By Dr. David Tee, Whose Name is RealDerrick Thomas Thiessen, We Already Know How, January 10, 2024
God has power that we do not have nor can comprehend. Yet we do understand that this power is greater than anything else in the universe. We do not need science to tell us what God did. God has already told us and our origins are not a mystery.
Why should we go to unbelieving, blind, deceived, and lost people to get our answers about our origins when God has already told us what he did in the Bible
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There is the truth and then there is false teaching. Biblical creation is the truth and you either accept it or you don’t. The other so-called option is a fantasy made up by those who rejected the truth yet needed something to fill the void left by that rejection.
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There is no need to debate this topic. You either preach the truth or you proclaim false teaching.
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The how is not only explained in Genesis 1 but it is also explained in other verses speaking on this topic throughout the Bible. God took only 6 days to create everything. If you cannot accept that, then you are left with false teaching.
There is no debate because there is only one truth and the Bible has the truth, not science. So there are no muddy waters to wade through and there are no old earth facts to worry about. That is because the facts support a young earth and the biblical account.
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We know how God created everything because he told us and God cannot lie.
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, 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.
Today, I received the following email from an Evangelical man named Alex. My response is indented and italicized and indented. All spelling and grammar in the original.
I’ve read a lot of your site over many months, it is certainly an interesting read, though to a Christian, very sad to hear.
As is my custom, I checked the server logs to see how many times Alex visited this site and what he read. According to the logs, Alex, who hails from England, visited the Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser fifty-three times. Not bad, considering the fact that most Evangelicals who leave preachy comments or send me preachy emails read one or two posts before sharing with me what the Lord laid upon their non-existent hearts.
I have written almost 5,000 posts since December 2014. I highly doubt that Alex has read “a lot” of my writing. Some, a handful, yes, but “a lot,” no. I do appreciate that Alex read what he did. I’ll give him a gold star for that. However, as readers shall see below, Alex “read” but he didn’t comprehend or understand. Despite investing time in reading my writing, he learned little to nothing about me; what I believe; how best to interact with me. Instead, Alex did what Evangelicals do: attack my person by calling me names, attacking my motives, and threatening me with Hell.
It reminds me greatly of Judas, who walked so closely with the Lord yet wanted out and you know the rest. Yet when he got what he thought he wanted, freedom! and a bit of money, He found that actually none of that mattered really. He gave up heaven for what? nothing.
Alex sees me as a Judas-like betrayer of Jesus. Ouch, right? Alex says Judas betrayed Jesus because he wanted freedom and money. In the end, Judas found out that these things didn’t matter. He gave up eternal life in Heaven, for what? Nothing.
First, Judas was preordained to betray Jesus. The Bible calls him the “son of perdition.” Judas had no say in the matter. Jesus was a lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. God’s plan to redeem humanity was concocted in the mind of God before Judas, Adam, and Eve were created. I am somewhat surprised that Alex doesn’t know these things, especially since, based on a Google Search, he is a preacher.
Second, we really don’t know anything about Judas. All we have are stories written by unknown authors 30-90 years after they allegedly occurred. Remember, we have no writings from Judas, no evidence that he even existed. All we have are the words of men who, let’s face it, needed a scapegoat for what happened to Jesus. Thus, Judas has become a villain in the minds of twenty centuries of Christians; right up there with the man, the myth, the legend: Satan, aka the Devil, aka Lucifer, aka Beelzebub, aka Slewfoot. It is in this vein of thinking that Alex sees the Evangelical-turned-atheist Bruce Gerencser.
Did I betray Jesus for freedom and money? Alex thinks so. Is it a betrayal to walk away from Christianity? Is it a betrayal when one realizes that Jesus is not who he claimed to be? Is it a betrayal to realize that the central claims of Christianity are untrue? Is it a betrayal to file for divorce from an abusive spouse? I think not. I devoted my life to following and serving Jesus. Yet, when I needed him the most; when I needed him to quell my doubts, questions, and fears, Jesus was AWOL, saying not a word to me. And so I started taking a close look at our marriage, finding out that I was married to deceiver, liar, and myth. If anybody is a “Judas” in this story, it’s Jesus.
Alex suggests that I left Christianity because I wanted freedom and money. On the former, he is right. I wanted the freedom to live my life as I pleased. I wanted the freedom to enjoy life to its fullest, free from the constraints of Evangelical rules, regulations, and standards. Of course, Alex will say, SEE! SEE! Bruce wanted to live a licentious life, so he divorced Jesus and ran headlong into the loving arms of hedonism. Of course, that’s not what happened. I have the freedom to do what I want, but, as a humanist, my life is governed by humanist ideals. I have moral and ethical values that matter to me. In fact, I am a far better Christian than many Evangelicals I know. Sure, I love to say fuck, enjoy good whiskey, watch R-rated movies on HBO, and have experienced making love in other than the missionary position for the purpose of procreation, but based on my good works, I am a pretty good Christian atheist. 🙂 All praise be to Loki!
On the latter — money — Alex is right too. We make more money today than we ever did in the ministry. However, contrary to what another Evangelical zealot recently told me on Facebook, we are not affluent. In fact, we are in the bottom quartile in income, especially when our exorbitant medical costs are taken to account. We don’t live in poverty, nor are we poor. However, if Polly lost her job or the U.S. government stopped paying social security recipients, we would be bankrupt in a month or two.
What is great about our post-Jesus financial position is this: we are free to spend our money any way we want. We no longer have to pay the Evangelical God taxes: tithes and offerings. We no longer have to cough up money every time our pastor — that was me — cooked up a fundraising scheme. We no longer have to “think of the missionaries” or support parachurch ministries. We are free to be as selfish or gracious as we want to be. We no longer feel “conviction” over spending money on ourselves. We now can enjoy a nice meal and a night out on the town without worrying about WWJD.
Alex seems to think that Christian bondage is a selling point. It’s not. I heard the call of secularism: “You are free, cheezy bread. You are free! Go! Go!” 🙂 Why in would I ever want to return to the bondage of Egypt? I have found the Promised Land, and I have no intention of returning to the intellectual equivalent of eating three meals a day of garlic and leeks.
Video Link And you, having walked so closely for so many years almost with the end in sight decide to betray the Lord.
Alex doesn’t seem to value intellectual integrity. People believe what they believe because they can’t do otherwise. Surely Alex knows that I left Christianity for intellectual reasons. I am an honest man. When I concluded in 2008 that the Bible was not inerrant or infallible; that the central claims of Christianity could not be rationally sustained, what did Alex want me to do? Fake it, until I make it? Faith it? What kind of person does Alex think I am? I am a man of principle and conviction. All Alex needs to do is provide sufficient evidence for the existence of the Evangelical God and the supernatural claims Christians make for Jesus and the Bible, and I will believe. Better yet, skip the evidence. All Jesus has to do is heal me, and I will believe. He allegedly healed people 2,000 years ago. Surely he can do it today! Is he not the same YESTERDAY, TODAY, and FOREVER? Think of how many people could be won to Jesus if God miraculously healed me and gloriously saved me? Yet, scores of Evangelicals have prayed for me, without success. Either God isn’t hearing their prayers, I’m more powerful than God, or he doesn’t exist. My money is on the latter.
I don’t know how many people put their faith in Jesus due to your preaching over many years, but it must be over 100 souls! Wow! Bruce, how many Christains could ever say that? Very few indeed! Imagine the blessings to be given to you in heaven ! yet you seem to want to throw it all away! I cant understand what for?
In one church alone, six hundred people made public professions of faith. Throw in a few hundred more over the course of twenty-five years in the ministry, and almost one thousand sinners have been saved through my preaching. Not bad, right? According to Alex, God would give me blessings (rewards) in Heaven after death if I would only come back to Jesus. I am throwing all these rewards away, and for what? In Alex’s Bible-sotted mind: nothing.
What, exactly, are the rewards I will receive? A new BMW? A yacht? A hundred-foot-long closet of color-matched clothing, complete with color-matched socks and shoes? No, according to the Bible, I will be rewarded with crowns. Woo Hoo, right? I guess I will be able to show off my crowns to all the Alexes in Heaven; those who didn’t win as many souls as I did? Nope. The Bible says that believers will cast their crowns at the feet of Jesus, giving him all the praise and glory for their good works. Jesus is like the boss at work who does none of the work but takes credit for yours.
You say when I die, thats it, the end. Yet how to you KNOW that? What are you basing this assumption on?
How do I know that when I die that will be the end of life for me? No Heaven, no Hell, no afterlife; just eternal darkness and nothingness. My view is not an assumption, it’s a fact. All the extant evidence available to me says that once people die, they stay dead. Five miles from my home lie my mother and grandmother in Fountain Grove Cemetery. Six miles to the south in the Sherwood Cemetery lie my dad’s parents, several aunts and uncles, and a cousin. These graves are an ever-present reminder to me that when people die, they stay dead.
If Alex has empirical evidence for his claim that there is life after death, he should provide it immediately. However, he has no such evidence. All he has are verses in an ancient religious text, faith, and feelings. That’s it. Does Alex expect me to believe in the existence of life after death, all because the Bible says so, or that he “feels” eternal life is a thing? Sorry, but that’s not how I roll. Want to convince me that Heaven, Hell, and the afterlife exist? All you have to do is provide me with sufficient empirical evidence that your claims are true.
You talk on and on about what you dont believe in, yet very little about what you now actually DO believe in.
Evidently, Alex hasn’t read any of the posts where I talk about my current beliefs; about my commitment to democratic socialism and the humanist ideal. That said, the focus of my writing is on telling my story, helping people who have questions and doubts about Christianity, and critiquing Evangelicalism. This has been my focus for the past fifteen years. I do, on occasion, write about politics, especially my progressive view of the world.
On the ABOUT page, I sum up my view of the world this way:
“You have one life. There is no heaven or hell. There is no afterlife. You have one life, it’s yours, and what you do with it is what matters most. Love and forgive those who matter to you and ignore those who add nothing to your life. Life is too short to spend time trying to make nice with those who will never make nice with you. Determine who are the people in your life that matter and give your time and devotion to them. Live each and every day to its fullest. You never know when death might come calling. Don’t waste time trying to be a jack of all trades, master of none. Find one or two things you like to do and do them well. Too many people spend way too much time doing things they will never be good at.
Here’s the conclusion of the matter. It’s your life and you best get to living it. Someday, sooner than you think, it will be over. Don’t let your dying days be ones of regret over what might have been.”
I believe in love and kindness. I believe in family, friends, and making the world a better place. I believe in enjoying what time I have left on earth, spending it with Polly, our children, our grandchildren, and people who matter to me. I believe in the Cincinnati Reds and the Cincinnati Bengals. I have great faith that one day the Reds or the Bengals will win a world championship.
Of course, all these things are secondary to Alex. What matters to him the most is life to come, and not the here and now. I am not willing to gamble the present away in the hope that I will receive some sort of divine payoff after death; a payoff no one has verifiably received.
Evoulution? then how did sex and reproduction start happening? how did life even start in the first place? It is impossible, no matter how much time you give it…..something cannot appear from nothing.
Alex is not a scientist and neither am I. I know enough to say that creationism is nonsense. Everything that science tells us about our biological world and the cosmos suggests that life and the universe did not come into existence in six literal twenty-four days; that Adam and Eve were not the first humans.
I wonder if Alex knows that scientists (or atheists) don’t think something came out of nothing. Surely, he knows this, right? Surely, he has read the countless science articles on the Internet that explain the existence of the universe? Surely, he has read books by actual scientists; men and women who have spent their lifetimes trying to understand our world? Surely, he doesn’t think Genesis is a science textbook?
I suggest Alex start here:
Video Link Yet there is still time for you to come back to the Lord!
How can Alex know this? Does he know whether I am one of the elect? Many Evangelicals have told me that I am an apostate or a reprobate — people beyond the saving grace of God. How could Alex possibly know the state of my soul? Maybe I am still a Christian, as many Independent Fundamentalist Baptists (IFB) allege; once-saved-always-saved, headed for Heaven regardless of Alex’s pronouncements about my eternal destiny. Imagine Alex having to spend eternity with me as his next-door neighbor. 🙂
Don’t you miss walking with Him? Talking to Him? Being blessed by Him?
NO, NO, and NO. I Corinthians 13:11 says: When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
I grew up, putting away childish thoughts about a magic man in the sky pulling the strings of my life. Instead of praying to a deity that doesn’t exist, I talk to real people, including myself. 🙂
The Christian life as you know is a battle, and the dark side has deceived you, please turn back to the Lord while you still can. He loves you and is waiting to welcome you back.
The Christian life is a battle because Evangelicals believe the words of the Bible are true; they believe the words of preachers are true. If they would but weigh the words of the Bible and the words of preachers in the balance, they would find them wanting.
While Alex doesn’t threaten me with Hell, the threat is implied: “turn back to the Lord while you can.” If you don’t, God is going to torture you in the Lake of Fire for eternity. Such threats don’t work with me. All they do is remind me that the Alexes of the world believe in a monstrous deity; one unworthy of my time or worship.
Alex can’t possibly know if God loves me or desires to welcome me back to the club. It always amuses me when Evangelicals say Jesus is waiting on me; that he is powerless to save me; that it is up to me to excercise my will and return to the cult. Has Alex not read what the Bible has about the sovereignty of God, God’s decrees, and the inabiity of man to save himself? My salvation rests solely in the hands of God. He knows where I live. He knows my cellphone number and email address. If you are reading this, Jesus, let’s talk. Please stop having Alex and his merry band of cultists contact me. Have you read the things they say, Jesus? Why would I ever want to buy a new Kirby vacuum? 🙂
Alex suggests that I have gone over to the dark side. Only in Evangelical Christianity is intellectual light darkness. Only in Evangelical Christianity is freedom bondage. There’s nothing I can do for Alex other than to pointedly and honestly respond to him. He arrogantly believes he is right. That’s what certainty does, it breeds arrogance. Until Alex can consider the possibility that he could be wrong; that his beliefs are not as sure and steadfast as he thinks they are, there’s not much I can do other than recommend that he read one or two of Dr. Bart Ehrman’s books on the history and nature of the Bible. Only then will there be a chink in his Evangelical armor; one through which a bit of knowledge and understanding will shine through.
Saved by Reason,
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
The truth is, you do not have to be a scientist to be qualified to speak on evolution. One reason is that evolution is not scientific. As we have stated in many of our articles exposing evolution as a false theory, there has not been one true scientific experiment that can be described as being evolutionary.
Every scientific experiment has been non-evolutionary. The second reason why non-scientists are qualified to speak about evolution is that it is false teaching. Every Christian who knows the truth can pick out the false elements of evolution and expose it for what it is. One does not need to be a scientist to do that.
They just need to know the truth and stick with that. The Bible has taught everyone about false teaching, false teachers, and false prophets, and how to spot them. There is no better teacher than Jesus or God.
— Dr. David Tee, TheologyArcheology: A Site for the Glory of God, You Do Not Need to be a Scientist, March 22, 2023 (David Tee is not an actual Dr., but he did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. His real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen,)
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.
An Evangelical man name David sent me a message today via my Facebook Page. Here’s what he had to say (all spelling and grammar in the original):
That’s interesting. I know in my mind I wondered about my faith for a long time. I’ve seen some miraculous stuff in my lifetime as I’m sure you have too. I saw the shekinah glory move through the church isles when I was about 22 which was 32 years ago and walked away from God for along time but I always felt God tugging on me trying to bring me back. Have you every studied the evidence on both sides of evolution vs creation? There’s a lot of scientific evidence for creation and a lot of scientists who believe that God created it all and that’s how I believe also after looking at all the evidence. I’m not one of those who would say well you just really was never saved because I believe you are. The one thing that stood out to me in your conversation between the two of you that have renounced Christianity was that there’s been a lot of people that are calling themselves Christians did not do the Christian thing to either one of y’all and I get the impression that y’all are both bitter with God because of it. I hope you realize that and don’t take what broken people do and turn it on God. My hope is that one day you’ll come back to God and I will definitely pray that you do. Sorry that wife never got to experience some of the stuff you did as I’m sure sooner or later she would have. I had always had a little bit of faith even when I was running from God and it all started with offense from other people but now my faith is strong and I have no doubt God put us here and the Bible is his word due to the the underlying mathematics in the Greek and Hebrew text and just from studying the Bible in general. Bruce I will be praying for you brother as I believe you still are a Christian. You got a wonderful looking family and good luck to you sir.
I want to give David the benefit of the doubt, but I find emails, comments, and messages such as his increasingly irritating, frustrating, and condescending. While David says I have a “wonderful looking family” and wishes me luck, his email also ignores what I have publicly said and written about my journey from Evangelicalism to atheism, and essentially calls me a liar (a point which I shall press in a moment).
David, as many Evangelicals do, conflates atheism with acceptance of evolution as the best explanation of the natural world. Atheism is one thing, and one thing alone: the lack of belief in the existence of gods. I wish Evangelicals would write this down on a post-it note and attach it to their computer screens; a reminder of what atheism actually is. Atheists have all sorts of beliefs — crazy beliefs, promoters of woo. Jesus, some atheists even voted for Donald Trump. Sure, atheists generally accept what science says about our biological world and the universe, but that does not mean such beliefs require atheism. Scores of Christians believe in theistic evolution or are old earth creationists. Are these followers of Jesus actually atheists too?
I am not a scientist and neither is David. Neither of us is qualified to speak authoritatively on evolution. As a former Evangelical pastor for twenty-five years, I understand creationism inside and inside. I don’t need a science education to understand creationism. Why? Creationism (and its gussied-up step-sister intelligent design) is a theological claim, not a scientific claim. Science, in fact, has repeatedly repudiated creationist claims. Sure a handful of scientists, operating from the presuppositions that the Christian God exists and the Bible is true, are creationists, but the vast majority of scientists believe evolution best explains our natural world, and that cosmology and other sciences best explain the universe.
Let me say this one more time, evolution played no part in my deconversion from Christianity. None, nada, zip. I read my first book on evolution in 2012 — Why Evolution is True by Dr. Jerry Coyne — four years after I deconverted. I have read several books about evolution since then and continue to watch YouTube videos about evolution. I have found Forrest Valkai’s video series on evolution to be quite helpful. Here’s episode one:
I generally accept scientific consensus. Since I am not a trained scientist, I am in no position to judge the work of people who have dedicated their lives to understanding our biological world. I try to educate myself and be informed as possible, but I will always be a novice. Thus, as I do with many things, I trust experts. Want to talk theology, Evangelicalism, or sex, I’m your man. Okay, maybe not that last one. No one knows everything. My late brother-in-law was a cardiologist, yet he couldn’t fix his computer or palm pilot if his life depended on it. That was my job. He trusted my expertise about computers and I trusted his expertise about medicine. That’s the way the world works. Sadly, within Evangelicalism, there are countless people who think if they read books published by Answers in Genesis and other creationist parachurch ministries, they are somehow experts on evolution. They are not, but don’t bother trying to tell them that.
Typically, when I interact with creationists, I try to get them to discuss the foundation of their creationist beliefs — the Bible. Not science, the Bible. If I can disabuse them of the notion that the Bible is in any way inerrant and infallible, then perhaps they will see that believing God created the universe in six literal twenty-four hours days, 6,026 years ago is rationally and intellectually unsustainable.
Let me conclude by answering David’s statements about my life and that of my wife, Polly. David believes that Polly and I are still Christians; that we are just bitter over harm caused to us by other Christians. David supposedly watched my video interview with the Harmonic Atheist.
Did he hear me say that I am bitter about what Christians did to me? Of course not. This is a straw man that David has built of me (and Polly) in his mind. There’s nothing in my story that suggests I was bitter towards God or Christians. I am not, by nature, a bitter person, so any claim that I am is false. If anything would make me bitter, it would be constant attacks on my character by God’s chosen ones.
David says he is a Christian. I believe him. I accept his story (testimony) at face value. Who am I to say that he is not, right? Why can’t David extend the same respect to me? Rarely does a day go by without an Evangelical Christian telling me what I really believe, what’s wrong with me, why I am not a Christian, etc. They daily dig through my story, looking for things that don’t fit their peculiar worldview. Others psychoanalyze me. Some attack, harass, call names, and threaten me with judgment, Hell, and death.
The Bible says you will know a tree by the fruit it produces. From my corner in the orchard, Evangelicalism is a poisonous tree that produces poisonous fruit. Even if I were inclined to return to Christianity, it sure as Hell wouldn’t be Evangelicalism. Of course, that ain’t going to happen. I have weighed Christianity in the balance and found it wanting. Unless new evidence is presented to me, I see no reason to reconsider my decision to divorce Jesus.
This brings me to my last objection to David’s message: the idea that I am still a Christian. This is, by far, the silliest thing Evangelicals say to me. What, in my life, remotely suggests that I am a Christian? Nothing. The God of the Bible is a myth. The Jesus of the Bible is forever dead, and did not perform the miracles recorded in the Bible. The Bible is an errant, fallible manmade book. I reject EVERY central claim of Christianity including the divinity of Christ, the virgin birth of Christ, and the resurrection of Christ. Can I fully, and without reservation, reject these claims and others? In what universe am I still a Christian?
No, the problem here is that David can’t square my story with his peculiar theology, so he claims I am still a Christian. Once saved, always saved, right? If David wants me to accept his claim that he is a Christian, then he must mine. That’s respect. I AM AN ATHEIST. Proudly so. I am, according to the Bible, an apostate and a reprobate.
I am not David’s brother. I am a stranger on the Internet. As is common among Evangelicals, they cheapen words such as love and brother. Becoming my brother is reserved for my three biological brothers — two of whom I became aware of two years ago — and men who are close, intimate friends. And trust me, I have very few male friends. I am not promiscuous with my love and friendship as Evangelicals are.
Well, enough. I am sure David got more than he bargained for. I suspect all I did with this post is prove to him I am bitter. 🙂
Saved by Reason,
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This is the latest installment in The Voices of Atheism series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. Know of a good video that espouses atheism/agnosticism or challenges the claims of the Abrahamic religions? Please email me the name of the video or a link to it. I believe this series will be an excellent addition to The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser.
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.
Ken Ham, CEO of Answers in Genesis and stand-in for Captain Noah on the Kentucky Ark of Ignorance, is well-known for pointing to the Bible — God’s science textbook — as THE (only/final) authority when it comes to understanding how the universe came to be. Ham is noted for telling Bill Nye that the Bible was all-sufficient, that it alone explains how everything came to be. But here’s the thing, Ham doesn’t really believe this. Here’s proof of my contention:
Ken, I ask you, why do we need to read your materials? I thought all we needed to do is read Genesis 1-3. Now you are saying that the Bible is NOT sufficient for our understanding of how the universe and biological life came to be. What’s up with that?
Of course, Evangelicals don’t really believe that the Bible is a one-stop knowledge store. If this was really the case, there would be no need for the thousands of Christian books that are published every year. There would also be no need for “ministries” such as Answers in Genesis. Ham and his cadre of professional dispensers of ignorance have published over ten thousand articles that are meant to help Evangelicals understand what God said in Genesis 1-3. If God has spoken, why would Christians have any reason to read any of Ham’s articles? The answer, of course, is that Ham needs 10,000 loads of bullshit to cover up his irrational, anti-scientific, literalistic interpretation of the Bible.
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.
Ken Ham, known as the ayatollah and grand poohbah of Kentucky and a purveyor of Fundamentalist ignorance, frequently writes articles about atheism. Several years ago, Ham asked and then answered the question, Why Do Atheists Care? Here is some of what this noted intellectual genius of young-earth creationism had to say:
Atheists get very passionate when it comes to fighting biblical Christianity. If God doesn’t exist—and life has no ultimate meaning—why do they even care?
Why do atheists get so emotional and aggressive in opposing biblical Christianity? Why does it bother them? Why does it matter at all to them?
When Answers in Genesis announced plans to build the Creation Museum, a local atheist group began attacking the ministry of Answers in Genesis and campaigning against the museum. When the museum was opened, the atheists gathered outside the museum to protest the opening of this facility. But why did they do this?
At the time of this issue’s publication, atheists are aggressively opposing a new project involving the building of a life-size Noah’s Ark, the Ark Encounter. But what is it to atheists if Christians build such a facility to proclaim the Christian message? After all, thousands of secular museums across the USA and other countries around the world are already proclaiming an atheistic evolutionary message to the public. Government schools throughout the world by and large indoctrinate hundreds of millions of the coming generations in naturalism—really atheism.
So why do atheists get so upset with a minority that stands for biblical Christianity?
During my debate with Bill Nye “the Science Guy” on February 4, 2014, Bill was asked where matter came from. In his answer he said it was a great mystery, but he loved the “joy of discovery” as he pursued such questions. In my responses to Bill’s answers, I asked him why the joy of discovery mattered to him. I explained that from Bill’s perspective, life is the result of natural processes and there is no biblical God, so when he dies, he won’t even know he ever existed or knew anything. Then, when others who knew him die, they won’t know they ever knew him, either. Eventually, from his perspective of naturalism, the whole universe will die and no one will ever know they ever existed. So what is the purpose of this “joy of discovery”? Really, the naturalistic view of life is ultimately purposeless and meaningless!
Think about the well-known atheist Richard Dawkins. Why does he spend so much time writing and speaking against Someone (God) he doesn’t believe exists? Why is he so aggressive against biblical Christianity? In an ultimately purposeless and meaningless existence, why does it matter to him if people believe in the God of the Bible and the account of creation as outlined in Genesis? Why bother fighting against such people when, from his perspective, eventually no one will even know they ever existed?
No matter how many times atheists point out to Ham that they don’t live purposeless and meaningless lives, he continues to recite these lies as a six-year-old would when reciting his memory verse in Sunday school. Ham seems to think that if he repeats the same lie over and over, it will magically become true. Later in the same article, Ham continues his lying ways by telling readers that atheists “aren’t fighting for the truth, but suppressing it” — “truth” being Ham’s literalistic interpretation of the Christian Bible. According to Ham:
Really then, when Bill Nye, Richard Dawkins, and others so aggressively oppose biblical Christianity, what they are doing is this. They are covering their ears and closing their eyes and saying, “I refuse to submit to the God who created me. I refuse to acknowledge that God is the creator. I refuse to accept that I’m a sinner in need of salvation. I want to write my own rules! Therefore I must oppose anything that pricks my conscience and aggressively suppress [sic] the truth to justify my rebellion.”
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So why do these who so aggressively oppose Christianity care? They care because they are desperately trying to justify their rebellion against the truth. They don’t want to admit that they are sinners in need of salvation and thus need to submit to the God who created them and owns them.
Again, Ham continues to lie, refusing to accept the reasons atheists give for not believing in his peculiar version of God. Our objection to Christianity, its God, and the Bible is not one of deliberate denial of truth. Far from it. Many atheists such as myself spent most of our lives reading and studying the Bible. We know the Bible from cover to cover. It is not that we have some sort of intellectual deficiency or have some secret desire to eat babies or star in porn movies. Our rejection of Christianity is based on our careful examination of its claims. Are the claims Christians make for God, Jesus, and the Bible true? The atheist says no. Rather than accept this, Ham lies and tells his followers that the real reason atheists aren’t Christians is that they suppress the truth and are in rebellion to God.
At one time I was willing to give Ham the benefit of the doubt. I thought, Ham is sincere. He genuinely wants atheists to be saved. I no longer believe this. Since Ham refuses to accurately report the atheistic/agnostic/humanistic/secularist worldview, I can only conclude that he has some sort of ulterior motive that requires him to lie about his adversaries. What could that motive be? you ask. I think Ken Ham needs atheists. He needs an enemy to fight, a war to wage. Ham believes that True Christians® are called on to wage war against Satan and his earthly emissaries. Atheists are an easy target because most Evangelicals equate atheism with Satanism (and Ham does nothing to dispel this notion). Ham knows that Evangelicals — his primary target audience — live lives that are indistinguishable from those of non-Christians. In order to stir up the passions of these passive Christians, Ham uses hyperbolic language when speaking of his three great enemies: secularism, atheism, and liberalism. Ham knows that stirred passions mean more donations, so this is THE reason Ham continues to misrepresent what atheists and secularists really believe. Ham lies because lying is good for business. Evangelicals, thanks to rapturist eschatology, are conditioned to believe the “world” is an awful place and should be avoided at all costs. And what better way to avoid the world than to visit Ham’s monuments to ignorance — the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter.
Ham knows that his Museum and Ark theme park won’t bring people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. I don’t know of one atheist who has become a Christian as a result of visiting Ham’s entertainment facilities. Ham’s goal has never been to save souls. The Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter are meant to reinforce Evangelical young-earth creationist beliefs. Why does Ham encourage Christian parents to bring their children to the Museum and Ark Encounter (by giving children free admission)? Why are most of the things in these facilities geared towards teenagers and young children (i.e., zip line, petting zoo)? Ham’s objective is to indoctrinate another generation in the creationist way of thinking. By focusing on children, Ham ensures that when these children grow up and marry that they too will bring their children for a visit, thus providing continued income for his empire.
As with much that goes on in the name of the Christian God, it is all about money. Ham knows that the key to his future prosperity rests on his ability to generate income. That was the real reason for building the Ark Encounter. Creation Museum visit numbers and income were in decline, and Ham needed something that would stir the passions of his fellow Evangelicals, resulting in them paying his ministries a visit. By building a wood replica of a fictional boat and throwing in a few amenities homeschoolers and children will be sure to love, Ham ensured that the next few years will have increased revenues. Knowing that revenues will later decline, Ham is already planning to build a new attraction, a monument to speaking in tongues, the Tower of Babel. What’s next? A water park where children can watch God drowning men, women, children, and unborn children while Noah and his clan float by in a wood boat?
Ham knows that fighting the atheist horde increases the bottom line, and it is for this reason he really doesn’t want to see any of us saved. If all the secularists and atheists got saved, Ham wouldn’t have anyone to rail against. And with no enemy, revenues would decline and Ham’s monuments to ignorance would fall into disrepair. Ham will continue to lie about atheism because, in his mind, the end justifies the means. He cares more about money than he does honesty. For those creationists who object to my portrayal of Ham as a money-grubbing liar, the easy way to repudiate my claims is for Ken Ham and his ministries to publicly release their financial reports. Of course, it will be a cold day in Kentucky before Ham ever releases his financials.
Twenty years from now, Ham’s ministries will be in decline, facing increasing financial pressures. Ham surely knows that Evangelicals won’t treat the Creationist Museum and the Ark Encounter as they do nearby King’s Island. Once Evangelicals have visited the Museum and Ark Encounter, they are unlikely to return. Been there, done that, Evangelicals say to themselves. Imagine children being forced to repeatedly visit a museum. Doing so is not their idea of summer fun. When asked what they would rather do: visit Bro Ham’s ministry or go to King’s Island/Cedar Point, I suspect most children will quickly opt to ride roller coasters. And since the Museum/Ark Encounter combo ticket is more expensive than that of the amusement parks, many Evangelical parents will decide to take their families to one of the theme parks instead. Facing financial decline, Ham will be forced to scale back his empire. As science continues to draw future creationists away from his pernicious teachings, Ham will be forced to rely on fund-raising appeals or large estate donations from dead supporters. These too will dry up as older supporters die off. By then Ham will likely be dead, leaving others with the responsibility to manage the Creationist Titanic. Eventually, Ham’s monuments to ignorance will close their doors and become decaying testimonies to the dying breaths of a thoroughly discredited system of belief. I will likely be dead when this happens, so I will leave it to my grandchildren to say good riddance.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Secular science does not know what objective truth is because it has already taken a side. It is on the side of evil once they rejected God and his son. All of their work is done from a biased viewpoint. God has said that there are only 2 sides and if you are not on his, you are on evil’s side.
They [non-Christian scientists] are also very easily misled as well. Sure they can see more of the universe with the new Webb telescope but without the right starting point, they are lost and do not know what they are looking at.
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Evolutionary and Big bang theories do not help because those are false concepts and cannot be verified. In other words, without the true clues [the Bible], the scientist is free to make up whatever they want about what they see, even when it is clearly wrong.
Observation is useless without that correct starting information. They will learn nothing but how beautiful the universe is and how complex it is. The scientists cannot see into the past for it is gone and they cannot see into the future for it has not arrived.
They are just fooling themselves and continually proving they do not know what they are talking about.
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The scientific method is not making these discoveries and it is not human curiosity. Science is no better at fighting diseases than it was 5,000 years ago. Death will happen and sometimes that death happens at the hands of the scientific professional.
Oh, and medical science does not depend on the evolutionary theory. it depends solely on fully formed chemicals and cells, etc. interacting with each other. It is what God did that medical science owes its gratitude.
Try putting unfully formed molecules together and see what happens. You can’t because they do not exist. What that means is that scientists are not doing evolutionary experiments. They are doing experiments using God’s fully formed creative designs.
Not one scientific experiment has followed true evolutionary claims. They are all based on God’s work.
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If you do science God’s way, you will see a vast difference in the results. You won’t see a lot of wasted time and wasted money spent on fruitless pursuits that have no hope of ever being true.
— Fake Dr. David Tee, TheologyArchaeology: A Site For The Glory of Ignorance, They Never Have a Response, January 2, 2022
Several years ago, Tim Gilleand wrote a blog post titled How Can All Those Scientists be Wrong? In his post, Gilleand argued that creationists and scientists both have the same data and that the difference between them is how that information is interpreted. Gilleand wrote:
I believe that the scientific method requires that all evidence must be interpreted before a conclusion is drawn. My issue is not with the evidence itself, it is with the interpretation stage. I believe that scientists interpret the evidence through a worldview filter. Their worldview filter includes their personal beliefs about how the world does or does not operate. For example, if I believe there is no supernatural influence in the world and everything continues on the way and the rate at which it always has, then I am going to interpret something like radiometric decay or geology much differently than someone who believes God has intervened in this world at various points in our early history.
Let’s look at a couple examples…
If God really created Adam on the literal sixth day of creation – how old do you think he might look on day 7? Was he a full grown man? 30… maybe 40? But the truth is he is only one day old. He was created fully mature and able to sustain himself. Now apply that concept to the rest of creation. If God really created the world in six days fully mature and self-sustaining – how might that affect the apparent age of the earth? And how might that affect our research if we left out that concept? Might we come to a much different conclusion? I think so. The point is evidence like radiometric dating the age of the earth doesn’t rule out a special creation because things still might appear older than they truly are and yet that would still be in line Biblicaly (sic).
But isn’t that a deceptive God?? I hear this all the time. No, it’s not. Perhaps God never intended us to study the age of the earth while ignoring his revelation about how He did it! Not God’s deception, human ignorance.
As for geology, we have to look at what might have happened had Noah’s flood actually covered and destroyed the whole world as the Bible seems to imply. Take the layers at the Grand Canyon. Two schools of thought: either a little bit of water (the Colorado River) over a long period of time (millions of years) OR a lot of water (the flood) over a little period of time. The same evidence, different conclusions based on different interpretations that are dependent on our worldview assumptions.
Is the difference between creationists and scientists really a matter of worldview? Is it, as Gilleand says, a matter of how one interprets the world? Creationists would love for this to be true, but doing science requires no particular worldview. Some scientists are devout Christians, yet they come to the same conclusions as their non-Christian colleagues. It is the creationist alone who allows his worldview to radically alter his view of scientific data.
The argument Gilleand is trying to make is that creationists and scientists alike have a starting point from which they begin their investigations While this is, to some degree true, let me demonstrate the difference between the starting points of creationists and scientists. Scientists begin with what we know, the collective body of knowledge we call science. This body of knowledge changes often, as scientists continue to make new discoveries and test currently held scientific ideas. Any student of the modern scientific era knows that science has radically adapted and changed as new information is brought forth. Things that were once considered settled facts are later, thanks to the diligent work of scientists, shown to be wrong. This is why the scientific method is vitally important to our understanding of the universe and the future of all life. It is a self-correcting way of explaining and understanding the world.
Creationists, on the other hand, do not start with the collective body of knowledge we call science. Their starting point begins not with science at all, but with a literalist, Fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian Bible. Gilleand admits this when he says:
As a Christian, I believe God does and has intervened in our world. I also believe the Bible is a historical, reliable account of the creation of the world.
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We believe we have additional information in the revealed word of God – therefore we see our starting assumptions as more reliable than fallible human intellect because it comes straight from God who was there, observed it, and doesn’t lie.
For creationists like Gilleand, their interpretation of the world begins not with what they can see and know, but with what unknown authors wrote in an ancient religious text thousands of years ago. Creationists are less than honest when they say that the issue is how the scientific data is interpreted. No matter WHAT science says, creationists will always retreat to faith and their literalistic interpretation of the Bible. Non-creationists know that the universe is billions of years old. How do we know this? Science. While scientists continue to study the universe, creationists have no need to do so. Their minds are made up: God created the universe in six literal twenty-four hours days, 6,024 years ago. None of what science tells us about the universe ultimately matters to the creationist. Why? To put it simply: the BIBLE SAYS.
For these reasons, I have long suggested that it is generally a waste of time to argue matters of science with creationists. The issue is not one of science, but theology. This is why when creationists comment on this blog, I ignore their anti-science rants and instead attack their beliefs about the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible. Once inerrancy and literalism fall, the argument for creationism is over. This is why, a few years back, when Gilleand stopped by this blog to wage war with the Evangelical preacher-turned-atheist, I challenged his view of the Bible. Gilleand ultimately retreated to the house of faith, safe from the assault of the evil, Christ-denying atheist.
If creationists want their understanding of the world to be accepted as the prevailing scientific view, then they need to start publishing studies in non-Evangelical peer-reviewed scientific journals. Why don’t creationists do this? Surely, if it is self-evident that creationism is true and just a matter of properly interpreting the scientific data, science journals should be filled with studies and papers by creationist scientists. Yet, year after year no studies or papers are forthcoming. The creationist answer for this is that there is a conspiracy by non-creationist scientists to keep creationists from publishing. Their evidence for this? None. If the evidence for creationism is overwhelming, then the science community will grudgingly admit they were wrong and embrace the creationist interpretation of the data. Of course, the creationist, at this point, responds, right, these scientists are unsaved. They don’t believe in the existence of the Christian God, nor do they believe that the Bible is a supernatural, authoritative text. So then, it is clear, the real issue is theology, not science.
Gilleand describes his apologetics ministry this way:
. . . a new apologetics ministry based in Northern Indiana. Our mission stems from the verse found in Colossians 4:6 (NIV) – “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” We have formed this ministry to combat modern secularist tendencies to pull people (often times including Christians) away from the accurate original Biblical message. We will discuss hot topics ranging from creation vs. evolution, homosexuality, abortion, modern politics, the supposed separation of church and state, often-cited inaccuracies in the Scriptures, end times, and much more. We aim to make our posts informative, researched from both sides of the aisle, and considerate of opposing views (grace) but firm in our stance (salt).
You see, even for Gilleand, it is not about the science. It is all about apologetics, the defending of the Fundamentalist Christian view of the world. In Gilleand’s eyes, everything begins and ends with the Christian God and the Protestant Christian Bible. Gilleand’s literalistic interpretation of the Bible becomes a box in which everything must fit. (Please see The Danger of Being in a Box and Why it Makes Sense When You Are in It and What I Found When I Left the Box.) While Gilleand has convinced himself that he has “researched from both sides of the aisle” and considered “opposing views,” his “firm stance” never changes. This is Fundamentalism at its finest: No matter what, I believe. While Gilleand thinks of himself as being open-minded, the fact is he is only willing to consider data that neatly fits within his box. Any data outside of this box is rejected, labeled as being contrary to the Christian God and the Bible.
There is no hope of reaching people who think like this. Try as you might to reach them, their minds are walled off from anything that contradicts or challenges their worldview. For them, the lines are clearly drawn, and no amount of argument will change their minds. Until Fundamentalists are willing to venture past the lines they have drawn, there is no possible way for someone like me to move them away from their ill-informed, ignorant view of the world.
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.
