Readers who have deconverted have likely heard believers tell them countless times: God loves and cares for you. (God being the Christian God of the Bible.) I know I have. Rarely does a week go by without me receiving an email or blog comment from an Evangelical Christian saying that God loves and cares for me. How do they KNOW God loves me? How do they know God cares for me? Just because the Bible says something doesn’t mean it’s true. Saying God loves and cares for me is a claim, as is the all of the Bible. Evangelicals wrongly think Bible verses are evidence for the truthiness of a belief, when in fact, they are claims. What a claim requires for justification is EVIDENCE. Actual empirical evidence, not just saying “the Bible says.”
Saying the Bible is the Word of God is a claim. Saying the Bible is supernaturally inspired, inerrant, and infallible are claims. I’ve engaged Evangelical apologists for almost twenty years. Without question, these apologists are long on claims and short on evidence. In fact, they are so short on evidence that it requires an atomic microscope to see it. Saying God loves and cares for me is an empty claim for which no evidence is forthcoming.
God could prove his love and care for me, but he chooses not to. Either that, or he can’t because he is a mythical being, powerless to act in the natural world. Everything I have seen, both as a Christian and an atheist, suggests that God is deaf, blind, and indifferent to the cries of his creation. “God loves and cares for us” is a grand ideal, but one that is not borne out in real life. God was silent when I prayed and silent when I didn’t. Pray tell, if there is no difference between God interacting with me as a Christian and as an atheist, how can I possibly know he exists and has a supercalifragilisticexpialidocious plan for my life? I am an atheist today because I see no evidence for the Christian God’s existence. If God truly wants everyone to love, know, and follow him, you would think he would, in a no-doubt way, make himself known to us. That he doesn’t suggests that he doesn’t give a shit about us, or he doesn’t exist.
But, Bruce, you were a Christian for fifty years. Surely you believed God loved and cared for you. Sure, but the question that must be asked is this: Why did I believe God loved and cared for me? I spent most of my life in the Evangelical bubble; an environment where every aspect of my life was controlled by my parents’ chosen religion. I was never allowed to examine and judge the central claims of Christianity for myself. I was indoctrinated and conditioned to such a degree that I believed that whatever my pastors, youth directors, and Sunday school teachers taught me was true. This indoctrination and conditioning continued during my college years at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan. I was taught WHAT to think, not HOW to think. While I later learned that my pastors and professors lied to me — deliberately or out of ignorance — I still held on to the belief that the Bible was the Word of God. It would be many years before I took a hard look at my beliefs and the claims I made about God’s presence in my life. I wanted to believe God was ever-present. I wanted to believe God loved and cared for me and had a wonderful plan for my life. Oh, there were times when I was certain God was talking to me, meeting my needs, or using me to advance his kingdom. However, a post-Jesus examination of my life revealed that my life was built upon a fiction taught to me by my parents, pastors, and professors, and passed on by me to church congregations I pastored.
If God wants me to believe he loves and cares for me, all he has to do is show me. Those of us who are married know that we show our love and care for our spouse by what we do, and not by what we say. The Bible says God loves and cares for all of us, but these claims are mere words — no different from a man telling his wife he loves her, even though he beats her every day. His behavior says that he doesn’t love his wife. So it is with God. If he wants me to love and follow him, is it too much to ask for God to make himself known to me? If God truly wants to save the world, wouldn’t this goal be best served by him sending Jesus back to earth to make a physical appearance — say, a yearlong show at a Las Vegas casino? Instead, Evangelicals tell us God speaks with a whisper, and if we listen closely, we will hear him. Welp, I am deaf, so perhaps God will text me or send me an email. Better yet, maybe Jesus will knock on my door and invite me to lunch. Now, that will get my attention. Alas, God remains silent, suggesting, at least to me, that he is dead or on vacation.
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.
Troy Lacey, a writer for Answers in Genesis, recently wrote an article titled Answering Atheists. Lame from start to finish, Lacey tries to deconstruct quotes from Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Richard Dawkins. (These men, by the way, are not top-shelf atheists. Lacey might want to engage atheists who are schooled in Christian theology and dogma.)
With the Bible as our starting point, we can look at the natural laws that God created, such as laws of thermodynamics and the law of biogenesis, and we can examine whether natural selection and mutation could possibly account for molecules-to-man evolution. They can’t. Instead, they clearly show the Creator (Romans 1:18–20).
Far from refusing to look at any evidence, creationists carefully examine it all. Creationist articles, books, and museums regularly cite the specific evolutionary arguments and then test them using the most rigorous scientific and philosophical tools available. We desperately want to know the truth so we can speak accurately about the Creator and his handiwork. We have no fears where the evidence will lead because we know it all points to God’s glory.
Oh, the lies young earth creationists tell. Do creationists really “carefully examine it [evidence] all?” Do they “desperately want to know the truth?” Of course not. Most young earth creationists are presuppositionalists. Creationists don’t start with evidence, they start with the following presuppositions:
The Protestant Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God
The one True God is the triune God of the Bible
God created the earth in six literal twenty-four-hour days, 6,028 years ago
God destroyed the human race, save eight people, with a worldwide flood
I could add more Evangelical presuppositions, but these will suffice for now. Instead of weighing the evidence for these claims, they presuppose that they are true. Granted, none of us is free of presuppositions, We should do everything we can to limit our presuppositions. Evangelicals, on the other hand, have presuppositions upon presuppositions. These presuppositions keep them from seeing, knowing, and understanding the truth. And it is for this reason that it is nearly impossible to argue/debate Evangelical apologists. Presuppositions are faith claims that are impervious to falsification. Either you believe them to be true, or you don’t.
Lacey lives in a bubble where he genuinely believes that creationists are “using the most rigorous scientific and philosophical tools available.” He says that creationists do not “fear where the evidence will lead.” Why? Here comes another presupposition: we know it all [all evidence] points to God’s glory. Does all evidence point to God’s glory? Of course not. This is a faith claim.
Long before we can discuss “creationism,” we must first debate the claims Evangelicals make for the existence of God and the supernatural nature of the Bible. Lacey wants atheists to take his word for these claims. Not going to happen. Most atheists are rationalists and skeptics. We expect Evangelical apologists to provide some sort of evidence for their claims. Lacey claims Evangelicals like him examine and test every claim made by scientists. Is this a true claim? If yes, then why are so few creationist scientists published in scientific journals; not creationist or Evangelical journals, but well-respected science journals? Cue claims of persecution or bias. That’s how Evangelicals explain their overwhelming lack of publication in non-sectarian science journals. “The evil evolutionists are out to get us,” Evangelicals claim. However, the more likely explanation is that their claims lack scientific standing, and no reputable journal is going to give space for nonsense to be published.
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.
Recently, a local Evangelical man messaged me on Facebook. He wanted to share God’s “truth” with me, not knowing that I was a former college-trained Evangelical pastor. I suspect he thought I would be receptive to his “preaching,” but he quickly found out I was not a good target for evangelization. Once I engaged the man, asking him for evidence for his claims — i.e. there’s 2,000 fulfilled prophecies in the Bible, the Bible is the “living Word of God, the gospel is all love, and we are under grace, not the law — he quickly retreated to the safe confines of faith.
Let me share a few comments illustrating what I want to discuss next. My comments are blue, his gray, though I suspect you will have figured that out without me telling you. 🙂
This thirty-one-year-old man believes he is “called” to speak the good news to unbelievers. Now that he has done so, it’s up to the Holy Spirit to intercede. I can confidently say that his prayer failed and the Holy Ghost did not intercede. I’m still an unrepentant atheist. Evidently, these “called” evangelizers have a dial-up connection to Heaven, and the connection times out before God’s Telephone Company receives the call and connects it to J-e-s-u-s. Thousands of calls have been dialed over the years on my behalf, but no successful connections to Jesus have been made. One might conclude that the line has been cut, or it doesn’t exist.
What I want to focus on is this man’s refusal to engage anyone outside of his tribe. In his mind, anyone who disagrees with him is blind. Either that or he’s afraid of having his beliefs challenged or he’s afraid that he might be led down a path that his pastor told him leads to death and damnation.
In other comments I made, I tried to challenge his bald assertions, asking him for evidence for his claims or providing alternate interpretations for his pontifications — all without success.
As with most Evangelicals, this man believes the Bible is literally written by God, and is inerrant and infallible. These are faith claims for which there’s no evidence outside of the Bible itself. Sadly, what this shows is that faith robs believers of the ability to think skeptically and rationally. And as long as they stay within the safe confines of the house of faith, it is impossible to meaningfully interact them.
This man is a poster child for ignorant Evangelicals. Raised in Fundamentalist churches, taught to obey their pastors, and repeatedly told that whatever the Bible says is true, and whatever the “world” says is Satanic. Thoroughly indoctrinated and conditioned, by the time they reach adulthood, their path is set unless something happens that forces them to re-think their beliefs. Imagine a world where you only read books that reinforce your beliefs and are surrounded by people who agree with you. It’s a safe world, one where the wicked, evil world rarely, if ever, intrudes (unless their pastors are featured in the Black Collar Crimes Series). Believers can live their entire lives in such an environment, safe from questions, doubts, and intellectual challenges. This, in my opinion, is no way to live. And it for this reason I continue to share my story and critique Evangelical Christianity. I know from my own story that it is possible to escape the pernicious grip of Fundamentalism. And it all starts with niggling doubts and questions that go unanswered by the preachers of certainty. Will the man who messaged me one day break free from bondage? Maybe, but he could also end up forty years later just like Dr. David Tee and others like him — people whose minds have been ruined by decades of indoctrination and conditioning.
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.
Is it reasonable for atheists to ask Evangelicals for their supernatural claims? I listen to YouTube shows such as The Atheist Experience, Talk Heathen, The Hang-Up with Matt Dillahunty, Skeptalk, and The Sunday Show. The hosts of these shows ask theists of all stripes to call in and share with them what they believe and why. This is a Biblical approach, even if the hosts are atheists and agnostics. The Bible says in I Peter: But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. When unbelievers ask Christians why they believe what they do, they should be ready and willing to share the truth with them. When asked for evidence for their beliefs, Christians have a duty to provide it. Most cannot or will not do so, choosing to “live and let live” Evangelicals, in particular, are challenged to share their faith with the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world. Most don’t, but those who do are largely ill-prepared to handle the hard questions asked by skeptics.
Many Evangelicals think, when asked for evidence for their religious claims, that Bible verses are “evidence.” Is the Bible evidence for claims such as the existence of the triune God, the virgin birth of Jesus, his resurrection from the dead, and the plethora of miracles attributed to Jesus? Is the Bible evidence for claims such as a six-day creation, the existence of Adam and Eve, Noah’s flood, and notable people such as Moses? No. The Bible is a book of claims. Just because the Bible says something doesn’t mean it’s true. Sadly, countless Evangelicals, including college-trained preachers, either don’t understand this or refuse to accept it. They think by quoting one or more Bible verses that they have provided evidence for their claims. That’s not how it works. If that was not the case, I could prove Hogwarts exists simply by quoting passages from one or more of the Harry Potter books. In no other realm except religion do we accept claims without evidence. If Evangelicals want non-believers to accept and believe their claims, they MUST do more than quote chapter and verse.
The real issue here is that Evangelicals want to be viewed as rational, scientific people, so they attempt to “prove” their beliefs to unbelievers. Scores of apologetics ministries have cropped up, each, allegedly, giving rational, evidence-based defenses of Christianity. Unbelievers are rarely swayed by their arguments. I’ve concluded that these ministries exist, not to reach unbelievers, but to make Evangelicals feel good about what they believe. As science continues to push the Bible God to the margins of human experience, believers have harder time defending their beliefs — especially Evangelicals who are presuppositionally committed to Bible literalism and the inerrancy/infallibility of the sixty-six books of the Protestant Christian Bible. Numerous Evangelicals have called the shows I mentioned above to defend all sorts of things such as rape, misogyny, genocide, and slavery — to name a few abominable “Biblical” behaviors. Instead of admitting the Bible records things that are now considered immoral, and even criminal, these defenders of God’s name go to absurd lengths to keep God — who, according to them wrote the Bible — from looking bad. As I have said before, God has a PR problem.
Christianity is better served if believers retreat to their houses of faith. After all, doesn’t the Bible say that the foundation of Christianity is faith, and not evidence? In fact, a better approach to reaching people for Christ might be to love God with all their heart, soul, and mind, and to love their neighbors as they love themselves. Maybe the best evidence for transformative faith is good works. Sadly, most of what unbelievers see and experience from Evangelicals is anything but “good.” Eighty percent of Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump three times. Their “works” tell us everything we need to know about their faith. Think of the behavior of Evangelicals such as Dr. David Tee, Revival Fires, Steve Ransom, Danny Campbell, John, Steve, and countless others on this site. Does anything in their behavior remotely suggest that the Jesus they allegedly follow is one any of us would want to worship? I think not. When called out on their behavior, they deflect, defend, and attack instead of repenting and doing a better job representing the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
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.
Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, continues to passive-aggressively respond to my posts, often refusing to mention my name or link to my writing. In a post titled Why Noah’s Ark Will Not be Found, Thiessen wrote:
People want evidence
This is what the modern world has turned into. Due to the rise in scientific influence and its demand for physical evidence, everyday people want to see evidence before they accept a premise as true.
The demand for evidence has overwhelmed the population elbowing the requirement for faith to the sidelines. It used to be that people believed the Bible without the need of any evidence.
That is not blind faith but acknowledging the fact that without faith one cannot please God. Also, it is an act of obedience as faith has always been the requirement for salvation and other biblical topics.
However, when science was placed as an authority the demand for real physical evidence rose and people stopped obeying God and wanted to see more and more physical evidence.
….
While we have so much evidence for Noah’s flood, it still takes faith to believe the biblical record. We do not know how Noah and his sons built such a large ship, how they weathered the storm, and much more. Everything about the flood has to be taken by faith.
Except for the lesson that God provided through this biblical event. Instead of searching for the ark, people should be learning what disobedience is going to cost them.
According to Thiessen, people used to “believe the Bible without the need of any evidence.” He provides no evidence or study for his claim, but I will accept his claim for the sake of argument. While there was likely a time when believers generally put their faith in the Bible and rarely, if ever, questioned its claims, thanks to the scientific method and the proliferation of evidence on the Internet that challenges faith claims, Christians are more likely to question and doubt what they hear from the pulpit. Thiessen, of course, will attribute this to Satan. After all, it was Lucifer (Actually a talking snake. The Bible never says the snake was the Devil.) who said to Adam and Eve, “Yea hath God said”? The answer to the snake’s question, of course, is “no.”
We teach our children not to trust people just because of what they say or their position of authority. Smart parents teach their children to be skeptical of all claims, including those uttered by authority figures. If a teacher, preacher, policeman, or other authority makes a claim, they should, at the very least, justify their claim. Every claim should stand on its own two feet. We should remain skeptical until hearing sufficient evidence to justify a claim.
However, when it comes to Evangelical Christianity, people are expected to check their brains at the door. Faith, not reason, is the standard of judgment. If a teaching or belief sounds irrational, just have faith. If a pastor’s preaching seems to run contrary to what we know to be true, just have faith. No matter how crazy a belief sounds, just have faith.
Thiessen says “We have so much evidence for Noah’s flood,” — a claim that is categorically false — but turns right around and says “It still takes faith to believe the biblical record.” Here’s the thing, if we have evidence, we don’t need faith. Faith is what people exercise when they don’t have a good reason to believe. Show me, I will believe, and then I won’t need faith.
Faith is never a good way to determine whether something is true. Faith allows people to believe all sorts of crazy things, including the supernatural claims of the Bible and Donald Trump’s claim that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. Thiessen would have us believe everything in the Bible by faith, even without an evidentiary reason to do so. Only in religion do we ask people to place faith over reason, skepticism, and rational inquiry. Imagine a scientist presenting a paper without evidence for his claims. “Brethren, I ask you to take my word for it that eating three Snickers bars a day cures fibromyalgia.” Why, this scientist would be laughed out of the room. His fellow scientists would demand empirical evidence for his claims, and even then, they would likely retest his claims before accepting them as true.
Thiessen wants us to just close our eyes and wish upon a star. Any and every absurd claim can be believed if people will just have faith. But that’s not how the world works in 2024. It’s not 1100 CE anymore. We now live in a scientific era where people are expected to provide evidence for their claims — including preachers, evangelists, missionaries, and Sunday school teachers. If credible evidence cannot be provided, moderns will not believe.
Thiessen longs for a day when people just took his word for it. I am sure it grates on him that he is no longer viewed as an authority on the Bible; and that people rightly challenge his bald assertions. If Thiessen wants us to believe, all he has to do is provide evidence for his claims. Not quote Bible verses or appeal to hermeneutic sleight of hand, but actual evidence. I remain ready and willing to believe. All it would take to convert me is to provide sufficient evidence for the existence of the Christian deity and the central claims of Christianity. So far, this evidence has not been forthcoming.
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.
David Tee/Derrick Thomas Thiessen is the tall man in the back
Derrick Thiessen (who sometimes uses the pseudonym Dr. David Tee) is a retired preacher, English teacher, and currently works as a freelance writer. He has several graduate degrees in theology, archaeology and history and has authored several books.
As a believer, we desire to win as many people to Christ as possible. Our specific ministry has been to bring Christians past square one to spiritual maturity. We have accomplished that through our two websites and books.
We have also sought to help pastors, missionaries, and Christian workers through the same avenue. Christians of all levels must be fed the proper spiritual food. They need to strengthen their faith and have the right information to defend what they believe.
Those actions are not a waste of time. But is it a waste of time and energy to prepare data, verifiable and credible physical evidence, and other historical, astronomical, and scientific information and present it to most unbelievers, atheists, and former Christians?
Why go to all that work and trouble when you know that those people groups will do what Dr. Phillip Davies did when he was presented with the evidence proving ancient Israel was as the Bible said?
All he did was close his eyes, shake his head, and repeat over and over that ‘it did not happen’. Are there any members of those people groups who are open-minded and who will take an honest look at what has been gathered and presented?
It is our experience that very few members of those people groups will be that way. Also, we have learned that even if believers discover the real ark used during Noah’s flood unbelievers will find something to criticize and justify their decision to reject it as physical evidence for the flood.
So what is the point in Christians meeting the demand of unbelievers to present evidence when they will only receive a cold reception and blind dismissal?
We understand that unbelievers are afraid of seeing the Bible proven true. If they were not afraid or if the atheists were right and there is no God, they would have no trouble honestly examining the evidence.
One example of this fear is a comment made in a Patterns of Evidence video posted to YouTube. The scholar providing the upcoming response hit the nail on the head, and we do this from memory when he said that unbelieving scholars and archaeologists do not want to prove the Exodus true.
He said ‘If they do, then they have to confront the reality of the Bible and make wholesale changes to their lives and bodies of work.’ Regular unbelievers can have peace that they are not the only ones who are afraid of seeing the Bible proven true.
This is one reason why they make so many unrealistic demands. One militant atheist we have known for a long time once told us to ‘go and dig’ when we talked about the evidence for Noah’s flood.
The problem with that is we cannot dig every square inch of the earth to uncover all the evidence he wants to see. Even if we present that evidence he is incapable or unwilling to accept it and convert.
There are two problems with providing evidence for Noah’s flood. The first is that a myriad of researchers have uncovered verifiable physical evidence for it. Graham Hancock has been one of those researchers as have Drs. Charles Hapgood, Ryan, Pittman, and Rehwenkle to name a few.
Their failure to recognize this evidence stems from problem number two. The majority of researchers and other folks do not know what evidence for a global flood would look like.
There has been only one and that event is difficult to excavate due to the construction, wars, natural disasters, and other events that change the nature of the evidence or remove it from existence.
When Sir Leonard Woolley declared he had found the flood layer in UR, the mainstream archaeologists at that time said he was wrong because the layer was not uniform. But does the flood layer have to be uniform to be evidence of the flood?
An honest person, taking into account all the variables that would change the design of the flood layer, would say no. A person who is not honest would close their mind and say yes.
The failure to accept the mitigating factors surrounding the discovery of evidence means that the person or persons hearing the evidence will not listen and waste the presenter’s time.
It is not that there is a lack of credible and verifiable physical evidence for the majority of biblical events. The internet is full of both Christian and secular websites that present this evidence and they are all easily accessed.
The key to all of this is the one word scientists, atheists, and other unbelievers hate. God created the equation to prove that he exists and his word is true. That word is faith. The Bible tells us that by faith we please God.
Thus God is not going to provide all the physical evidence anyone wants to see or demands. God is not going to destroy what pleases him. This means that we will only get enough physical evidence to strengthen our faith, not ruin it.
This is why there is no scientific evidence for the creation of the world. Creation was a one-time supernatural act that was not enacted using any scientific method.
The way science is constructed, it is impossible for that research field to analyze creation. It will not produce any evidence for that act. Science can study the results of creation and see that God’s word is true but that is as far as science can go.
Those who demand scientific evidence are merely using that demand to hide from the truth. Those who make unrealistic demands do so for the same reason. They do not want the Bible to be true for they would have to deal with the information like the archaeologists and other scholars mentioned earlier would have to do.
God uses faith to help divide the sheep from the goats. His equation tells him who believes him and who does not. Faith is merely believing God and the physical evidence is nothing but a supporting cast member.
So the question is, are you an honest, open-minded unbeliever or are you one of those dishonest, closed-minded ones that will not even give the evidence a fair hearing?
If you are the latter, don’t waste Christians’ time. Just stop making unrealistic demands for evidence that you will never listen to. If you want evidence then you should be prepared to give it a fair hearing and careful consideration.
Note: Thiessen refuses to comment on this site, nor does he allow comments on his main blog. Derrick said in his email to me:
Same instructions apply. It does not need your editor/assistant’s help. I will take the heat for any mistakes alleged or otherwise. I will also read all comments and respond on my own website if the need to respond is there.
Thank you for publishing it as is.
The only thing changed on Thiessen’s post was the title. It originally said, “Is It a Waste of Time” without proper punctuation. His chosen title was unspecific and ambiguous. I changed it to reflect its content. The body of the post was unchanged. I also shortened the bio and provided proper links.
BG opened his website to submit guest posts. He made the offer that anyone can send one in so we did. We asked God first to help us write what needed to be written and told him to publish it as is without his assistant doing any editing.
We shall see if that instruction is met and if he publishes our entry. We kept a copy to compare if and when it sees the light of day.
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 am hopelessly behind on answering emails readers send me. I have emails dating back six months that I still need to answer. As I was quickly leafing through these emails, I noticed that many of them are from Evangelicals who wanted to share their personal testimony of saving faith with me, suggesting that if I met their God, their Jesus, interpreted the Bible as they did, or had the experiences they did, I, too, could become a Christian. With a quick wave of their hands, these believers dismiss my past and present experiences. You see, I have a personal testimony too. We all do. We all have stories that explain our lives. These stories may or may not be true. More often than not, they are an admixture of facts, misunderstandings, distortions, delusions, fading memories, and lies.
Generally, I take at face value the testimonies of others. If someone says that he is a Christian or that Jesus saved her, I believe them. I believe that they think they have a real, personal relationship with Jesus. That, however, doesn’t mean that I think their testimonies are factual. If Christians want me to, based on their personal experiences, become like them, then they must provide evidence for their claims. I cannot and will not take their word for it.
No matter how detailed a testimony you share with me — and believe me, I have had Evangelicals send me emails thousands of words long that go into minute detail about their experiences with God — I am going to have a lot of questions for you, starting with what evidence do you have for the existence of your peculiar God or the particular claims you made from the Bible? Quoting Bible verses is not enough. Verses are claims, not evidence. The Bible may be enough for you, but for atheists, agnostics, and other unbelievers, quoting words from a religious text will likely be unpersuasive.
If God, Jesus, Christianity, and the Bible give you purpose and meaning — fine. Awesome, Go with God. If you find personal peace and satisfaction through these beliefs, who am I to object? However, when you want me to abandon my worldview and beliefs for yours, you are going to have to do better than just telling me a subjective story. You say Jesus delivered you from ______________, but how can I possibly know that he did? Countless behavioral changes are attributed to the supernatural actions of a supernatural deity, yet when asked for evidence for such claims, Evangelicals often run to faith or say, “I know what I know . . .” And that’s fine — for you. But if you want me to join your merry band of Christians, it is going to take more than a personal story for which you have no evidence other than you believe it to be true. But, Bruce, look at what Jesus supernaturally did for me. Again, these are claims, not evidence. I have found that most supernatural claims can be easily explained away, and the few that can’t are not enough for me to abandon atheism/humanism for your peculiar version of God and Christianity. I will politely listen to your testimony, but I cannot and will not become a Christian just because you tell a good story.
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.
David Tee/Derrick Thomas Thiessen is the tall man in the back
The following is my response to Dr. David Tee’s post titled Where is Their Evidence? Tee, who is neither a Tee nor a doctor, took issue with my post Understanding Religion from A Cost-Benefit Perspective. Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, refuses to mention me by name or properly link to this site, while, at the same time, using my copyrighted material as the main, and often only, source of material for his blog, Theology Archeology: A Site for the Glory of God. Quite frankly, without my writing, Thiessen would have little, if anything, to say. This boorish behavior has been going on for over three years.
It is tempting to ignore Theissen, writing him off as just another ill-bred Evangelical who is pathologically unable to play well with others — including Christians. Thiessen considers himself a “true Christian,” while evidencing behavior that suggests he is anything but. I choose to respond to him — as regular readers are well aware — because I don’t like people who piss in my corn flakes; people who misrepresent my views or attack me personally. Bullies such as Theissen must not be given a pass, though I try my best to only respond to him when a post of his is egregious or absurd. His latest post is both.
Now to my response:
Unbelievers make astounding statements about Christianity, God, Jesus, and the Bible. It is not their faith, yet they feel they have a right to criticize something they do not believe in or accept.
Thiessen seems to forget that I was a Christian for fifty years; that Evangelical Christianity made a very deep imprint on my life. I have as much right as anyone else to critique Evangelicalism. It was the religion of my tribe, one that I know well and continue to follow from a distance to this day.
Thiessen is a Fundamentalist; a cultist. His peculiar brand of religion causes harm, both psychologically and physically. Many ex-Evangelicals feel duty-bound to expose Fundamentalism for what it is — a pernicious cult. How could I possibly be silent while people are being harmed, knowing that telling my story and critiquing Evangelicalism might help them? Shall I stand by and do nothing while well-meaning, sincere people are drowning? Shall I say nothing while cultists such as Thiessen harm others? Sorry, but I cannot and will not be silent.
This criticism would not be so bad if they did not just want everyone else to take their word for it. That is all that it amounts to, their opposition to Christianity is just their rejection of the truth. If they had an argument, they could point to real, objective evidence that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Bible is in error.
I have written over 5,000 posts since 2014. Not one time have I ever told readers to “take my word for it.” Not-One-Time. Further, Thiessen knows that I have extensively explained why I am no longer a Christian. One need only read the posts on the Why page to know why I deconverted.
Thiessen believes the Bible (including translations) is inerrant and infallible. Every word is without error. Such a fantastical claim cannot be rationally sustained. It is absurd at face value. One need to only point to ONE error to bring the whole house of cards down. I could quote dozens and dozens of glaring errors, mistakes, and contradictions in the Bible, but doing so would be a waste of time. No amount of evidence will move Thiessen off his belief that the Bible is inerrant. As Evangelicals are wont to do, he will have an “explanation” — no matter how superficial and lame — for every error.
Typically, I ask people to read one or more of Dr. Bart Ehrman’s books on the history and nature of the Bible. Don’t take my word for it. Read the words of an esteemed New Testament scholar. Thiessen, however, won’t do this. He has read articles and blog posts about Ehrman’s books, but I doubt he has actually read one of his books from cover to cover. No need, right? The Bible is inerrant and infallible, and Ehrman is an atheist. He has nothing to offer to this discussion. Never forget, you can’t argue with an inerrantist, presuppositionalist, or creationist — Thiessen is all three. Fundamentalist minds are shut off from anything that does not fit in their narrow worldview and beliefs.
Yet, all they point to is either their unbelief or made-up evidence created by them or their fellow unbelievers. Case in point:
Many of my fellow atheists and agnostics have a hard time understanding why, exactly, people are religious. In particular, many godless people are befuddled by Evangelicals.
How can anyone believe the Bible is inspired and inerrant; believe the earth was created in six twenty-four-hour days; believe the universe is 6,027 years old; believe Adam and Eve were the first human beings; believe the story of Noah and the Ark really happened; believe that millions of Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years, and believe a Jewish man named Jesus was a God-man who worked miracles, was executed on a Roman cross, and resurrected from the dead three days later.
I could add numerous other mythical, fanciful, incredulous Bible stories to this list, all of which sound nonsensical to skeptical, rational people. (BG website)
The first paragraph is easy to refute, the Bible says that the preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who do not believe. Every Christian has experienced that attitude from unbelievers.
It remains foolishness to them because the unbeliever only experiences the here and now. Unfortunately, the unbeliever will reject any physical evidence presented to them. We have seen this done and experienced it ourselves. The best thing to do is to stop arguing with them and leave the unbeliever with the evidence we have.
The unbeliever wants physical evidence but will always find ways to reject the presented physical evidence. Some do as the late Phillip Davies did one time and just close their eyes and deny that the evidence proves anything.
Thiessen says unbelievers live for the here and now (how is this relevant to the discussion at hand?) and are averse to any evidence presented to them by Evangelicals. Thiessen uses his own subjective experiences with non-Christians as proof that unbelievers will reject any evidence shown to them by true Christians. He never bothers to consider that maybe, just maybe, the real issue is the quality of evidence being presented to unbelievers; that quoting Bible verses is not evidence. The Bible says — according to how Evangelicals interpret the Bible — that the universe was created in six literal twenty-four-hour days. This is a claim, as is the earth being 6,027 years old. Claims are not evidence, science is, and science overwhelmingly says that Thiessen’s claims are wrong. Thiessen, who fancies himself as an author, rejects much of what science has to say about the world (even though he has no substantive science training). He has the B-i-b-l-e, and that’s all he needs. In Thiessen’s world, whatever the Bible says is true, and if what it says conflicts with science, science is wrong.
In other words, a majority of unbelievers do not believe because they do not want to believe. No matter what evidence you present, it will never be good enough to convince them. The question really is not about unbelievers being amazed at why Christians believe in God and the Bible, the question is with all the supporting evidence, Christians are amazed at why unbelievers do not believe.
I am open to evidence for the central claims of Christianity. I am open to evidence that supports the claim that the Bible is inerrant. Unlike Thissen, I am willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads. But saying, “Bruce, you are wrong, the Bible says __________, is not evidence. Those are assertions, assertions for which Thiessen has yet to provide empirical evidence.
Thiessen seems unaware that only a small percentage of earthlings are “true Christians”; that the overwhelming majority of people are unbelievers, and that a minuscule number of people — mainly Evangelicals — believe the Bible is without error and infallible. Yet, Thiessen arrogantly thinks he is right and 7+ billion people are wrong. There’s not much you can say to a person who thinks like this. The first step to intellectual honesty is to admit that you could be wrong. It wasn’t until I gave space for the possibility of being wrong that I was able to consider whether the central claims of Christianity are true.
There is a wealth of physical evidence proving the Bible true. Noah’s flood alone has more evidence supporting it than any other biblical event. Just read Noah’s Flood Did Take Place to get a lot of that evidence.
Wealth of physical evidence? Really? Want to know about this so-called evidence? Read Thiessen’s 122-page “best-selling” book, Noah’s Flood Did Take Place. Theissen left off the rest of his title: An Examination of the Non-Scientific Evidence. Thiessen says there is a wealth of evidence proving young earth creationism is true, but his book says that this evidence is non-scientific.
Theissen says this about his book:
“Scientific evidence is not always the best field of research to use to know if an event, etc. took place in the past. This book goes outside of evidence to bring to the discussion all the evidence that is not talked about today and show that Noah’s Flood was real.”
As for creation, it is more rational to believe that God had the power and did create in 6- 24 hours days than it is to believe a theory that is statistically impossible to do. It is also more logical and rational to believe in a supernatural creation than it is to believe that the universe came from a small pinpoint and expanded to a size no telescope can see the edges.
Or be filled with different elements that were created by matter crashing into each other, especially when every attempt to crash things together destroys the two objects not combine them into a set of planets and stars that miraculously creates gravity, a force that even science cannot figure out how it operates.
It is also more rational and logical to believe in a super being that has the power to do all of this than some unknown entity no one can touch, feel, or experience. All that evolutionary scientists can do is study the supposed results of evolution. They cannot study the process itself nor can they put it in a test tube and examine it.
All they can do is make faulty predictions, which are not 100% correct, and ruin their theory anyway, and then declare ‘evolution did it and is true’ even though every one of their experiments is not exclusive. Any process can produce the same results.
Again, Christians scratch their heads and wonder how can unbelievers in Jesus believe such fairy tales and nonsense? There is no evidence for the alleged original conditions that started and developed life, there are no transitional life forms, and there is nothing to support the theory of evolution except some fallible human’s word.
Sigh. I will leave it to readers with science backgrounds to challenge Thiessen’s so-called “rational” assertions. I know what I know, and most importantly, I know what I don’t know.
In every case, the unbeliever presents no evidence to support their views of Christianity. Take these words for an example:
Here we are living in 2024 — an age driven by technology and science — yet millions of Evangelicals and other conservative Christians flock to Kentucky to tour Ken Ham’s monuments to ignorance: the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum…Why is it that Evangelicals continue to believe, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary? (BG website, we left out his anti-Trump remark)
….
To answer the question posed in BG’s quote, we believe because Jesus and the Bible are both real and true. There is nothing the unbeliever can say or do to change that fact. We have eyewitness testimony, we have physical evidence and both come from the believing and unbelieving sides of the world.
Thiessen provides no physical evidence for his claims, and quite frankly, none is needed. Thiessen’s claims are based on faith, not facts. Faith needs no evidence — just belief. I have argued with, debated, and talked with scores of Evangelicals over the past seven years. Without fail, “faith” is always the final answer. And once someone runs to the house of faith, no further discussion can be had. Facts do not need faith. Evidence does not need faith. Faith allows people to believe things that are not true.
Thiessen claims he has eyewitness testimony that proves that “Jesus and the Bible are both real and true.” Wikipedia says, “The majority of New Testament scholars also agree that the Gospels do not contain eyewitness accounts; but that they present the theologies of their communities rather than the testimony of eyewitnesses.”
The alleged eyewitness accounts in the Bible are claims, not evidence. If Thiessen wants to me to accept his claims, he must provide evidence that supports his claims. Just because a book says something doesn’t mean what it says is true. I will await Thiessen’s empirical evidence for his claims, especially his fanatical claim that the gospels are eyewitness testimonies. I have been studying theology for most of my sixty-six years on earth. I have yet to see any evidence that supports Thiessen’s Fundamentalist claims. If he has it, he needs to cough it up.
So here’s my offer to Thiessen: write a guest post that provides evidence for your claim that the Bible is eyewitness testimony, and I will post it unedited to this site. Actual evidence, Derrick, especially that “unbelieving” evidence you speak of (which is hilarious since you reject “unbelieving” evidence any time it challenges or contradicts your narrowminded Fundamentalist worldview). You have my email address, Derrick. I look forward to reading your scathing defense of eyewitness testimony in the Bible. Who knows, your post might convince me to reconsider the claims of Christianity.
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.
Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, continues to misuse and misattribute my content, writing several posts about me virtually every week, saying he is just using my copyrighted material to teach believers — all ten of them who read his blog, anyway. I have largely ignored Thiessen’s posts, but a recent one titled Do They [Unbelievers] Really Want a Discussion? deserves a response.
Thiessen wrote:
Over the years we have had discussions with a variety of unbelievers and people who claim to be Christian. They have not always gone well. We are not trying to evangelize these people but work hard to plant and water seeds in them.
….
They usually do not want an open-minded discussion. Their minds remain closed and they only want the believer to be open-minded to their views and points. if they want to have an open honest discussion, then the unbeliever cannot simply dismiss the points made by the believer.
….
That specific unbeliever [Bruce Gerencser] already knows that science, archaeology, and other secular topics do not cover, fully support, or provide the information he is willing to listen to. That means he only hears what he wants to hear and can freely remain in his unbelief without guilt.
….
This is why we have stopped talking to many unbelievers. They just do not want to hear the truth and they want to shield themselves from what God has to say. A believer is not allowed to have an open and honest discussion because they are already forbidden to include what their belief is and where they came to that belief.
To be truly objective, the unbeliever has to be open to everything involved in the discussion and that includes quotes from the Bible. One cannot prove the Bible true without using bible verses as part of their examples and points.
….
Those Bible verses needed to present one’s point of view are backed up by both science and archaeology. Without that reference point, it is impossible to refute the arguments made by the unbeliever. One cannot appeal to both science and archaeology to prove a point if one cannot bring pertinent bible verses into the discussion.
….
BG [Bruce Gerencser] has our email address and if he has a list of questions he wants answered, then we would be happy to answer them for him. But we will not get involved in a discussion. He won’t like the answers but the truth is the truth and he does not have it anymore.
Thiessen wrongly thinks that I have doubts about the existence of God, Jesus, and Christianity. I don’t. I am fully persuaded that the Christian God is a myth, Jesus is a man who lived and died, and the central claims of Christianity are false. I have weighed these things in the balance and found them wanting. I don’t have questions that need answering, and even if I did, I would never, never go to a disgraced preacher who lacks understanding of basic Christianity — especially soteriology — for answers. If I want answers to religious questions, I seek out experts, not hateful, mean-spirited, argumentative Evangelical preachers.
Now to the focus of this post. Evangelicals, including Thiessen, think if they quote a Bible verse, they have provided evidence for their claim. This is not true. Bible verses are claims, not evidence. Evangelicals claim Jesus was born of a virgin, and give several Bible verses (which they grossly misinterpret) to justify their claim. However, these verses are not evidence of the virgin birth. They are claims, and if Evangelicals want me to believe that a teen girl named Mary was impregnated by God (the Holy Ghost) without consent and gave birth to a God-man named Jesus, they must provide more evidence than “the Bible says.” Of course, there is no evidence for the virgin birth apart from the Bible. The same can be said for many Evangelical beliefs.
When I ask for “evidence,” I am asking for more than proof texts. I am more than happy to talk about the Bible, but when Evangelicals appeal to the Bible as the sole source of evidence for their claims, I am going to call foul. First, there is no evidence that the Bible is anything other than a fallible, errant, contradictory ancient compilation of religious writings. Believing the Bible is God’s inerrant, infallible words is a faith claim, one for which Evangelicals can provide no evidence apart from saying “I believe it to be true.” Second, the central claims of Christianity rest on a foundation of faith — a faith I do not have. I refuse to ignore evidence and facts and just faith-it.
Ninety-nine percent of the emails and messages I receive from Evangelical preachers and apologists are filled with Bible verses and regurgitated arguments and claims. No new arguments, no new claims, just the same old shit, new day. I would love to hear a new argument, but none have been forthcoming for sixteen years. I am open to new evidence for the claims of Christianity, but I highly doubt any is coming. I spent 20,000 hours reading and studying the Bible. I preached over 4,000 sermons. I have read countless theological tomes. I am confident that I have a comprehensive understanding of Christianity. If the Thiessens of the Evangelical world have new evidence for their claims, I am more than willing to hear them out. However, regurgitating the same things over and over again is not helpful nor persuasive, and I wish the Evangelicals who contact me would realize this. Alas, they don’t, so I must endure email after email of quoted — often misused — Bible verses, appeals to Pascal’s Wager, heretical theological beliefs, threats of judgment and Hell, and questions asking me if I have ever read this or that book.
Do better, Evangelicals, do better.
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.
“But is wasn’t. My mind was filled with thoughts of all the wonders I found outside the box. Things that those in my box said were bad for me; things that they were sure would ruin me. They told me that the box was all I needed. They feared I was becoming a wanderlust.
And they were right. I wandered once again outside the box, and just like before I fell down the slope of the slippery hill. This happened to me many times before I finally gave up and stayed at the bottom of the hill. When I did this, the box I had lived in for almost 50 years was no longer large enough for me. For the first time, the things I had found in the box seemed odd, peculiar, and contradictory.”
Every time I left the box, I found new and wondrous things, things I had never heard about before, things I had never experienced. The box I was in for five decades was a box whose dimensions were clearly defined. There was no guessing about the length, width, or depth of the box. Over time, the box had to be replaced. Those outside the box constantly battered the box with bats, bricks, and rocks. Sometimes, these attacks would cause gaping holes in the box and it became necessary to replace the box.
The new box was not like the old box at all. The dimensions were different and it held fewer people. Everyone in the box pretended that the box was just like the old box. An old-fashioned box, we were told. We knew the box was not like the old one, but giving the appearance that the new box was the same as the old box was more important than coming to grips with the reality that the box was different. The box keeper was adamant. He said our box was just like the first box, that the box had stood strong for 2000 years.
On one of my trips outside of the box, I found out that the box keeper wasn’t telling the truth. He was trying to preserve something that never existed. Perhaps he really didn’t know since he had never been outside the box. I found out the box manual had errors and contradictions. People outside the box questioned whether the box manual was the correct manual. For a time, fear plagued me every time I went outside the box. I realized if the box manual wasn’t true, then everything I believed about the box was wrong. I thought, I am a smart guy. How could I have been deceived for almost 50 years? Surely ALL these people in the box can’t be wrong?
As I strayed farther and farther away from the box, though, I found that there were all kinds of boxes. Every group of people had its own box — some were religious, some were political, some were social, and some were economic boxes. I always knew there were other boxes, but I considered all other boxes but the one I was in to be false boxes.
Those of us in the box always mocked those in the atheist box. None of us actually knew an atheist, nor had we ever read a book written by an atheist, but Dr. I-Have-The-Truth told us he knew all there was to know about the atheist box and he was certain the atheist box was a false box with no bottom that led straight to hell. He told us many horrible things about the atheist box. I was glad I was not one of THOSE kinds of box dwellers.
Imagine my surprise to find out that the atheist box was nothing like Dr. I-Have-The-Truth said it was. In fact, I found out there was quite a bit of diversity in the atheist box. People in the atheist box argued back and forth with each other, but once they were done arguing, they all went to the bar and were still friends. I had never seen such interaction before. In my box, when arguments broke out they usually ended with one party calling the other party not-a-true-box-dweller. Some of them even went so far as to leave the box and, just a few feet away, build another box. They said they were a new and DIFFERENT box, but everyone knew that the only thing different was the location of the box.
I found that I liked the atheist box. Those in the atheist box encouraged me to be skeptical of every box. I had never heard this before. In the box I was from, we were told to never question the box and certainly to never question or doubt the box manual. The box keeper warned us that doubt led many a box dweller outside of the box to never to return. We wondered, did they end up being recycled?
This newfound freedom to question and to be skeptical was quite liberating. It also caused a good bit of conflict for me. People from the box I had left were questioning whether I was ever a “real” box dweller. They said, Yes he was in the box but he never really believed the box manual. They called me a deceiver. Some even thought I was deluded. The box keeper used me as an illustration of what happens when a person becomes skeptical and asks questions
For a time, my wanderlust, while liberating, caused me a great deal of mental conflict. There seemed to be a constant tug and pull. I felt as if I were going to be pulled apart. I heard about a man who specialized in helping people who left boxes similar to the one I was in. So I went to see him and I knew immediately that he could help with the tug and pull that was trying to tear me apart.
Over time, I began to see how the box, the box keeper, and the box manual had taken over my life to such a degree that I lost any concept of who I was. Every time I saw the specialist I reclaimed some of the self that I had lost. As this happened, I began to deal with the questions I had about the box and the box manual.
I am not sure when the moment was, but I do remember coming to a place where I felt completely free. I felt “born again.” I thought, I am a “born again” atheist. I no longer felt any pull to return to the box. Of course, those in the box said “See what happens when you stay outside the box for a long time?”
Fourteen years have gone by since I found myself at the bottom of the slippery hill. It is hard to believe — fourteen years. People in the atheist box, the box I now call home told me that things would be better with time. They encouraged me to read and study. They told me “go where the data, the evidence leads you.”
Over time, I learned that the atheist box, and for that matter no box, is perfect. In every box there are arrogant, nasty, vindictive box dwellers. No box is perfect, but some boxes are definitely better than others. That’s the greatest wonder of all . . . I now have the ability to freely choose the box(es) I want to be in.
I guess the best thing to say is this…I no longer feel boxed in.
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.
