The Best of the Blogging World This Week

I know it may sound like I'm being a lazy blogger with this post, but there truly has been so many great blog posts out there from fellow bloggers.

 I would like to highlight a few of them, so many great posts on everything from a great conclusion to a great series on leaving Christianity, to a blog post about Ken Ham (the founder of the Creation Museum/Answers in Genesis), and how his plans for theme park have gone down in flames.

Ken Ham and his disastrous "Ark Park" experiment:

Bruce Gerencser in his great blog, The Way Forward, wrote recently about Ken Ham wanting to expand his Creation Museum (which is already starting to struggle financially), by building a theme park based on the Old Testament and its stories. Ken Ham is struggling to come up with funding, and he is scrambling, trying to get the state of Kentucky, as well as the nearby town of Williamstown to cough up the cash to support him with direct funding and bond issuing.

Besides the problem of church/state separation, it will be a disaster if Kentucky and Williamstown go along with this, because much of his plans hinge on the financial success of this endeavor. In order for it to be successful, it will require 1 million people a year to be paying visitors, and he can only get about 400,000 people a year to visit his Creation Museum.

Read more at The Way Forward

Politicians Forced to Take Random Blood Test:

Confessions of a Former John Piper Fan

That is what I intended the title of my guest post at The Way Forward, Bruce Gerencser's blog to be. Instead, just like I did with my guest post at Leaving Fundamentalism, I copy/pasted from Google Drive, and forgot to mention the title. (The guest post at Leaving Fundamentalism was originally intended to have the title of "Jumping on Cassettes", if you read that post, you will find out why)

Oh well...

The title I originally wrote came from the fact that it talks about a time in my life where someone close to me got me into the teachings of Baptist minister John Piper (pictured at left).

The were some aspects of his teaching,  that would have repulsed me even as a fundamentalist, the details of which I didn't find out until recently.

Read the guest post over at The Way Forward. Click here.

Exposing the IFB: Pastor Steven Anderson

Pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Phoenix is no stranger to controversy or militant rhetoric.

He is a pastor in the loosely organized Indepdent Fundamental Baptist network, and his teachings and public statements are the most extreme and bizarre I have ever seen from any leader in the IFB cult.

In 2009 he said that he prays for the death of President Obama:

"I hope that God strikes Barack Obama with brain cancer so he can die like Ted Kennedy and I hope it happens today,"

He is militantly homophobic, saying that not only should homosexuality be illegal, but that gays should be executed, and that gays supposedly "recruit" children into homosexuality through rampant sexual abuse:

A Few Notes on the Atheist Blogging World

I always like to keep with the atheist blogging world, I like to discover blogs I haven't read before, and share great blogs with anyone who might be interested.

Two of my favorite bloggers have come back after a hiatus, and I would like to introduce two blogs to my readers.

The Way Forward: I am so happy to see that Bruce Gerenscer has returned, apparently he started back up again some time ago, but I just recently found out he had started blogging again.

 I always liked Bruce's writing, and he had a unique perspective as a former fundamentalist because he was a pastor in the Independent Fundamental Baptist organization. He is a great guy, he had found my blog when I first started blogging, and would comment on posts sometimes. I enjoyed having him stop by, and I had a lot of respect for him.

A Sad Day for the Atheist Blogging World

Over the weekend, I noticed that links for Bruce Gerenscer were not showing up in the feed for the blog list on the homepage here, I ran a google search today for his blog, and the links that normally direct there are leading to an ad site. He's sold the domain name without no apparent warning (at least that I know of). I know he said before that he was in failing health, I don't know what has happened to him. Did he just get tired of blogging and give up? Is he dying? I don't know.

It's disappointing that he is no longer blogging, he was one of my favorite writers, and an occasional commentor on my blog, he apparently had found my blog because of a response on my blog to an article he wrote on the Freethought Blogs/Atheism + controversy a few months ago. He would stop by from time to time after with encouragement and advice on how to promote my blog. He was a pastor in the Independent Fundamental Baptist organization, and was a great first hand resource on what the organization was truly like. He kept a close eye on the group as a blogger, and I had him as one my resources on the Exposing the IFB  page (I'll have to remove him from there today, since not even past posts are accessible now). If you follow my Google + page, you probably saw links to his blog posts from time to time.

I hope he's alright, if you're out there, Bruce, and reading this, comment here or send me an e-mail at ramblingsofsheldon@gmail.com, I want to know what happened, and if you are alright.

Friday Randomness

I'm sure that you're used to my randomness around here, after all, the blog is called Ramblings of Sheldon.
Here's a few great things that I have ran across online, that I just wanted to share.


Bruce Gerencser hits it out of the park as always with his post If God is Pro-Life, Why Did He Kill So Many Children? , in which he takes on the pro-life movement, and asks that if pro-lifers think it's God's will to protect human life, why do they worship a God who has taken so many lives throughout history?

It's time for a little humor after reading that, here's Aussie comedian Jim Jefferies talking about his nearly life long struggle with depression, and how good we actually have it in Western nations, even though we may not think that we do.... This is one of his milder routines, but he is Australian, so his comedy is not for the easily offended, that's what I have always enjoyed about him.

Bruce Gecenscener Part 2: Comments on Deconversion

(My note: this is part two in my response to Bruce Gecenscener’s post about atheism and the atheist + movement)

Read my response to his comments about atheism + here.

My original post was getting long, and was going off track into my feelings and his comments about de-conversion, the following are his comments about the process of leaving Christianity, and my personal experiences with leaving the faith. His words from the original article are in bold and quotes, my responses are in plain text flowing each statement:

"I suspect that the largest percentage of new atheists come from Evangelical and Fundamentalist churches. Learning that the Bible is not what the church claims it is, and becoming disillusioned with the shrill, acerbic hate speech of their preachers, has turned more people into atheists than Madalyn Murray O’Hair could every of hoped for." 

Very true, and for more on this topic, read a great article by Johnny Scaramanga, author of Leaving Fundamentalism in this guest post, Fundamentalism: The Leading Cause of Atheism .

"When people deconvert they don’t immediately become atheists in the truest sense of the word. They may say they are atheists, but often this is just a reaction to their former religious beliefs. Some people get over their anger and return to Christianity. They were never atheists in the first place. They were angry, and hurling the words, I am an atheist, was a way of poking their finger in the eye of the bear."

This is part of the "angry" stage of deconversion, a person knows that they no longer want to be part of Christianity, and they disgusted by it's beliefs and rhetoric. At this point, they know what they don't believe, but not yet  what they do believe, so the label "atheist" sounds just about right at this point, it feels good to finally say it, because the label atheist is such a strong term, it's a rejection of what they once were, but not yet who they are now. 

People who remain in this stage, I believe are responsible for the "re-converts" that keep surfacing, people who eventually return to their faith. It's an emotional reaction and struggle without any intellectual foundation yet. Those who progress from this emotional state to an intellectual foundation become grounded atheists and agnostics, those who don't, often end up drifting back, if not to Christianity, than possibly another religion altogether.

Many de-converts take on the atheist label very early on, I didn't, it took me over a year to finally recognize myself as the agnostic that I am. Immediately after my rejection of Christianity, I still thought that I believed in a god, but knew that I didn't believe in the god of Christianity, I wondered if I was just simply a typical American non-Christian theist, who still believes in Heaven and Hell, or for a very brief time, a deist. It was a time of searching, trying to redefine myself. I spoke to very few people about my exit from fundamentalism during this time, or my ever changing feelings, until I knew what I believed for sure.

"A true atheist is born out of heartache, contemplation, and study."

During the heartache stage, I tried to find the answers within Christianity, first within the Bible, then, because of the people who influenced me spiritually at the time, in the writings of author John Piper. I desperately wanted to remain a Christian, and yet answer the nagging questions and doubts definitely, bury them once and for all, and go on with my life a stronger Christian, that, as you have guessed by now, didn't happen. 

During the contemplation stage, I prayed for answers and for wisdom in my search and received no response at all from god, just empty silence. I spent hours thinking over the Bible and the Christian writings/authors that I had read, making detailed notes of points made, and bringing my questions up to two people that I looked up to in my Christian world, two people who were well versed in the beliefs of fundamentalism. 

I still came up empty.

After all this, and coming to the realization that I am, in fact an agnostic, for a time, I still felt empty, I felt a sense of loss. This world is all there is? How disappointing! So there's no afterlife where justice is given out, the good people rewarded, and the evil people punished? Life felt utterly pointless, I also missed the sense of wonder in the universe that I had as Christian, in believing that there was a divine plan for me being on earth, and that this world was created by design for a purpose by god. Atheism felt so impersonal and uninspiring. 

Eventually I got over this, the sense of wonder is now starting to come back, when you think about it, out of the billions of years that the earth has existed, here I am, I am part of a world that is so immense, with infinite galaxies, and I only have a limited amount of time to live on this earth and appreciate it’s wonders. I also only have a limited time in which I can live life, so I need to make the time I have count, not only for my sake, but for the world around me.

I have peace now with my new beliefs.

I have also began reading any material I can get my hands on online, I have found some great atheist blogs along the way see my list here. (This is not an exhaustive list, and I may make a part 2 with more blogs later).

I have been trying to seek out more information from atheists more established, more educated, and more well versed in their beliefs than myself. I’m trying to build a strong foundation again, as well as reach out, put myself into a new community to replace the one I lost when leaving Christianity. Ex-Christian.net has been a great resource for me in that regard, and I am starting to get to know some of the people there quite well. My time there, sharing my story with others, and reading their stories, and the results of their continuing recovery from their past has helped me to be a stronger person in my beliefs.

“The true atheist (my focus is on those who come from Evangelicalism to atheism) must deconstruct their lives and rebuild them one belief at a time. The true atheist likely reads and reads and reads and…well you get the picture."

I had to revaluate everything I had been taught in life in the light of my new found beliefs, what do I really believe on crucial social issues? I had to start giving up some of the bigoted beliefs that I was still tentatively holding onto, and I was amazed at how many misconceptions and outright lies I was taught in life, and believed while simply taking them for granted that they were true. Exposing myself to new experiences, and different types of people helped me to recover from this. One of my greatest friends now is a Wiccan, growing up, I was led to believe the lie that Wicca and Satanism are one and the same, and that Wiccans, were by association, evil people. This couldn’t have been farther from the truth! Even though she doesn’t believe in Christianity, she lives more of the life that Christians are supposed to live (love your neighbor as yourself, etc), than Christians do!

“It is not enough to say, I don’t believe in God anymore. Just the Christian God? Some Gods? All Gods?  The true atheist is one who says, I reject any belief in the existence of deities. Once a person has reached this point they are an atheist. Nothing more is required to claim the label atheist.”

Nothing more."

Agreed, there’s no more qualifications needed to claim atheism (or agnosticism in my cases), there’s no other litmus test needed.

Atheist blogger/former pastor Bruce Gerencser is right about Atheism +

I ran across today this post by blogger Bruce Gerenscer about the Atheist + movement/ Freethought blogs. Bruce Gerencser was a pastor for over two decades in the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement before losing his faith. The IFB movement is a Protestant Christian sect so extreme that many fundamentalist/evangelical groups who are familiar with it disparage it as a "cult" due to their extreme beliefs, lifestyle, and their rejection of other fundamentalists as being "liberal" or not "Bible Believing". (When fundamentalists think a Christian group is too far to the right, that's really saying something).

Some great quotes/points from his post: (Bold text is his words, normal text, my comments)

"I am of the opinion that the atheist cause is best served when atheists are free to connect themselves to whatever group or cause they wish.  I prefer a loose coalition of atheists as opposed to a structured atheism with rigid political and social beliefs. With a loose coalition individual atheists are free to pick and choose what and who to support. Atheism+? Either you are with them or you are against them, to quote Prophet Carrier." 

"This Us vs.Them approach of atheism+ will ultimately harm and weaken the atheist movement. Any time there is exclusivism rather than inclusivism, the group’s power is diminished. The fundamentalist approach of atheism+ will only continue to marginalize other atheists who can’t or refuse to toe the atheism+ ideological line. Atheism+ should be working to include as many people as possible rather than exclude as many people as possible. (especially since atheism+ is a reaction to a tiny fragment of people within the atheism community)" 


Exactly, this is precisely what the opponents of atheism want, a house divided, a movement that can't take on the more extremist elements of Christianity, because it's too busy squabbling over the scorched earth tactics of Carrier and company.

We should be respecting and celebrating differences of opinion within the atheism/skeptic community, except for when ideals espoused by members are harmful (racist, homophobic, etc). Atheism + started with good intentions, but they are proving the point that the road to hell is paved with them (pardon the hell reference in an atheism post, but you get the point of the common American saying). They took some isolated comments by internet trolls, painted all their legitimate, non-sexist critics with the same brush, and now we have what we do today, a house divided.

"Many of the sharpest critics of atheism+ are people who were Evangelicals before they deconverted. What we see in atheism+ is very similar to our experience in the Evangelical church. We left leaders who demanded we toe the line doctrinally. We left churches that were built on an Us vs.Them thinking. We left churches and leaders who believed they held the only Christian franchise. Exclusivism controlled everything our former churches and leaders did. Why would we want to join a group that is just an atheist version of what we left behind?"


Agreed, the behavior of FTBers, an us vs. them, and they are evil, no exceptions, is remarkably similar to the attitude taken by fundamentalists against who do not agree with them. To fundamentalists, any critics are automatically branded as "doing the work of the devil", fellow Christians who criticize them are "liberal", "not Bible believing", or not "true Christians". To Carrier and company, their critics are unjustly called "misogynists" or trashed as, "asshole atheists", "stupid", "retarded", or many other slurs and insults. I can somewhat understand them using this kind of tone against unashamed/unapologetic trolls who make no excuses for true hate filled behavior, but the FTBers have taken this stance against everyone who criticizes them for any and all reasons. This is unacceptable, and shows the true closed minded, exclusivistic character of the FTBers. They truly are trying to create a "cult of atheism", and anyone who doesn't agree with them can in the words of Carrier, "GTFO out".


"The other leaders in the atheism+ group could have publicly called out Richard Carrier but they didn’t. It is also evident, based on his last post, that he wasn’t called out privately either. It is evident that the atheism+ group values Carrier being a part of their group more than it does attracting new members. As I told someone recently, Carrier killed the baby in the cradle."


FTB has refused to condemn Richard Carrier's comments, and not rejecting him and his blind hatred of his critics, they are alienating people from Atheist + movement, and FTB in general. This will lead to Atheism Plus either dying a slow death, or marginalizing it down to a small group of followers who have shut themselves out to the rest of the atheist community. Either way, it will be forgotten in due time.