Dr. David Tee, World Renowned Denier of Science, Observations, October 24, 2024.
On the back of the book (Stephen Hawkings — The Origin of Everything), and we are quoting from memory, the book said that scientists have finally got to the point where they understand and know where are origins began. Or something close to that.
As we read those few lines, the first thought was, what a waste of time. The secular scientists still have no clue about our origins because they omit the truth concerning that topic. They have yet to verify that our origins were by natural means.
They come up with different theories but not one of those theories puts the biblical supernatural creative act in jeopardy. The second thought we had and another reason we consider the book and the secular scientific work a waste of time is that God already explained our origins.
The scientists exploring and pursuing an alternative to the Biblical creation act simply wasted their intelligence, time, and money. They have spent years and valuable resources pursuing a topic that has already been answered
That is a waste considering the millions of people who could have benefitted from a wiser use of those three elements. But is the secular world for you. They would rather waste precious time, money, and intelligence pursuing a false idea than humble themselves and accept the truth.
….
As we have said for years, unbelievers always take the wrong paths, in the wrong directions and look in the wrong places for the wrong answers. They never learn or refuse to learn when the truth is presented to them.
Unbelieving scientists need our prayers so that the truth is revealed to them and their eyes are opened once and for all. Those prayers need to include all those Christian scientists and students who listen to the unbelievers and follow their counsel and not God’s
….
Throughout the world Christians can see the difference between the unbelieving world and the believing world. When they do recognize this difference, they will understand why God said to not follow or listen to unbelievers.
Unbelievers do not have the truth and many do not want it. We have read on many occasions where unbelieving scientists say that even if the Bible is proven true, they would not accept it. That is a sad state to be in and shows Christians we still have a lot of work left to do.
The unbelieving world uses its immoral standards and self-righteous attitudes to attack Christians, not realizing how bad off they are. They are merely pawns being used to harm unwary Christians
….
The right information does not come from unbelievers.
It comes from God and the Bible. Learn the truth and teach your children the truth before they come under attack from unbelieving teachers and professors. Giving them the right information is protecting your children.
For most of my adult life, U.S. politics has ebbed and flowed at the local, state, and federal levels. Democrats come and go, as do Republicans. Prior to Donald Trump riding down the escalator in 2015, there was never a time when I feared what the Republicans or Democrats might do to our country. Trump changed everything. Overnight tens of millions of Americans became enamored with Trump’s bombastic rhetoric. Today, it is almost impossible to have civil discussions with MAGA supporters over policy differences. We now have a man running for president who is threatening to arrest (or deport), prosecute, and incarcerate anyone who disagrees with him, including people in the Republican Party. Trump has even threatened to pull the broadcast licenses of networks that fail to confess fealty to him and only report in ways that are unfavorable to him.
Sadly, it seems as if many Republicans, and even non-voting citizens, are unable to differentiate between facts and lies. What do we do when we no longer have a common knowledge and understanding of facts; politicians such as J.D. Vance even admit to making up lies to advance their political agenda — as in the case of Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
Twelve Facts About Donald Trump
☑ Donald Trump is a pathological liar.
☑ Donald Trump is not a Christian.
☑ Donald Trump is a misogynist.
☑ Donald Trump is a xenophobic racist.
☑ Donald Trump is not a self-made billionaire (if he actually is one).
☑ Donald Trump is a narcissist.
☑ Donald Trump is a failed businessman, having filed for bankruptcy six times and closed numerous business ventures.
☑ Donald Trump has sexually assaulted numerous women.
☑ Donald Trump will use anyone to get what he wants, discarding anyone who refuses to play along, as former cabinet members will attest.
☑ Donald Trump’s stated economic policies will raise the federal deficit, increase inflation, and fatten the bank accounts of the one percent.
☑ Donald Trump has early signs of dementia.
☑ Donald Trump’s promotion of strong-arm world leaders and dictators is not in the United States’ best interest, nor is his threat to withdraw the United States from NATO.
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 years ago, my wife received an email from a college student who worked for her one summer. This girl — an Evangelical Christian — wanted to let Polly know that she was raising $6,000 so she could go to a “secret” country and do illegal missionary work. The girl meant well, I am sure, but her email was a reminder to me of the Jesus Vacations® many Evangelicals take each summer to foreign lands to spread white American Christianity. Scores of Evangelicals take these trips each year, spending millions of dollars as Jesus tourists; convincing themselves that what meager, incidental work they do matters.
Why didn’t the girl’s church pay for her trip? If the goal is winning souls for Christ in a country that forbids such things, why not have the soulwinners or their churches pay for the trip? Instead, trip-takers turn to people they know — family, friends, casual acquaintances, workmates — to cough up the money so they can take an unnecessary Jesus Vacation® to what they believe is the foreign mission field. Polly, of course, did not respond to the email, nor did she forward it to others as the sender requested. In our Christian days, we didn’t support such wastes of energy and money, and as unbelievers, we sure as hell aren’t going to help American Evangelicals harass foreign non-Christians.
Jesus Vacations® are taken primarily by White middle-class Evangelicals. While certainly “some” good is accomplished; say, building housing, digging wells, and improving the welfare of people in poverty-stricken countries, the irony here is that many Evangelicals who minister to material needs while on their Jesus Vacations® won’t do the same in their own country. In their minds, Haitians are worthy of care, but poor Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics in impoverished areas in the deep south? Let them starve. Get a job! Mexicans on the American side of the border are criminals worthy of deportation, abusers of American goodness and largess. Mexicans south of the Rio Grande? Why, now they are a mission field; people worthy of missional attention from rich white Evangelicals.
After these Jesus-loving travelers return from their Jesus Vacations®, they will stand before their fellow congregants one Sunday and give a testimony of all the things they did for Jesus; of all the goodwill they spread to the poor; and, most of all, the number of people who prayed the sinner’s prayer and asked Jesus to save them. Charismatic vacationers will regale their churches with claims of miracles, yet will not provide evidence for their claims. Year after year, Evangelicals take Jesus Vacations®, never considering whether they are doing anything meaningful or whether the money spent for travel and other expenses could have been put to better use.
Jesus Vacations® tend to support the false notion that poor people of color in other countries need affluent white American Christians to help them and deliver them from Satan. Why not, instead, send the money to Christians who live in these countries and let them spend it helping their fellow citizens? Wouldn’t doing so be more cost-effective? Instead of fifty college students coughing up $6,000 each for a Jesus Vacation® — $300,000 — wouldn’t it be far better to send it to people who know their country and communities, and what needs people might have? Bruce, surely you know we can’t trust poor Blacks with White people’s money! They need us – “us” being affluent White Evangelicals — to manage how the monies are spent. USA! USA USA! JESUS! JESUS! JESUS!
Comic by Tom Tapp
Of course, sending the money to the field and forgoing Jesus Vacations® will never happen. You see Jesus Vacations® give the appearance of doing good in Jesus’ name. These trips are feel-good, Hallmark-like experiences. They allow trip-takers to oh-so-humbly brag about how Jesus used them to materially help and evangelize poor people of color. Praise be to Jesus! Look what I, uh, I mean, Jesus, did! The humble-bragging extends to pastors and older congregants too. Look at what WE did for Jesus! Look at how we helped those poor, helpless Haitians (and ignored the poor people who live next door to the church)! As with most things Evangelical churches do, no one will ever question the value of taking Jesus Vacations®. No one will ever ask, WHY do we take these trips every year? Oh no, you don’t: thou shalt not question. Summers are for vacation Bible school (VBS), youth camp, and Jesus Vacations® (and here in Ohio a day trip to either King’s Island or Cedar Point). And so it goes, year after year . . .
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.
Singing Group Trinity Baptist Church, Findlay, Ohio. Bruce Gerencser is the last person on the right.
Some readers wrongly think that my past Christian life was filled with unhappy, negative experiences. If people only read my polemical writing or my critiques of Evangelicalism, I can understand why they might think I was a disaffected follower of Jesus. However, I generally enjoyed life as a Christian. I had numerous trials and struggles, but by and large, life was good. My partner, Polly, would tell you the same thing. I have few regrets about my time in the ministry. I gladly served Jesus and did what I could to help others. My loss of faith had little to do with negative church experiences. Sure, I was hurt by people, but that was not the reason I deconverted. I divorced Jesus because I could no longer rationally sustain the central claims of Christianity. (Please see The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.)
If there’s one thing the church gave me, it was a love for music. Music was central to worship, but it was much more than just the songs played and sung on Sundays. My mom played the piano, as did my sister, and I played the trumpet before I discovered basketball and dropped out of band. As a teen, I sang in a church quartet (see picture above), and as a pastor, I led the music and sang duets with Polly (she was an alto and I was a tenor). Polly played the piano and was part of a college traveling handbell group. Our children can remember countless hours spent singing hymns and gospel songs as we traveled down the road. The good old days . . .
I miss my singing days. Preaching ruined my singing voice, and I no longer have opportunities to sing like I used to. I still listen to and sing hymns and gospel songs, not that I believe their lyrics, but because doing so still stirs me emotionally. When I go places where Christian songs are being sung, I lustily add my voice to the chorus. Not that I believe in God or the central claims of Christianity — I don’t. But I find singing enjoyable, a respite from pain and adversity. I wish there were places I could go to sing without all the baggage that comes from attending church. Sometimes, I will stream Christian music from Pandora, Spotify, or YouTube Music, singing to my heart’s content. People driving by our home who know I am an atheist might find it strange to hear me belting out my favorite psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. What can I say? I am a complex, contradictory man.
As a Christian, were you musically inclined? Did you enjoy singing? Did you sing in the choir or other singing groups? Did you play an instrument in church? If so, as an atheist/agnostic, do you miss your church music days? Do you miss singing unto the Lord? Or is the music a reminder to you of that which you would rather forget? Please share your thoughts 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.
I have always been involved in American politics. I grew up in a home where my mother was a political operative, campaigning for politicians such as Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and George Wallace (twice). Mom veered off into the land of independent candidates, working for candidates such as Wallace, Ross Perot, and John Anderson. She even had positive things to say about 1984 Vice President candidate Geraldine Ferraro.
Mom was outspoken about her political beliefs, writing numerous letters to editors of local newspapers. She was a product of her age — racist and pro-military. Mom defended Lieutenant William Calley of My Lai massacre fame and thought the Kent State students murdered by Ohio National Guard soldiers got exactly what they deserved. Mom was never afraid to speak her mind. I suspect, to a large degree, I followed in her footsteps.
That said, Mom was widely read, a news junkie who spent hours every day watching cable news programs — including C-Span. Mom killed herself in 1991 at the age of fifty-four. (Please see Barbara.) She and I had numerous discussions about politics. Her views evolved and changed, but she remained a conservative Christian until the end.
I voted in my first presidential election in 1976. I voted for Jimmy Carter. He would be the only Democrat I voted for until I left the Republican Party in 2000 and voted for Al Gore. Since then, I have voted for Democratic presidential candidates, even though I am increasingly dissatisfied and disappointed with candidates such as Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Hillary Clinton. I didn’t vote for any of these candidates in the primaries, choosing to vote for Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama instead. Whether I continue to be a card-carrying Democrat remains to be seen. I have spent the past decade voting for the lesser of two evils. I am tired of doing so, but until the two-party system is dismantled and true alternatives come to the forefront (along with ranked voting), I suspect I am consigned to lesser-of-two-evils hell.
I spent fifty years in the Evangelical church. Twenty-five of those years were spent pastoring churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. For many years, I was unafraid to mix religion and politics, going so far as to endorse and support political candidates from the pulpit. That said, I wasn’t a party hack. Former church members might remember my scathing 1998 sermon about Bill Clinton and his affair with Monica Lewinsky and my 1991 sermon about George H.W. Bush’s murderous war in Iraq. George Bush would get similar public castigation for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Above political affiliation, I put morals and ethics first. I was unwilling to give politicians a pass just because we were members of the same party. I have long believed that war-mongering runs deep in our politics, and the 2024 Presidential Election is no different. The unwillingness of Harris, Biden, and other Democrats to take a stand against Israel’s genocidal violence in Palestine disgusts me. If there were a viable third-party candidate who took a clear position opposing war in the Middle East, I would vote for them. Alas, I refuse to throw my vote away to maintain naive political purity.
People who know of my right-wing political beliefs as a pastor wonder if Donald Trump was a Republican presidential candidate back in the day if I would have voted for him. The answer is no. It is unlikely that I would have voted for the Democratic candidate either. I might have voted third-party or abstained from voting, but there’s no way I would have voted for Trump. Morals and ethics matter to me, and Trump is the most immoral, unethical presidential candidate in my sixty-seven years of life. He is unfit to be president, a vile man who sexually assaulted numerous women and has ripped off countless small business owners. He is unfit to be a member of the human race, let alone the leader of the United States. I have no doubt I would have preached sermons about Trump, pointing out his lies and immoral behavior.
All politicians have skeletons in their closets. All politicians lie. Trump’s lies are legion, but Harris and Waz have told a few whoppers of their own too. I don’t expect politicians to live according to my moral and ethical values, but I do expect them to be decent, thoughtful human beings. Trump is neither, and I cannot imagine a scenario where I would vote for him.
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.
The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.Psalm 12:6,7
Most Evangelicals believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God. Every word is true, without error or contradiction. This position cannot be rationally sustained. Educated Evangelicals know about translation errors and contradictions, yet still maintain the Bible is somehow, some way, without error. How do Evangelicals, knowing that the evidence is stacked against them, continue to say that the Bible — be it at the manuscript or translation level — is inerrant?
Evangelicals invented out of whole cloth a new doctrine to cover their asses — the preservation of Scripture. The preservation of scripture doctrine asserts that God has preserved the Bible throughout human history so that the Bibles we have today are God’s very words; God superintended this process in such a way that error did not enter the text through the translation and copying process.
I spent fifty years in Evangelical Christianity. I heard countless preachers preach-up and defend the preservation of Scripture. What these preachers said sounded right, but none provided evidence for their claim. Instead, we were told that God is perfect — how could his Word be otherwise? If this doctrine is true, then Evangelical preachers should be able to produce evidence for this untainted line of Scripture — all sixty-six books. When asked for this evidence — crickets. And yes, I am aware some proponents of King James-onlyism have detailed charts they use to prove the preservation of Scripture (and to a lesser degree the purity of the Baptist church).
Remember, the goal is to protect the Bible from critical examination. Doubt is poison to Evangelical preachers, so they go to great lengths to inoculate congregants from anything that would cause them to question the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible. One way to do that is to tell church members that God has preserved his very words, and they can trust that the Bible is authoritative, accurate, and true. Of course, any rudimentary understanding of the history of the Biblical text and the underlying Greek and Hebrew manuscripts shows that inerrancy, infallibility, and preservation cannot be rationally sustained. Inspiration is a faith claim beyond rational inquiry, but inerrancy, infallibility, and preservation can be critically examined. And when they are, the presuppositions underlying them fail.
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.
Thiessen is not a scientist, and, as far as I know, has no science training apart from what he was taught in Bible college. He is no more qualified to opine on evolution than I am physics. That’s not to say that Thiessen doesn’t know anything about science. He knows enough to make it seem to uneducated Evangelicals that he is some sort of authority figure. This is common in Evangelical churches where preachers are viewed as authority figures in areas in which they have no relevant expertise.
What follows are excerpts from Thiessen’s latest posts. Laugh, ridicule, or weep, but never forget that scores of people agree with Thiessen, even if they might disagree with his ham-fisted approach.
There is only one single view that all Christians must accept and hold to. That view is the creation act revealed in Genesis 1. Every other viewpoint that alters or disagrees with this one biblical revelation is false teaching.
….
Evolutionary scientists make a lot of assumptions. The reason for this is . . . they cannot replicate claims made about ‘historical evolution’. It is an impossibility as they have no way of developing partial samples to experiment with.
This failure is another piece of evidence showing that evolution is not true. We do not have to worry about scientifically replicating any results of god’s creative act as it is done on an hourly basis every day.
….
No, other approaches do make scientific sense if science would be more open-minded about our origins. Science cannot study the one-time act nor replicate it. But it can prove that all life goes as stated in Genesis 1. That means God’s creative act makes scientific sense.
….
The truth never changes which is why Christian colleges, etc., need to stand with God and the Bible. Neither has changed over the thousands of years this world has existed. Evolution is whatever the evolutionist wants it to be no matter who it hurts.
….
There is no scientific evidence for any alternative to Genesis 1. All scientific evidence for those alternatives is manipulated to show support and read into any experiment they make. Plus, science has not discovered or tested one mechanism they say is involved in evolutionary human development.
….
To many unbelievers and unbelieving scientists, scientific media outlets and organizations evolution is dogma and settled science, not a theory. Evolution should never be taught in any school except to show why it is wrong and never existed. It is a theory that should never be considered for anything else.
….
It [the Bible] also tells us how God created. There is no room for any other theory to explain our origins. We know everything about our origins as the Bible reveals this creative act correctly. The opinion of Mr. Wright is one that is used to justify denying what God wrote about himself and says that God is incapable of writing about himself and his actions.
….
Any form of evolution is not true, it is not honorable, especially towards God, and it is not right or pure. Plus, evolution is not lovely or commendable as it caused great harm to millions throughout history and today, and it is not in any way shape, or form excellent or worthy of praise.
Evolution is nothing but a deceptive lie that has no place in any part of Christianity or its academic institutions. One cannot take science over God as the former is not the ultimate authority over anything.
Science, like many tools, is used to destroy people and Christians need to be aware of it before jumping on board scientific research. Christians can not teach other Christians to accept science over God’s word. If they do, they are leading those students to sin against God. That is very wrong.
If you don’t teach creation [ism] as true, then why teach the Bible at all? Or another good question why claim you are a Christian if you think the Bible is in error?
….
Good exegesis does require that everyone accept God’s word and does not hint at him being a liar. There is no evidence in scripture or nature that a process was involved in the origin of everything.
….
The very first biblical verse [Genesis 1:1] does not imply a process. Neither do the words ‘Let there be’ Every step of the creative act supports a supernatural creative act leaving no room for processes.
….
First, there is no evidence supporting evolution. To get evidence, scientists would have to produce the original conditions and let life take its course. With no intelligent being involved in the origination or development of life, scientists cannot be a part of any evolutionary experiment.
Then their ‘experimental’ set-up would have to produce the same results as scientists claim took place in their version of human history. If millions of years are needed for this production of verifiable evidence, then evolution is not true. One does not have evidence to support their extraordinary claims.
….
While the information about the fossilization of life forms is true, evolutionists will ignore this fact and claim the fossil record supports evolution. Unfortunately, for the evolutionist, everything about evolution is read into fossils not taken out of it.
Fossils do not support an evolutionary process. They are pawns in a high-stakes game that evil uses to deceive people.
….
If Christian colleges are not pursuing truth but academic freedom, then the truth is lost and Christians are not getting the right spiritual food to grow strong and maintain their faith. You get what we have today, false teachers teaching false doctrine to vulnerable people. That is not a recipe for success.
After browsing the science books placed on the tables [at a book fair], we came to the conclusion that we do not need to read unbelieving science books anymore.
There are good reasons for following that realization. First, all the authors are telling the same story. They all do not depart from the main evolutionary claims or themes. Thus, they are boring to read. We figure they are writing these works to avoid the perish part of the academic publish-or-perish mentality.
Second, they offer no new evidence especially any that would be considered groundbreaking or history-changing. No new ‘physical evidence’ has been discovered or reported from the evolutionary side of the creation debate.
Anything they would present would be preceded or followed by the words ‘We Think’, ‘We Believe’. ‘it is possible’, ‘we do not know’, and similar phrases all evolutionary scientists cover their theories with. The last one is the most telling as it openly tells everyone they cannot find an alternative to God’s creative act.
Their evolutionary theories, etc., are merely wishful thinking and a waste of everyone’s time. Third, those first two points add up to the fact that it would be a giant waste of time reading those books.
They are nothing but false teaching and no Christian should be reading them unless they are looking for data and points to refute as well as show students why evolution and the Big Bang are wrong. These books provide no other type of valuable information.
Save your money or use it to buy solid, good Christian books written by true Christian scientists who believe in a 6 24-hour day creation. Remember, unbelievers do not have the truth and that includes all research fields under the science umbrella.
Every alternative to God’s creative act found in the Bible is false and untrue. Find Christian works that support Genesis 1 and 2 and learn the truth about our origins. Learn to strengthen your faith, not undermine it by accepting and adopting false information written by deceived people who are far from the truth.
Only God was there when creation took place and scientists cannot see back in time. It is laughable to think that evidence would survive billions and millions of years untouched by anything else.
— End excerpts
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Danny Kluver is a Harley-riding Charismatic Christian who lives in the state of Washington. Over the years, Kluver has repeatedly sent me emails, messaged me on social media, and texted me. I have blocked him, avoided him, and ignored him, yet like an in incurable STD, he keeps showing up in my inbox.
Earlier this year, Kluver repeatedly messaged me on Facebook Messenger. In classic passive- aggressive fashion, he talked like we were best friends having a friendly conversation. Of course, it was a one-sided discussion since I refused to respond to him. I noticed today that he deleted these messages — a common practice used by trolls to jerk your chain and then erase all evidence of their boorish behavior.
Today, Kluver texted me. (All spelling, grammar, punctuation, and irrationality in the original.)
Danny Kluver: Are you doing any better or still reaping?
Kluver: Praying for your salvation and for your dreadful wife’s salvation too. Deny me before men and I will deny you before my father in heaven! Open your heart lizard head!!!
Kluver: You have become fodder for me at first but I don’t want you to miss heaven and same for Polly.
Kluver: You are way too young to be ailing like you are I hope you feel better soon so you and Polly can go for walks with the dogs. Where do your thoughts come from since they are not physical? Other dimensions to ponder on. Also confirms that you are eternal. Your spirit is your software and your body is the hardware. You know that the spirit and the soul leave your body and join together before you get your temporary body. Then at the rapture you will get your glorified body! We will recognize people that we know after all this and we can hardly fathom how cool this will be! Still praying for you you and Polly so don’t be surprised how your hearts are changing. Talk later Bruce!
Kluver: You have been exposed to too much baptist theology and it has poisoned you some but the hardness of your heart will heal.
Kluver: I would be pissed too if I was deceived by the baptist and wasted a big chunk of my life! I have regrets too but I’m blessed to still have harleys to ride whenever I want. It’s good to be rebellious in some ways and I still am. I shun too much talk about religion and politics and spend time with my wife. That’s one thing you and I have in common is our familys are priority!
Bruce Gerencser: It’s evident you haven’t paid attention to anything I have written or said to you over the years. You are everything that is wrong with Christianity, regardless of whether I think the claims of Christianity can be rationally sustained. Hint, they can’t. Based on your behavior, why would I ever want to be a Christian? No thanks. You might want to rethink your strategy with me. Of course, you won’t. It’s not in you to be a decent human being. Perhaps you should seek out professional psychological help for your pathological need to berate, denigrate, and bully people you don’t know. Or just keep being an Asshole for Jesus.
Kluver: Wow you finally figured out that nobody is any good! Everyone is an asshole including you and all Christians. You invite people to respond to the opinions you write about. There are no good people in the world! Some are more tolerant than others and appear to be good but they will fall just like the next person. You don’t know my relationship with Jesus or anyone else! I read about your kind in the Bible in lots of places. Bitter about life and complaining constantly! You must feel better when you are trashing someone on your stupid blog but I see you reaping corruption for your denial of Jesus! So you keep on mocking and reaping and suck it up asshole!!!
Bruce: I’m judging you by your works, Danny, as will others when I publish your texts to me.
You wrongly think I have to put up with your bullshit. I don’t. I may be headed for Hell, but I’m a better Christian than you in every way. Worse, you have gone after Polly and some of my children. You even went after one of my son’s friends. So spare me your talk about Jesus, the Bible, and Christianity. You know nothing about these things, and worse, your behavior is antithetical to what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
— End of Text Messages
Kluver’s messages speak for themselves. Anyone who calls Polly — the love of my life — dreadful isn’t going to get any respect from me. Anything he says to me after that goes in one ear and out the other. The Kluvers, Thiessens (Tees), Justices, and Revival Fires of Evangelical Christianity seem unable to understand that they will be judged by others according to their works; that Jesus himself said the measure of a man is how he treats others (Matthew 25). Worse, the Bible says the Fruit of the Spirit (singular) is (present tense) love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. If this is the standard by which God judges whether someone is filled with the Spirit, I humbly suggest that these so-called defenders of the faith know nothing about Jesus. Was it not Jesus who said in Matthew 5:43-48:
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
If I am as bad a man as Kluver says I am, according to the aforementioned passage of Scripture, how should he treat me? You see, people such as Kluver “say” they are Christians, but all I see are barren trees. Kluver may convince himself that everyone is an asshole, but most of us know this isn’t true. Sure, we all can have a bad day, but the bent of our lives is generally towards kindness and goodness — with or without Jesus. I would live in despair if I believed, as Kluver does, that there are no good people in the world. Sixty-seven years of experience tells me that there are a lot of good people. Too bad that Kluver isn’t one of them, nor does he know of any.
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.
Earlier, I posted an article about the fact that many Evangelicals contend I never was a True Christian®; that I never met the REAL JESUS. Unsurprisingly, I often get similar treatment from hardcore — dare I say, Fundamentalist — atheists. According to these atheists, I am crypto-Christian, posing as an atheist; that deep down I am still a follower of Jesus — or at the very least want to be. In their minds, all religion is bad, and the Abrahamic religions are the worst of the bunch. That I am an accommodationist and believe Jesus was a real, flesh-and-blood historical figure says to them that I haven’t left Christianity behind. That I have good things to say about my Christian past, and I am willing to commend Christians when they do good in Jesus’s name, is more proof to them that under my atheist veneer beats the heart of a man who is having a secret affair with Christianity.
Years ago, I attended an atheist meeting in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that featured theologian and atheist Robert M. Price. I thoroughly enjoyed Price’s lecture. During the Question and Answer period, one man — an outspoken atheist — challenged Price’s respect for certain aspects of Christianity. The man said, Tell me one good thing Christians have done in twenty centuries that couldn’t have been done without religion. This led to a brief back and forth between Price and his accuser. Sadly, nothing Price said made any difference to this man. He was a Fundamentalist, and one of his cardinal doctrines was that all religion was bad. He was settled in his beliefs about Christianity. He and I later got into an email skirmish about the matter. I concluded, then, that I was an atheist, but I wasn’t one of THOSE atheists. I hold to this sentiment today.
Tim O’Neill, an acquaintance of mine, is also often accused of being a crypto-Christian. Tim blogs at the History for Atheists website. If you are not a reader of Tim’s writing, I encourage you to check out his site. Good stuff. Mythicist Richard Carrier says this about fellow atheist O’Neill:
Tim O’Neill is a known liar …. an asscrank …. a hack …. a tinfoil hatter …. stupid …. a crypto-Christian, posing as an atheist …. a pseudo-atheist shill for Christian triumphalism [and] delusionally insane.
Ouch, right?
I have received numerous emails over the years from atheists angered over my friendliness towards Christianity (or my liberal political beliefs). Funny, isn’t it? Evangelicals think I am hostile towards Christianity, and some atheists believe Jesus is my secret fuck buddy. Can’t win, so I don’t try. Both sides use the No True Scotsman argument to suggest that I never was or I am not part of their club. Fortunately, my mother and my Evangelical training taught me to stand on my own two feet and not be a company man. I am more than willing to listen to honest, thoughtful critiques of my beliefs, but demand that I believe this or that or risk losing my Atheist Card, and you will learn how recalcitrant I can be. Evangelicals can at least threaten me with their mythical Hell. What are atheists going to threaten me with? Loss of their support? Loss of their comments? Please. I am almost sixty-eight years old. I am a confirmed curmudgeon. Want to be friends with me? Fine, but you take me as I am. If not, that’s okay. I have more than enough atheist, agnostic, humanist, and pagan friends to carry me safely to my grave. I am too old to worry about making new atheist BFF’s.
I will continue to write about the excesses and dangers I see in American Evangelicalism. I will continue to point out hypocritical clerics in the Black Collar Crime series. I will continue to push back against the unholy alliance between church and state. And yes, most of all, I will continue to tell my story. What I won’t do, however, is hate people just because they are religious, even if they are Evangelicals. I live in an area where seven out of ten people are registered Republicans and virtually everyone believes in Jesus. If I want to happily and quietly live in rural northwest Ohio, then I must be willing to get along with people of faith. I choose to love my neighbor as myself. I choose to have a good testimony before my Christian neighbors. I want my way of life, my words, and my friendliness towards them to be confusing. I want my life to be in direct conflict with what their pastors say atheists believe and how they live. Does anyone seriously think that I would make any difference in my community if I loudly, publicly, and angrily preached from the housetops, Jesus Never Existed! Why, they would think I was a loon.
The other day, a local Democratic party worker, who is a devoted Catholic and a friend, stopped by my home while she was out canvassing. She told me as she leaving, Bruce, you may be an atheist, but you have gospel values. I smiled as she said this to me, thanking her for the kind words. Should I have given her a lesson on where atheists derive their morals and values? Of course not. What she was telling me is that she appreciated my pro-human progressive values. I am sure my atheism doesn’t compute for her, but the manner in which I live my life and the way I am willing to speak out when it matters tells her what kind of man I am. That Fundamentalists — Christian or atheist — can’t or refuse to see and accept me as I am is their problem, not mine.
On occasion, I am asked why I seem to live on the fringe of the atheist movement. Perhaps, this post best explains why I do. I have decided to be my own man, tell my story the best I know how, and leave the results up to God, uh, I mean . . .
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 years ago, an Evangelical man by the name of Steve left the following comment on the post titled, An Atheist Thanksgiving:
You went from being unsaved to a flat out reprobate buddy. You rejected the God of the Bible to believe you evolved from a rock which came from and explosion 13.8586.678 billion years ago. I agree that these old IFB pastors you pick on all the time have no spine and are just in it for the money but to believe you came from a monkey which nobody has ever seen a monkey turn into a human! Never! You just traded one religion for another. You traded Paul the apostle for that Pedo Richard Dawkins! Have fun in hell buddy
I will leave it to Brian — a former Independent Fundamentalist Baptist preacher’s son — to answer Steve’s comment:
I read Steve P’s post sentence by sentence and tried to find even one sentence that approaches an accurate statement. I was unable to see even one in the lot. Accuracy/truth seems very unimportant to Steve P. Is this true belief in God, this parrot-dull squawking? (with apologies to parrots, who at least make their dull repetitions entertaining!)
Some day, perhaps, Evangelicals will realize that threatening me with their God’s judgment and Hell has no effect on me. The only God I fear is Polly and the only Hell I know is Trump’s America.
Bruce Gerencser, 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.
