He who is without sin can cast the first stone.

“Gay people should burn in Hell!” How many of you have heard something along these lines lately? I know I have. Several times a week, and even more often. “Homosexuality is an abomination!”, – you know, all the “slogans” WBC use when they picket funerals. (But, it’s not only WBC who uses language like this. People you’d think are quite normal also tend to lean this way, even here in Norway. “God hates fags!”

Well, if you (and by “you” I mean you that think this way) have read your Bible, you’d know that while Jesus never spoke against homosexuality, he spoke quite negatively about divorce. Funny then, how a lot of the people I know who are “against homosexualy because it’s in the Bible” also are divorced. Another funny thing – most of these people stuffed their face really good this Christmas. Here’s a list:

• Philippians 3:19 (“their god is their belly”)
• Psalm 78: 18 (“they tested God in their heart by demanding the food they craved”)
• Proverbs 23:20 (“be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat”)
• Proverbs 23:2 (“put a knife to your throat if you are given to appetite”)
• Ezekiel 16:49 (“Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”)

Why do we never see anyone picket fast food restaurants with “God hates Gluttony!”

Jesus, the guy these people believe is the son of God, told his followers that “He who is without sin can cast the first stone” when the religious leaders ganged up on the woman caught in adultery.

Funny really, isn’t it how the pious tend to gang up on those that are different, but considerest not the beam that is in their own eye…

Do I hate Christians or Christianity?

As you’ve probalby figured out by now, I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in any God(s), nor do I think that the Bible, The Quaran, the Torah, or other religious books are the word of some supreme beeing. I have tried to believe, and I have studied the various ‘holy’ scriptures to see if there is something there that makes me really believe that some God has dictated the book to mankind, but I haven’t found anything.

Some christians believe that atheists are people who hate God. (I say “some christians”, because they’re not all thinking this!) I don’t hate God. I don’t believe in God. Quite the difference if you ask me. I don’t hate Santa Claus, I don’t believe in Santa Claus. I don’t hate unicorns. I don’t believe in unicorns. I don’t hate Harry Potter. I don’t believe in Harry Potter.

You see, to me, all the people and animals I mentioned in the last paragraph are fictional. They don’t exist, and have never existed. I have read stories about all of them though, and some of the stories are quite good, funny, or interesting (or sad, depressing, etc…), but that doesn’t make them true. I have read stories about people I do believe in, who died before I was born: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, King Henry VIII. Historical people who are remembered for what they did, or said, or both. Of course you can say that since I “wasn’t there” at the time, how can I know that they have actually existed? To that I say; There is enough evidence, and enough sources to make it beyond reasonable doubt that these people lived. Thus I believe they did.

There is not enough evidence, nor source material (only one book, poorly written (yes, the Bible), and no other historical sources) to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the christian God exists. The same goes for the other Gods.

Still, I don’t hate God. How can you hate something that doesn’t exist?

But, do I hate the believers? People who believe in God, or Allah, or Jehova, or any of the other Gods people believe in?

Short answer: No!

Longer answer: I don’t hate people, but I do hate some of the things people do. And when people do bad things in the name of their God, I hate them for being brainwashed enough to actually commit the heineous acts. The crusades, Jihad, 9/11, bombings, hijacking of planes, murder, genocide, prosecution, witchburning, etc. It is actually in the Bible, in the chapter of the the Sermon on the Mount, I find the best phrase explaining how I feel:

Mathew 5:44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

This is often summed up into the sentence “Hate the sin, not the sinner” (a phrase that is actually not in the Bible!).

If you love your enemies (be it the tribe in the next valley, the country across the border, the homosexuals, the atheists, the christians, the whoever), you don’t kill them, maim them or bully them. You don’t prosecute them, and you don’t hate them. You love them.

Still, it is fun to mock people who are different. We all do that. Maybe to raise our status within our community (like people at school bullying someone to be able to stay with the “in-crowd”), or atheists mocking christians for believing that a burning bush can talk, or creationists mocking people believing in evolution for having an ape as a grandmother. We all do it, even though we really shouldn’t. It’s in our nature to try and place ourselves above the rest.

I can’t say I truly love every christian, muslim, jew, or other theist, but I try not to hate them. (Then again, as I’m not a christian, I guess it’s ok not to follow the Bible, right?) I try to see the good in every person I meet, and I meet a lot of people through work, and through my hobbies. I try not to judge people before I know them, and I hope I don’t have to judge people after I get to know who they are, and what they believe. But sometimes I fail, like we all do. I’m only human.

So, basically: I don’t hate religion, I don’t hate religious people, and I try to keep the mocking of those of faith to a minimum.

[Cherry] I’m a sinner!

I love cooking, and I’ve got a lot of stuff to help. A blender, a skillet, pots, pans, measures of different kind… Oh crap, that makes me a sinner!

It is written (in the Bible):

Deuteronomy 25:14 “You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a large and a small”

If you too have two kinds of measures, you’re also a sinner!

I am going to cherry pick, and write small posts about obscure verses from the Bible, and I hope you like them.

Evolution disproves the entire Bible?

Have you ever met a creationist? You know, the people who think god created everything, just the way it is today. Who think the earth is around 6000 years old, and that dinosaurs and man lived side by side before the dino’s went to a better place. (Maybe there was no room in the Ark?)

They claim that evolution is “just a theory”, and that creationism should (at least) be equally thaught in schools. But have you ever wondered why they are so afraid of evolution? “My grandmother wasn’t an ape” aside, this cuts a lot deeper.

If evolution is true, there is no possible way the story ofAdam and Eve is true. Two people was not created one day, but the spieces human evolved over millennia. This leads me to the Bible’s story of the “original sin”. If Adam and Eve is a myth, Eve didn’t get tricked by a snake, she didn’t eat the forbidden fruit, and there is no original sin.
“Well, it’s an allegory!” You’ve probably heard some christians say this. “The story of Adam and Eve, and the whole biblibal creation is just a way the authors of the Bible described how the world was made.” OK, but if it is an allegory, my statement stands – there was no “original sin”.

Let’s take a closer look at the next part of christianity – Jesus. The carpenter who was crucified “for our sins” (including the original sin!). What other sins did he die for? The seven deadly sins was invented by the early christian church.

The modern concept of the seven deadly sins is linked to the works of the 4th century monk Evagrius Ponticus, and the sins are usually given as wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. Well and good, but according to the Bible, all these sins came into the world because of the fall in the Garden of Eden. (A place that never existed either if you believe in evolution.)

I’m not saying that people doesn’t commit wrath, greed, etc, but according to evolution they are nor connected to Adam and Eve, because there was no Adam and Eve. Thus Jesus dying on the cross wasn’t “for our sins”, because there was no original sin the other sins came from.

Also, if Jesus was God, or part of him, then he knew what would happen after his crucifixion, right? Being all knowing, he would have known he would be crucified. Knowing how you will die, that you will be ressurected, and that you’ll inevitably end up in heaven again kind of takes away from the story a bit. So doesn’t knowing you’re coming back from the dead and going to heaven anyway kind of negate the whole dying for our sins bit?

I guess you can take the story of Jesus and the crucifixion as an allegory as well, but that really messes up christianity, doesn’t it?