his words and God’s words are almost identical.
Thiessen will continue to write about me. He has a pathological need to do so. And as sure as the sun comes up in the morning, Thiessen will continue to accuse, attack, and discredit. He has been doing these for so long, that it’s just who he is.
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.
My dear friend Zoe recently wrote the following for a blog post titled My Benediction:
Like all the years I studied to understand my former Christian belief system. At some point, I moved on from that, though I can engage, I often choose not to. Or, I limit my input. There comes a time when the sorrow attached to it all weighs heavily on the heart. The exercise has been beneficial for understanding me, mom, and a lot of humanity throughout history. I don’t have the energy anymore to go point by point to try and warn and or educate. My therapist shared something, with a caveat that at first this sounds terrible to say, but: Some people are just terminal.
Without going into more personal detail, this wasn’t about suicide or suicidal ideation. This was more about, if I understand it correctly, accepting that some people can’t be moved. And it’s more than a sense of them not wanting to move, they just can’t. They are in their own world and regardless of the reasons, some people can’t reason other than where they are at.
Over the years of recovery for me, I have read, I have studied, I have prayed my knees raw (in those years), I have listened, I have contemplated, I have educated myself and I have played devil’s advocate. If you’re going to try to educate others then you have to spend time studying the other side. Until of course, it’s time to stop. It doesn’t matter about their new tricks. There aren’t any new tricks. Actually, nothing has changed. I look at Christianity. What has really changed? Maybe that there are more denominations/sects now than when I joined up . . . but they’re still Christianity.
I met Zoe back in my emerging/emergent Christian days; my “barely” Christian days. She’s been around for the whole Bruce Gerencser Show — all five acts. Both of us have spent years interacting with abrasive, hostile Evangelical Christians with few satisfying outcomes. We have learned over time that some people are just terminal; that no amount of evidence or emotional capital is going to change their minds.
Since 2007, I have interacted with thousands of Evangelical zealots. Virtually every one of these interactions miserably failed. Why? Until a person can entertain the thought that they just might be wrong or that their beliefs might be untrue, there’s no hope for them. Most people who deconvert do so from the privacy of the shadows. One of the reasons I respond to hostile Evangelicals is to help the thousands of lurkers who frequent this site, but never comment or email me. Taking what they learn from my writing and the comments of readers, doubting believers think about their beliefs — whether they are rational and evidence-based. I love hearing from such people, learning that something I said made a meaningful difference in their lives.
Some days, I enjoy engaging Evangelical zealots for sport. I haven’t heard an original argument for the veracity of Christianity and the Bible in over a decade. When a know-it-all Evangelical thinks they can “educate” me, put me in my place, or “save” me, I lick my chops and say, “may I have BBQ sauce for the beef I’m about to shred?”
Other days, I am just content to sigh. (Please see Why I Use the Word “Sigh”.) I’m with Zoe when she says, “I don’t have the energy anymore to go point by point to try and warn and or educate.” Every day of my life is dominated by unrelenting pain, nausea, and bowel problems. Just getting out of bed is all I can do some days. Other days, I have a short window to do the things I want or need to do. Sunday, we went to Toledo to shop for groceries: Fresh Tyme Market, Costco, Monnette’s Market, and Meijer, finishing the night with dinner at Texas Roadhouse. Did I overdo it? Big time, as my counselor will remind me on Thursday. Two days later, I am still having a hard time moving. This afternoon, I had a steroid injection in my right hip. In two weeks, I will have an injection in my left hip. My orthopedic was brutally honest with me, saying that he was doubtful, based on the location of the pain, that the injections will be helpful. I am willing to give it a try, hoping to improve the quality of my life. Either that or maybe I’ll take up “praying.” 🙂 With these things and others as the backdrop of my life, I hope Evangelicals who want to grind on me like a stripper giving an IFB preacher a lapdance, understand if I don’t pay attention to them. For those I do, you are “special.” 🙂 Oh so “special” . . .
Are you an atheist, agnostic, or non-Christian? Have you changed the way you interact with Evangelicals over the years? Please share your experiences in the comment section.
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.
Every time we turn around there is yet another deconversion story being proffered as the newest ex-evangelical smoking gun. The most recent—and arguably most influential—one has come from entertainers and YouTube sensations Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal of the Good Mythical Morning channel and Ear Biscuits podcast.
Rhett and Link have grown their brand performing hilarious satirical songs and engaging in zany stunts such as duct-taping themselves together, playing wedgie-hangman, crushing glow sticks in a meat-grinder, and flinging bags of dog feces at one another’s faces. With guest appearances on The TODAY Show, Live with Kelly, and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, their stars have been rising for the past few years, swelling their net worth to an estimated $23 million. They were also Christians, former missionaries, and Campus Crusade (now Cru) staff members.
When they each recorded videos walking fans through their spiritual-deconstruction stories in February, it shot through the internet like a bolt of lightning. Over the course of a few days, social-media newsfeeds became inundated with hot takes, responses, disagreements, and praise for the comedy duo. The comment sections of their Reddit, Facebook, and YouTube pages reveal that their stories inspired many atheists and touched the hearts of some folks who experienced similar deconversion journeys, describing the videos as “beautiful,” “candid,” and “vulnerable.”
Several people reached out to me personally, including pastors who reported that the faith of several kids in their youth groups was rocked by the broadcasts, leaving them shaken and doubting. After all, when someone is conversant in apologetics and theology, knows his Bible, and can anticipate my suspicions and objections, it’s difficult to simply pass him off as someone who never really understood Christianity. Blend that with Rhett and Link’s magnetic personalities, and it’s no wonder the faith of many Christians has been unsettled.
The stories themselves weren’t so different from others that have lit up social media over the past few years. For Rhett, it started with questions relating to science, the age of the earth, and evolution. It morphed into doubts surrounding biblical reliability, the historicity of the resurrection, and the general idea of hell and judgment. But as both Rhett and Link recounted, there was something brewing underneath the intellectual questions. They both felt a deep discomfort with biblical sexual ethics, which they perceived to oppress women and their LGBTQ+ friends.
….
This brings us to the salient question. How can two guys who make a living as YouTube personalities go from making possum corndogs one day to throwing 2,000 years of Christian history under the bus the next? Why were so many people rattled and even persuaded by them? Could it be that the cultural influences driving these deconstruction stories needs to be re-examined, rather than Christianity itself? [Or maybe, just maybe, the deconverted have pulled back the curtain only to find out that the Wizard is a mere man or a construct of the human imagination. Nah, it’s easier to blame deconversions on cultural influences instead. Keep telling yourself that, Ms. Childers.)
….
The sad reality is that, for the deconverted, disbelief isn’t sufficient. These apostles of unbelief are on a mission to help others deconstruct with the same evangelistic zeal they learned from their previous tribe.[Yes, we are. The difference being, of course, we have traveled both sides of the road. That’s what makes deconversion stories deadly to faith. We know where the dead bodies are buried.]
The probability that the Bible is God’s word is inversely proportional to the amount of work it takes Christian apologists to defend it from objections to the contrary (that is, the more work its defense requires, the less likely the Bible is God’s word), and it requires way too much work to suppose that it is.
Consider the sheer numbers of Christian apologists/scholars and books that have been published by the following author/editors: C.S. Lewis, Norman Geisler, William Lane Craig, Richard Swinburne, Paul Copan, Alvin Plantinga, N.T. Wright, Chad Meister, J.P. Moreland, Gregory Boyd, Gary Habermas, Steven Cowan, Douglas Groothuis, Peter van Inwagen, Randal Rauser, Michael Murray, William Dembski, Richard J. Bauckham, Michael Brown, Dan Wallace, D.A. Carson, G.K. Beale, Craig Blomberg, Craig Evans, Stephen Davis, Donald Guthrie, Ralph Martin, Richard Hess, Dinesh D’Souza, and Timothy Keller to name some of the more noteworthy ones. While some of these authors deal with the same issues most of their material is unique to them, for further defending their faith. If we add in their magazine and journal articles we already have a small library of works. If we were to get and read the references they quote from we have a whole library of works in defense of the Christian faith, a comprehensive case. That’s what a comprehensive apologetic requires. The important question left unaddressed by them, as always, is why a defense requires so many books? Why does Christianity need such a defense at all?
The fact that it takes so much work to defend Christianity is a strong indicator, all by itself, that the Christian God does not exist, or he doesn’t care if we believe.
If God had done a better job of revealing his will, there wouldn’t be much of anything for Christian defenders, or apologists, to do but share the gospel message like evangelists do. But since the God of the Bible was in fact incompetent, Christian apologists are forced to defend their faith against the multitude of objections raised against it. It’s as if God gave Christian defenders permanent job security, while forgetting that there are eternal destinies stake, people who, on some accounts, will suffer conscious torment forever because of it.
When dealing with the problem of divine miscommunication, Christian defense lawyers seek only to get their divine client acquitted no matter what the intellectual or moral cost. Rather than face this evidence that shows their God to be nothing more than the product of ancient people, who didn’t have a clue about civilized matters, these apologists use convoluted legalese to obfuscate and confuse the jury.
Typically they’ll say we couldn’t possibly know what an omniscient God is thinking, so we have no right to judge him and his ways. However, even if this is the case, it changes nothing. Millions of people died because God didn’t correctly reveal the truth. Christians will further object by saying we just don’t know if God did anything to help the people who died, to which the obvious answer is that this is my point. If God did something to help these people, then there is no evidence that he did? Think about it. There isn’t any. This objection is based on faith, not evidence, the very thing reasonable people should reject if they want to honestly know the truth. And if God really wants us to believe in him and believe that he loves us, this is a strange way of going about things. For an omniscient God would have known that later generations of intelligent people would find him to be guilty of not doing what decent people would do if they could, and as a result, disbelieve in him and his love.
The best Christian defense lawyers are liberals who admit there are texts in the Bible that, to a great degree, are reflective of an ancient outlook rather than the rigid literalism of conservative believers. In their view, God’s revelation is progressive, becoming better as humans grope to understand the divine. In other words, theology evolves. Liberals didn’t come by this conclusion easily though. Down through the centuries, they came to it as the realities of life and the results of science forced them to accept it. Yet this view is exactly what we would expect to find if there is no truth to their theology. It’s what we would expect if there is no divine mind behind the Bible or the church. If there is a God, then his so-called progressive revelation is indistinguishable from him not revealing anything at all, and, as such, progressive revelation should be rejected as an unnecessary theological hypothesis unworthy of thinking people.
Furthermore, such a view actually undermines their theology, for it leads to theological relativism, since there was no point in the history of the church when any theologian could say that a final, unchanging theology had been attained. So the theology of yesterday was true for Christians of the past, as the present-day theology is true for others, as the theology of tomorrow will be true for still others. So don’t talk to me about an unchanging theological truth. Don’t talk to me about an absolute standard for theological truth either. It doesn’t exist. Never has. Never will. Liberals therefore cannot state any theological truth that is true for all time. As far as they can know, the end result of revelation could be the death of God, the conclusion that we don’t need God, which would make him effectively dead. As far as liberals can know, atheism may be the future of their theology. The only reason they won’t accept the relativism of their theology is that they perceive a need to believe. They are playing a pretend game much like the people in M. Night Shyamalan’s movie The Village. In my opinion, liberals should just stop pretending.
The bottom line is that the whole notion of progressive revelation is a “heads I win, tails you lose” strategy. If their God had revealed the truth from the beginning, then these Christians would use that as evidence he exists. Because since he didn’t, they have introduced the concept of progressive revelation, which betrays their desire to believe no matter what the intellectual cost. What they’re doing is justifying their God “after the facts,” rather than asking “before the facts” what they would expect of their God if he lovingly communicated to human beings.
— John Lofus, Debunking Christianity, Excerpt from the book, How To Defend the Christian Faith: Advice from an Atheist, November 27, 2018
I found this gem on a Reformed Christian apologetics forum. As soon as I read it I fell on my knees and . . . laughed my ass off. Sorry, no salvation for Bruce. Come on Christians, you are going to have to do better than this.
Jesus, a character on The Walking Dead, is currently among the living. Whether by Negan’s hand or a walker’s bite, this Jesus will one day die, joining all the Jesus’s that have come before him.
Over the past nine years, countless Evangelicals apologists have emailed me or commented on this blog in hopes of winning me back to Jesus. Reclaiming an Evangelical-pastor-turned-atheist for Jesus would certainly be big news and viewed as a sure sign that God is still in the soul-saving business. Why is it, then, that former Evangelical pastors rarely, if ever, return to the faith?
Many apologists suggest that the reason former pastors can’t be reclaimed for Jesus is that they are apostates or they have committed the unpardonable sin. (Romans 1:18-32) These pastors are blasphemers who have trodden under their feet the blood of Christ (Hebrews 10:26-30), degenerates who have crossed the line of no return. Apologists will often engage former pastors anyway, seeing it as an opportunity to hone their apologetical skills or preach the gospel to those who are lurking in the shadows.
Assuming that I am not a reprobate that God has turned over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, why, then, do Evangelical apologists fail to win me back to Jesus? One reason is that the behavior of apologists towards me is contrary to everything the Bible says about how we are to treat other people. Some of the most arrogant, nasty, judgmental people I have ever met are people who attempt to win me back to Jesus. I have never understood how behaving this way is conducive to reclaiming me for Jesus. As a pastor, I talked to hundreds and hundreds of people about the state of their souls. I found that being loving, kind, and compassionate helped in setting the tone for a presentation of the gospel. Leading with hell, judgment, and the wrath of God generally turned people off. Sadly, many apologists are oblivious to these things, choosing instead to bully people with the Bible. (Please read Bible Thumpers: Dealing With Evangelical Bible Bullies.) In doing so, these apologists give Christianity and God a bad name. When such people savage me with their words, I often ask them, what is it in your behavior that would make me want to return to Christianity? Granted, just because the messenger is an asshole doesn’t mean that the message is untrue. That said, kindness and respect will open far more doors than hatred and judgmentalism — a lesson some apologists need to learn.
Another reason that Evangelical apologists fail to win me back to Jesus is their belief that the Protestant Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. I recently wrote a post titled, Why Biblical Inerrancy is Not Intellectually Sustainable. This post attracted an apologist who was certain that his intellectually superior arguments would destroy any criticism of the Bible. His arguments failed to convince anyone that the Bible was inerrant. The only people who believe the Bible is inerrant are presuppositionalists who assume, without evidence, that the Bible is without the error. The Bible says is it is without error, so it is. End of discussion. This is, of course, a faith claim that cannot be refuted. Once apologists appeal to faith — which is inherently subjective — all rational discussion ends. Faith, according to the Bible, is belief without evidence. Hebrews 11: 1,3, and 6 states:
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Creationists love to argue that the events recorded in Genesis 1-3 are scientifically accurate; that God created the universe out of nothing in six twenty-four-hour days, 6,022 years ago. Everything that science tells us about the universe says that creationists are wrong, that the universe is billions of years old, not thousands. Vast amounts of scientific data must be rejected or misinterpreted for creationists to conclude with a straight face that Genesis 1-3 is how the universe came into existence. Lost on creationists is the fact that the Bible says that believing Jesus created the universe is a matter of faith, not scientific fact. Millions of Christians reject creationism, yet believe God is the grand architect of the universe. Creationists, on the other hand, refuse to budge on their ignorant beliefs. Why? Their commitment to literalism and inerrancy forces them to embrace beliefs that are absurd. One need only drive to Kentucky to visit Ken Ham’s Creation Museum and Ark Encounter to see colossal monuments to Evangelical ignorance.
Let me conclude by giving three obstacles apologists can’t overcome in their attempts to win me back to Jesus:
The Christian God is the creator of everything.
Jesus was born of a virgin.
Jesus was executed on a Roman cross and resurrected from the dead three days later.
These three things ultimately stand in the way of me returning to Christianity.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
The Apostle Paul said the universe itself gives testimony to the existence of God. Look at the wonders of the earth and beauty of the star-lit sky. Sure this is proof that God created everything? Perhaps, but what evidence is there for this creator being the God of the Christian Bible? I have long argued that I understand how someone could look at the night sky on a clear summer night and conclude that a deistic God of some sort created the universe. What does not make sense to me, however, is that this creator God is the triune God of Christianity. What in the night sky tells me that the Christian God is the creator? Why the Christian God, and not any of the other Gods human worship? I see no intellectual bridge that gets me from A GOD to THE GOD of Evangelical Christianity. Again, the belief that the Christian God created everything rests on the presupposition that the Bible is the Word of God and whatever it says is true. Believing this way requires faith, a faith that I do not have.
The virgin birth of Jesus and his resurrection from the dead thirty-three years later, are equally problematic for me. Virgins don’t have babies and dead people don’t come back to life. Pregnancy requires the uniting of a female’s egg with a male’s sperm. Believing Jesus’ mother Mary was a virgin requires me to ignore what science tells me about where babies come from. But, Bruce, with GOD all things are possible! So Evangelicals say, but one thing is certain: millions and millions of people have prayed to God asking him to give them a baby. God has — supposedly — answered these prayers countless times. I have heard numerous testimonies about how God “blessed” people with children. What is the common denominator in all these stories? — a female egg united with male sperm, and nine months later a child was born. There’s no evidence that God played any part in these births. Believing so requires faith.
So it is with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Billions of people have lived and died on planet Earth, yet not one of them has come back from the dead. Cemeteries, funeral homes, and crematoriums are reminders that when people die, they stay dead. I believe Jesus was a real person who lived and died in Palestine two thousand years ago. How Jesus died, it matters not. Jesus lived, died, end of story. Evangelical apologists offer no evidence for the claim Jesus resurrected from the dead. Again, believing this to be true requires faith, a faith I do not have. Either someone accepts as fact what the Bible says about the things mentioned in this post or they don’t. I don’t, and this is why apologists fail in their attempts to win me back to Jesus. I want evidence, not special pleadings that appeal to Evangelical faith and the inerrancy of the Bible. Until apologists can come up with arguments that are more substantial than the litany of proof texts and faith claims they currently use, I remain unconvinced. The ball is in your court, Evangelicals.
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.
