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, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
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, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
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, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
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, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
“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, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Bruce and Polly Gerencser, July 1978, with Bruce’s mom and dad
What follows are fifteen things I learned as a young married man. Polly and I married in July, 1978. We recently celebrated our forty-fifth wedding anniversary. What were some of the lessons you learned as a young married person? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
Love doesn’t pay the bills.
If you put gas in your car, it won’t run out.
The balder the tire, the more you will need to use your car jack.
A spare tire is of no use if it’s flat.
You will have to teach your wife to drive a stick shift, check the oil, start the car with a screwdriver, and change a flat tire.
Children change everything.
If you pay the light bill, you will always have electricity.
Living across the street from your in-laws is not a good idea.
It is not a good idea to quit your job before you have found a new one.
Having sex in a car is not as much fun as the movies say it is.
Driving too fast is a sure way to get speeding tickets — lots of them.
If you write a check with no money in the bank, it’s going to cost you.
Guinea pigs, hamsters, and gerbils die.
It’s a miracle any couple stays married.
Giving substantial sums of money to the church is not a good idea when you can’t pay your bills. Contrary to what preachers say, Jesus will not provide.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
In 2021, David Nims, a children’s church leader at Calvary Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida, was arrested several times on child porn and voyeurism charges.
Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons says the Pensacola church children’s director who has already been arrested multiple times may have more victims.
37-year-old David Nims was arrested late Friday for a third time after investigators say he secretly recorded people in public restrooms at a church in Escambia County.
Simmons says deputies recently discovered that eight additional victims were secretly recorded. This follows Nims’ initial arrest back in June regarding a secret camera hidden in a church’s men’s bathroom.
According to Nims’ most recent arrest report, investigators reviewed over 180 videos that showed multiple people using the restroom.
Sheriff Simmons told Channel 3 that there is a chance they could find more victims as they continue their investigation.
According to Sherriff Simmons, the videos were taken in three locations: Calvary Baptist Church (where Nims volunteered as a children’s director), his home and his wife’s work.
Reports indicate he was recording men, women and children.
“Every time we arrested him and we seize more storage devices and more computer equipment then we end up finding more,” Simmons said. “Unfortunately we end up finding more evidence of video voyeurism.”
Nims was charged with 25 counts of child pornography possession and 16 counts of video voyeurism. Yesterday, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
40-year-old David Nims was charged with 25 counts of child pornography possession and 16 counts of video voyeurism. He faced more than 500 years in prison, but he took a plea deal. Some charges were dropped, and Nims was sentenced to 50 years in prison on Friday.
Nims set up a camera under a sink in a restroom at Calvary Baptist Church. In March 2021, he recorded not just adults but kids between the age of 6 and 14 years old. Investigators later found SD cards with more than 100 child porn images in his home.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.
Christopher “Chris” Pruitt, pastor of Our Father’s House Ministries in Beaverton, Oregon, stands accused of sexually abusing two minor church girls. Pruitt was indicted on six counts of first-degree sexual abuse and two counts of third-degree sexual abuse.
A Beaverton pastor was jailed last week after being accused of inappropriately touching two young girls who were members of his congregation.
A Washington County grand jury indicted Christopher Michael Pruitt, 39, of Beaverton on six counts of first-degree sexual abuse and two counts of third-degree sexual abuse Wednesday, Oct. 11.
Pruitt allegedly touched two girls, one under 14 years old, one under 18 years old, on Sept. 29 in Washington County, according to court documents. The girls were members of Pruitt’s congregation of Our Father’s House Ministries Church.
The church had been operating out of Pruitt’s home in Beaverton before moving to North Portland recently.
Pruitt was arrested Thursday, Oct. 5, and remains in jail as of Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 11. He has a probable cause hearing and a pre-trial release hearing scheduled for Friday, Oct. 13.
In 2017, Pruitt pleaded guilty to public indecency in Multnomah County. He was put on probation for one year for the Class A misdemeanor, according to court records.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
As you can see, science is powerless to discover any alternative source for the origin of the universe. There is no evidence, no hope of replication or observation, in all of their theories. They are left with creating several fairy tales that they know they have no hope of proving true.
But the Bible knows all about our origins and provides the only answer.
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The universe’s and our origins are not a mystery as science claims. We have a source that tells us exactly what happened. The Bible also tells us the force that created everything and that knowing this information is not impossible.
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We know where energy and matter came from and we know that something was not made out of nothing. Our origin and the universe’s all came from God and to know this takes just a little step of faith.
Everything was made by the word of God so he would be worshipped and given the glory for what he did. This does not mean that we Christians cannot do science. It means that science cannot and should not be wasting time and money investigating our origins. It has been revealed and science needs to focus on more important things that are within its realm to investigate.
All it takes is a little faith in God and believing that he is capable and has the power to create exactly as he said. Many secular scientists will demand evidence to prove the Bible true. The biggest piece of evidence that can be shown to them is the fact that science cannot create any explanation for a natural cause or provide evidence that their alternative is true.
The unbelieving world has been shown physical pieces of evidence after physical pieces of evidence year in and year out for thousands of years. Yet they never accept that evidence because they do not want to do one thing– believe by faith.
It is a simple step to take yet so many people in the scientific communities refuse to do it.
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To those of us who believe the answers to our origins are very clear. The Bible knows and it is telling all those who listen to it when they read its pages. Even the problems science cannot solve, mentioned earlier, are solved by the Bible.
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Trying to go over answered ground is not science. It is an act of unbelief and sin. The Bible does what science cannot do- provide the right answers.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Israel is not “God’s Chosen People.” No one is chosen by God. He’s a myth.
There’s no evidence for the existence of Abraham. Thus, there’s no such thing as the “Promised Land.”
The Cincinnati Bengals convincingly won their second game on Sunday. Joe Burrow is back.
Violence is violence regardless of the race and ethnicity of the perpetrator.
It’s evident that Iran is funding and arming terrorist groups such as Hamas. The United States and its proxy, Israel, want nothing more than to obliterate Iran.
The United States has funded, armed, and trained terrorists over its blood-filled, violent history. Funny how Hamas and Iran are evil, but the United States is virtuous, moral, and Christian.
I finally turned on the furnace, beginning the titanic struggle over the temperature setting. 🤣
It would be nice if MSNBC actually reported the news instead of promoting a pro-military, pro-Israel, pro-Biden agenda. Progressives condemn Fox News for their politics-driven “news,” yet say nothing when MSNBC does the same.
John Oliver did a segment on Sunday about homeschooling in the United States. Thoughtful and balanced, Oliver laid out the good, bad, and ugly of homeschooling. (All six of our children were homeschooled.) I support the right to homeschool as long as it is properly regulated.
I can’t wait to see how long it takes for someone to call me an antisemite.
Bonus: Streaming services continue to raise their rates. I vaguely remember being told “cord-cutting” would save us money. How is that working out for us?
Double Bonus: Just listened to an NSA official tell Rachel Maddow that if the United States was attacked like Israel, we too would slaughter civilians and bomb communities into oblivion. Mess with us, and we will gut you. Of course, he used smooth words to convey this point. No need to do so. Two Iraq Wars and Afghanistan later, we know exactly what the United States will do to innocents if provoked.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
