Evangelicals are allegedly “people of the book,” even though most of them have not read the Bible from cover to cover one time. Supposedly, the Bible is THE book above all books, one written and compiled by God himself — another belief for which there is no evidence apart from words written in the Bible. Yet, at the same time, Evangelicals claim that their faith is a “logical” faith. Sure, little buddy, sure.
Evangelicals claim univocality for the Bible, an absurd claim, to say the least. The Bible is often contradictory, littered with scientific, historical, and theological errors. Anyone who says the Bible is inerrant and infallible ain’t paying attention. Before the Internet, Evangelical ignorance about the nature and history of the Bible was understandable, but not today. Anyone with a modicum of curiosity can be quickly disabused of their supernatural beliefs about the Bible itself and its teachings.
Besides, it’s a hoot to hear Evangelicals talk about “logic” while holding absurd, irrational beliefs. The same can be said for Mormonism and Islam too.
Most Evangelicals believe in a 6,029 year old universe, talking snakes and animals, a virgin birth, and curing blindness with dirt and spit, to name a few fantastical beliefs; beliefs for which there is no evidence apart from words written in an ancient religious text. These beliefs fail rational inquiry, and Evangelicals are forced to appeal to supernaturalism and faith to “prove” their beliefs. An epic fail, to be sure.
And let me be clear, I’m not using the word “logic” in a philosophical sense. I have no interest in philosophical arguments; none of which ever leads to the Evangelical God of the Bible. As a theologically educated atheist, all I’m interested in is what the Biblical text actually says. Surely, that should be desire of every follower of Jesus, yes?
Did you think you had a “logical” faith as a Christian? How did you reconcile the errant, fallible nature of the Bible, if at all? I, for one, ran to the house of faith anytime I couldn’t make the pieces fit. Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
What follows is my response to another email from Independent Fundamentalist Evangelist Arv Edgeworth
Mr. Gerencser,
So nice to hear from you. I don’t read your blog so I won’t be reading your replies to my emails to Carolyn. I read your “Why” section, and all I saw was poor logic on your account, so I have no desire to read any further.
That’s up to you. Remember, you came to this site and then emailed me.
You claim I use poor logic, yet you provide no evidence for your claim. What laws of logic have I violated?
Bruce, you blame God and the “Church” for you neglecting your family. I have known several pastors who built strong ministries, and they had strong family ties, and I saw no evidence they neglected their families in any way. I’m sorry you neglected yours. But that is on YOU, not God.
I don’t blame “God.” He is a myth, so it would be foolish to blame a mythical being for something that happened in my life. I accept full responsibility for the choices I have made throughout my life. Part of accepting responsibility is determining why a certain decision was made. From this perspective, my pastors, professors, and the churches I pastored all played a part in how I neglected my family. I was indoctrinated and conditioned to view the world a certain way. The same goes for how I viewed my calling and the work of the ministry. I can’t be at fault for practicing what I was taught or what was modeled to me by my pastors and peers. I did what I thought was right in the eyes of God. Over time, my thinking changed. How I viewed the ministry in 1976 was very different from the way I viewed it in 1997. Unfortunately, Edgeworth does what many of my critics do: he takes a snapshot of a certain point in my life and applies it to the sum of my life, not allowing for change as I got older and matured.
I was a Creation evangelist for over 20 years, giving over 450 seminars in 27 different states. Sometimes my wife couldn’t go with me because she was our church secretary for 27 years, but she is my best friend, and we are both close to our kids. We will celebrate 60 wonderful years of marriage this week.
Okay? I’m not sure what the point is. We all have a storyline. In my case, I was saved at the age of fifteen and called to preach several weeks later. In the fall of 1976, I enrolled in classes at Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan — an IFB college started in 1954 by Dr. Tom Malone. (Malone, by the way, had an earned doctorate from an accredited state school.) While at Midwestern, I met a beautiful IFB preacher’s daughter. Two years later, we married, and this July we will celebrate forty-seven years of wedded bliss. We are blessed to have six adult children, sixteen grandchildren, and four cats.
My ministerial career of twenty-five years took my partner and me to Evangelical churches (IFB, Southern Baptist, Sovereign Grace Baptist, Christian Union, and Nondenominational) in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. I left the ministry in 2005 and converted from Christianity in 2008. I am now an atheist and a humanist.
You claim you had an intimate relationship with Christ for many years, but now claim He never existed. It can’t be both.
People change their minds. When I was a Christian, I had an intimate relationship with Jesus. I was a sincere follower of Christ. And now I am an atheist. I learned over the years that religious faith is complex; that people, myself included, can hold beliefs that are not true.
I have never said Jesus wasn’t a real person. I am not a mythicist. I think Jesus was a Jewish apocalyptic preacher who was executed for his opposition to the Roman government. He was buried in an unknown grave, never to be seen or heard from again. What I reject are the supernatural claims made for Jesus.
You blame God for all bad things in the world, then claim God doesn’t exist. More bad logic?
If God is the sovereign creator of the universe, then, yes, he is responsible for the good and bad that happens in the world. I can make a solid theological argument for this claim; a belief, by the way, I held when I was a pastor.
I can easily defend my past beliefs if challenged. After all, the Bible can be used to prove almost anything.
Like I told Carolyn, you blaming God for everything bad, would be like me seeing a smashed Chevy and no longer believing in General Motors as a great company because they build automobiles that can be smashed by humans. Poor logic.
If God is in control of all things, then, yes, God is responsible for everything, including automobiles.
If Edgeworth wants to discuss or debate this issue, I am game.
You might want to reconsider being an atheist though, if God doesn’t exist then you can’t blame Him for all your failures and the failures of other people. Then the responsibility for you neglecting your family falls only on you. If God doesn’t exist, then you can’t blame Him for creating a world where bad things can happen.
As I have repeatedly stated, I accept responsibility for every decision I have ever made. I have been honest and open about the churches I pastored, detailing both my successes and failures. That said, I refuse to accept blame for things that were not my fault or over which I had no control.
As an atheist and a humanist, I accept and understand that bad things can and do happen, not only to me but to other people. I have had a rough road in life. Life is what it is. All I know to do is to learn from past experiences. I wouldn’t wish my childhood on anyone. Sure, I survived, but not without a hell of a lot of deep wounds and scars. As a 68-year-old man, most of my struggles these days are health-related. I have gastroparesis and exocrine pancreatic insufficiency — both incurable — osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, and degenerative spine disease (that has left me with widespread disc damage in my neck and spine). In August, I had major surgery on my spine. Virtually every moment of my waking hours is dominated by debilitating pain and illness. I should note, before a Christian reader suggests that my health problems are God’s judgment for my unbelief, I started having health problems years before I deconverted. Countless prayers were uttered asking for deliverance or relief, without success.
I won’t be reading your blog that I am sure will be filled with more bad logic, but if you wish to communicate via emails that would be fine. I hope you get things straightened out in your mind so you can put things in proper perspective.
As far as getting straightened out, I am as “straight” as I can be. One hundred percent heterosexual. 🙂
When Edgeworth says “proper perspective” he means seeing things as he does, believing as he does. Remember, certainty breeds arrogance, and there’s nothing more arrogant than expecting and demanding that others believe as you do. That said, I am more than happy to embrace Edgeworth’s beliefs, provided he can give me empirical evidence for his claims. It’s really that simple. I operate on evidence. My goal is to believe as many true things as possible. That’s why I deconverted. The central claims of Christianity no longer made any sense to me. I expand my thinking on this subject in the post titled The Michael Mock Rule: It Just Doesn’t Make Sense.
We humans mess up sometimes. Blaming a God Who you say doesn’t exist isn’t the answer. Just curious, will you be worshiping the Easter Bunny next Sunday?
I have sufficiently addressed your false claim above. Again, let me be clear, I give blame and credit to whom blame and credit are due. I do, however, worship my wife. Now, there’s a God worthy of worship. 🙂
Unlike Edgeworth, I do not worship inanimate or mythical beings.
Bruce, what you BELIEVE isn’t the REALITY of the way things ACTUALLY are. I know it makes things easier for you in the make-believe world you have built for yourself, which removes a lot of the responsibility for yourself.
Says who? What evidence do you have for this claim other than that you have convinced yourself that your worship and fealty to a mythical being is “reality.” It’s not. I am a materialist. Since God is an immaterial being and you cannot provide empirical evidence for his existence, “God” is not a part of reality (outside of having to live and interact with people who believe God exists and is personally involved in their lives).
Life is actually much harder for humanists. As a Christian, every belief and action was parsed through the teachings of the Bible. What the Bible said was all that mattered. THUS SAITH THE LORD! As a humanist, I have to develop carefully the moral and ethical framework by which I live my life. There are no humanist Ten Commandments, no humanist standard.
If God does exist, you messed up. But guess what, if God doesn’t exist, you still messed up and are still messing up. But now you are also responsible for all the people you are misleading. If you cared about others, instead of just yourself, you would want them to know the REAL TRUTH. Your whole blog or website is based on bad logic and delusion, and is leading people away from God instead of toward Him.
In what way am I “misleading” people? All I know to do is share my story. I don’t try to convert people to atheism. That said, scores of people have told me that I played a part in their deconversion. I don’t preach at people. I don’t comment on Christian websites. Seventeen years ago, I started blogging. My goal then is the same today: to honestly and openly share my story, answer questions people might have about Evangelical Christianity, and to help and encourage people who have deconverted.
If this blog is based on bad logic and delusion, I suggest Edgeworth either deconstruct my story and posts on his website or start a blog to do the same. He makes all sorts of claims about me, yet provides no evidence to support his contentions.
I wish you well. If you were ever IN the body of Christ, you can never be OUT of the body of Christ, that much is sure. You will be in HEAVEN someday, but think of all those who may not be because of your DELUSION, and anger, which should be directed mostly at yourself, not God.
Answered, answered, answered.
If there is a God, according to the IFB gospel, I will go to Heaven when I die. Awesome, right? Thousands of people who read this blog will someday be in Heaven, too. What a party we will have; millions of Atheist Christians praising logic, reason, skepticism, and common sense for their glorious deliverance from the bondage of Evangelical Christianity, complete with rock music, Holy Ghost marijuana, and a free grace bar. And what will Jesus do? He will probably join us. 🙂
Saved by Reason,
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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 post VanZee references here is the most widely read and commented post on this site, Why I Hate Jesus. It is also the most misunderstood article on this site.
I am just going to say it plain, this post is full of logical fallacies. Look into Introductory and Intermediate logic by Bill Nance. It will help you sort your thoughts out. If you go through the book I can help you translate what you said into its propositions and show you were the fallacy lies.
VanZee thinks I am illogical; that if I read several books on logic (which I have) that I will then think correctly. And then what? Coming running back to Jesus and Christianity? VanZee must have missed that I grew up in the Christian church (50 years, longer than she has been alive), attended an Evangelical college, and pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years. She must have missed where I talked about my voracious reading habit as a pastor. Of course she did. VanZee read all of two posts before rendering judgment.
Let me quote the Bible. Let it speak plainly to VanZee: Answering before listening is both stupid and rude. (Proverbs 18:13)
I have a rudimentary understanding of logic and philosophy. That said, I don’t engage in arguments or debates on these subjects. Doing so is a colossal waste of time — for me, anyway. I choose, instead, to tell my story and provide critiques of Evangelicalism and the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church movement.
The aforementioned post is not a treatise on logic or philosophy. It is, in fact, a political and polemical piece. How could VanZee (and countless other Evangelicals who have objected to the article) not understand this? The graphic of the AMERICAN JESUS at the top of the page is a dead giveaway. Try harder, Evangelicals, try harder.
If VanZee would like to discuss the nature and history of the Bible or Christian theology, I would be glad to do so. Then we can see who is “illogical.” Let’s have a cage match between the Evangelical-turned-atheist and the Holy Spirit-filled Evangelical.
I’m sorry for whatever happened to you. I don’t have time to read your story now, but I can see you were hurt and you are angry… yet you seem to be longing for God and want to get saved.
VanZee couldn’t be bothered to read my story, yet she feels she knows enough to make sweeping, ignorant, false judgments about my life. See Proverbs 18:13 above.
VanZee says she can “see” that I was hurt and that I am angry, and most astoundingly, that I am longing for God and want to get saved — none of which is true. But, VanZee knows better. Evangelicals think they have God-given magical senses by which they can see inside of people and discern what it is they really believe and feel. I have no answer for such nonsense. None. All I can say to VanZee is this: read my damn story and then we will talk. Read the ABOUT page. Read the posts on the WHY? page. Read my autobiographical work. Then, and only then, are you in a position to intelligently talk with me about why I left Christianity and became an atheist. Until then, you are ignorant and uninformed.
I will pray for you. I hope to hear from you again.
Ah yes, the obligatory “I will pray for you.” Thousands of Evangelicals over the years have told me that they are praying for me. Yet, I remain an unrepentant apostate. Why, one could almost conclude that “nothing fails like prayer” or, perhaps, the only “God” Evangelicals are praying to is the ceiling.
I long ago concluded that Evangelicals say “I’m praying for you” because it is, literally, the least they can do. Such statements are little more than a fart in a hurricane. Think of all the things Evangelicals could do for me that would make a difference or make me think that I am anything more to them than another notch on their gospel gun. Years ago, an IFB evangelist sent me $100. Color me impressed. I appreciated his gift. We struck up a friendship. Maybe he hoped his act of kindness would draw me back to Jesus. Regardless, I found him to be a generous and kind person. He even sent me a fancy tie that I wear to this day. Of course, I didn’t return to Jesus. Instead, he is now an unbeliever — and we are still friends. Be careful sending me money. I might use my magical atheist powers to suck the Holy Ghost out of your heart. 🙂 All kidding aside, Evangelicals. Want to make a favorable impression on me? Send me money. Praying may make you feel good, but it’s a masturbatory act — all about you.
Saved by Reason,
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Yesterday, I went to Amazon to look for books on introductory logic. My understanding of formal logic is quite piecemeal, so I thought I would try to educate myself on the subject. Imagine my surprise when I found out that many of the books listed on the first page at Amazon were written by Evangelical authors. Or they were expensive college textbooks. Bummer, right?
While it is possible for Evangelical authors to give an overview of logic, forgive me for not wanting to give my money to Fundamentalist creationist Jason Lisle and other Evangelical authors. When Tim Challies is recommending a book or an Evangelical homeschooling leader thinks a book is essential for students, I am not inclined to buy such books.
So, I thought I would turn to the readers of this blog and ask for logic book recommendations. I am NOT looking for heavy tomes. I want books I can read and understand, and then pass off to my wife or children when I am done.
Please leave your suggestions in the comment section; that is if I have any logical readers. 🙂
Thank you for your help.
Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen 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.
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