"Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!"
The recent news about the Church of Sweden now allows gay couples to marry in church, has started a world wide debate. A debate that establishes my idea of Christians as narrow-minded, blue-eyed and ignorant. I don't know how many times I have read people saying "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve", and as far as I am concerned, using this as some kind of argument reveals pure ignorance and a great deal of stupidity. This saying makes me laugh hysterically. Especially since this god actually did create both Adam, Eve and Steve according to the bible. And not to mention all the rapists, racists, nazis and fascists he also created. Argument fail.
Atheist quotes
"If atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!" (Clark Adams)"The Bible is one of the most genocidal books in history." (Noam Chomsky)"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means." (George Bernard Shaw)"When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it." (Oscar Wilde)"Science with religion is lame; religion without science is blind. Science without religion is useful; religion with science is useless." (Albert Einstein)"If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion." (Edmond & Jules de Goncourt)"The real oppressor, enslaver, and corrupter of the people is the Bible. [...] If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane." (Robert Green Ingersoll)"All Bibles are man-made. [...] I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God." (Thomas Edison)"The prayer of the agnostic: "O God, if there is a God, save my soul if I have a soul." (Ernest Renan)"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." (Stephen Roberts)"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality." (George Bernard Shaw)"I'm a born-again atheist." (Gore Vidal)"All the biblical miracles will at last disappear with the progress of science." (Matthew Arnold)"Not by accident, you may be sure, do the Christian Scriptures make the father of knowledge a serpent - slimy, sneaking and abominable." (Henry Louis Mencken)"What was it that Adam ate that he wasn't supposed to eat? It wasn't just an apple. It was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The subtle message? 'Get smart and I'll fuck you over' sayeth the Lord. God is the smartest, and he doesn't want any Competition. Is this not an absolutely anti-intellectual religion?" (Frank Zappa)"Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis." [To Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God] (Pierre Laplace)"I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously." (Douglas Adams)"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion." (Steven Weinberg)
via exchristian.net
We don't need marriage in present form
I am well aware of the very delicate issue this is, having a somewhat "churchy" background and being raised after somewhat Christian values. But I am happy today and I celebrate the outcome of the voting. Despite me calling myself an atheist, I am still very interested in what's happning inside the thick walls of what's supposed to be a jolly and lovable family, the church (my ass...).
I have met a couple of Christian gays and talking to and meeting them is very sad and tragic in every way. They keep hanging on to a religion and a god who discriminate people and forgetting about the very foundation of Christianity itself: love. I wonder how they do it. Why they do it. Why praise and worship a god that sees their love as something bad? If you ask me, that kind of god is not worthy any attention at all. Also, this is where the problem is: the church is based on the Bible and a belief in god.
I haven't read the Bible that many times and I haven't been searching for signs that the situation is different, but according to the Christian mass, gay marriage in church would be wrong. I respect that frakking old-fashioned, awful and inhuman idea; after all, that is what Christianity ultimately is: frakking old-fashioned, awful and inhuman idea. I respect it and I hate it.
Instead I wish that marriage itself could be revised and thought upon differently. Marriage as we know it today, is a religious ritual, but who says we can't lift it out of the religious context and make it all-avaliable? The problem today is that marriage isn't only about religion and love - it's also about legal rights. A not married couple doesn't have the same rights and isn't equal in front of the law as married couples. This is what needs to be changed. In a secular country like Sweden, few couples get married "religiously" anyway even if they marry in church and by a priest. It's tradition and a romantic goal for many of us to achieve. It is time to leave the idea of marriage being a religous ritual behind and instead let it be what it is to many of us anyway: an act of love and law. The church doesn't have copyright of love and the sincere wish to publicly announce it!
The Bible and god has no place in a modern world and old rituals from the past shouldn't be a part of our tradition. Leave the Christian marriage to the blue-eyed Christians and let them sit inside their thick walls and let them live in their fantasty world. We don't need them, the church or their inhuman views on love.
Church of Sweden says yes to gay marriage
Church of Sweden says yes to gay marriage
Published: 22 Oct 09 11:10 CET
Updated: 22 Oct 09 12:29 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/22810/20091022/Dictionary tool Double click on a word to get a translation
The Synod of the Lutheran Church of Sweden has come down in favour of church weddings for homosexuals in a vote held on Thursday morning.
The decision, which is based on a proposal from the church’s governing board, means that the Church of Sweden will conduct wedding ceremonies for both heterosexual and homosexual couples. The proposal was approved by 176 of 249 voting members. The decision comes just three days after the 30th anniversary of the date when homosexuality stopped being classified as a disease in Sweden. “The Synod’s decision takes a stance in favour of an inclusive view of people. Regardless of whether one is religious or not, this affects the entire social climate and the view of people’s equal value,” said Åsa Regnér, head of the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU), in a statement. In June, the church board took the first step towards permitting same-sex marriages by submitting a petition to the Church of Sweden Synod – the church's highest decision-making body. The board proposed the church continue to perform wedding ceremonies following new legislation which came into force on May 1st and grants same-sex couples in Sweden the same legal marriage status as heterosexuals. Current church regulations will likely continue to apply in practice, with some alterations, such as replacing “man and wife” with “lawfully wedded spouses” when a homosexual couple is married. Since 2007, the Church of Sweden, which counts around 74 percent of Swedes as members, has offered gays a religious blessing of their union. The ruling by the Synod, which has 251 delegates - two of which were absent from Thursday's vote, puts Sweden among the first countries in the world to allow gays to marry in a major church. In moving ahead with the decision to perform same-sex marriages, the Church of Sweden ignored concerns expressed earlier this year by the Church of England in a strongly worded letter to Swedish archbishop Anders Wejryd that the move could lead to “an impairment of the relationships between the churches”. Church of England spokesperson Steve Jenkins confirmed that relations between the two churches may be headed for a turbulent phase in the wake of the decision. “Those concerns remain,” he told The Local, referring to the letter from English bishops Christopher Hill and John Hind. He added that he didn’t know of any plans by the English Church to issue a formal statement in response to the Church of Sweden’s decision.
TT/The Local (news@thelocal.se/08 656 6518)
via thelocal.se
Okay, God, if he exists, turned fair and human. I am happy for all you gay Christians who have felt being abandoned by the one you worship. Congrats!
Islam 'Sweden's biggest threat': far-right leader - The Local
Islam 'Sweden's biggest threat': far-right leader
Published: 19 Oct 09 10:21 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/22738/20091019/Dictionary tool Double click on a word to get a translation
An article by the leader of the far-right Sweden Democrats claiming that Islam is the biggest threat to Sweden since World War II is tantamount to hate speech, according to legal experts.
A number of jurists believe the text, published in the opinion section of the Aftonbladet newspaper, qualifies as agitation against an ethnic group (hets mot folkgrupp). The Sweden Democrats concluded their annual congress on Sunday in the town of Ljungbyhed in Skåne in southern Sweden. On Monday, Aftonbladet published an opinion piece by party leader Jimmie Åkesson in which the prominent far-right politician slams Islam. According to Åkesson, “today’s multicultural Swedish power-elite are totally blind to the dangers of Islam.” He goes on to claim that more than ten Muslim terrorist organizations have established themselves in Sweden, that Sweden has the most rapes in Europe, and that Muslim men are highly overrepresented among the perpetrators. “As a Sweden Democrat, I see this as our greatest external threat since World War II and I promise to use all my power to change the trend during next year's election,” writes Åkesson. Åkesson’s claims prompted academics and legal experts to draw parallels between the Sweden Democrats and the Nazis. “This is the same sort of propaganda as the Nazis' anti-Semitism,” said Jan Hjärpe, an emeritus professor of Islamic Studies at Lund University, to Aftonbladet. “This also has racist undertones, because the rhetoric assumes that religious affiliation determines how a person acts.” Several leading lawyers who spoke with Aftonbladet believe the article borders on qualifying as agitation against an ethnic group. “I think that the Chancellor of Justice (Justitiekanslern - JK) should prosecute it. The article is uniformly directed against and is hateful toward Muslims as a group,” said attorney and media expert Peter Danowsky. “To single out an entire religion as the greatest external threat is very close to agitation against an ethnic group,” attorney Peter Althin told Aftonbladet. “A tough jury assessing the boundaries of free speech would condemn this article. It’s an expression of disrespect towards Muslims as a group,” said Per Hultengård, a lawyer with the Swedish Newspaper Publishers’ Association (Tidningsutgivarna). But Chancellor of Justice Göran Lambertz said he has no plans to launch a preliminary investigation himself as to whether Åkesson’s article violates Swedish rules governing the freedom of expression. “This isn’t an obvious case of agitation against an ethnic group. If it had been, I would have launched an investigation myself. But I’ll probably receive complaints about the article and then I’ll look more closely into the matter,” Lambertz told TT. One controversial claim in Åkesson's article is that Sweden has more rapes than any other country in Europe. According to Sweden’s National Crime Prevention Council (Brottsförebyggande rådet – BRÅ), researchers agree that it’s impossible to assess and compare the actual number of violent crimes and rapes across different countries by comparing the number of crimes reported to police. “The differences between countries’ judicial systems and their systems for gathering statistics regarding crimes reported to police isn’t just big – it’s really big,” council head Jan Andersson wrote last spring in comments on an EU study on the matter. “Firstly, we in Sweden have an obvious legal definition of what is considered rape. That means that more cases in Sweden are tried and registered as rape than in many other countries. Secondly, we in Sweden began putting a lot of effort into registering all cases which could be suspected of being rape at a very early stage in the process, which means that we even count cases which later turn out to be some other sexually-related crime, no crime at all, et cetera.” In Sweden, every individual act reported to police is registered, not just the most recent or primary criminal act. In many other countries, authorities want and remove many cases from statistics. There is also no basis for Åkesson’s claim that Muslim men are overrepresented among rapists. “I haven’t seen any scientific articles dealing with this which have reached that conclusion. It’s based on an assumption,” Brå researcher Klara Hradilova Selin told TT. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said Åkesson’s article makes clear what the Sweden Democrats want to achieve. “They have an interest and that’s to differentiate between people, to create an us-against-them way of thinking, cast suspicion on ‘them’ and in that way lay the groundwork for policies by which ‘they’ are thrown out or deported,” Reinfeldt said at an informal press conference on the margins of a Monday morning visit to Gothenburg University. “Every attempt by those in power to single out the right religion or right nationality, right sexual preference, has always ended horribly. Because as soon as practical policies are to be made using that approach, a dividing up of people begins which is neither manageable nor desirable.”
- Far-right member motions death penalty (17 Oct 09)
- Four in ten back far-right cooperation: poll (16 Oct 09)
- Sweden Democrats gain in new voter poll (23 Aug 09)
TT/David Landes (news@thelocal.se)
via thelocal.se
What Sweden is talking about today.
My sudden criticism towards religion - explanation
Those of you who follow me on Facebook, Twitter and my blog, probably notice a sudden change of activity. For the last couple of weeks I have put my focus and interest on religion criticism and perhaps even more on Christianity. While you could think I don't know anything about Christianity I can only say that I do. Quite a lot, actually. There was a time in my life when I was planning to study theology to become a pastor in a Pentacostal church branch. It failed. Or I failed.I have grown up in a Christian family with two parents who both were brought up in an even more Christian environment. My parents have never been active Christians though while the rest of the greater family, aunts and grandparents and cousins, have. But we have always had this close connection with the local church and I started early to attend activities such as boy scouting, orchestras and choir singing. At the age of 19 I was finally "saved by Jesus" as it were. I was a soul on fire and preached the gospel as soon as I could. This phase of my life last for three four years or so. Today I look back on these years as very dark years of my life and I regret every single day I called myself a Christian. Why? Let me tell you...
1. I fooled myself
For all those years I ran around in church with my Christian friends I was quite jealous of them. They were always happy and that happiness was something I wanted. I was also working hard to fit in; not only in church, but everywhere. One answer to this might be found in the fact that I am adopted and at the time I grew up, was one of few adopted children in the neighborhood. It wasn't easy, at times it could be a living hell. In church I felt that I was loved and that people around me enjoyed my company. I played my saxophone at services and people came up to me afterwards telling me how good I was (nowadays I think that I could have been standing in church farting and people would have enjoyed it...). Of course I felt "at home" here.
Perhaps I wanted it so badly I lied to myself. I had listened so many times to people saying that Jesus loved me, that he was alive and that I was a sinner, and perhaps I finally bought it. And I believed it for a couple of years. At the same time, my parents and especially my dad, started to turn away from church and his religious past. My dad and I used to watch the night sky together watching stars and planets. He used to share his knowledge as a physics teacher on evolution and big bang. Deep inside I still believed in the evolution theory even when calling myself a Christian.
I didn't want Jesus, I didn't want God. I wanted something else and that was only the social aspect of the church. They made me feel that I was loved and at the time, that what was I needed. Perhaps you could say that this was one of my greatest parts I have done as an actor. I fooled everyone and I fooled myself.
I worked as a youth pastor for a year and I preached to kids and youngsters about love, Jesus and God. I said to them that "Jesus loves you" but each time I said that, I doubted it even more. I felt bad for preaching kids this when I knew that if there was a God he didn't give a shit about them. Their parents could still die in a car crash, they could still catch cancer and there was no plan what so ever with their lives, as I told them there would be. I fooled them too.
2. I never saw that burning bush
I needed proof, I needed visual proof. I needed to see a burning bush. I think that most of my friends that I have left from those days, can agree on that I had my doubts and I always asked questions and had debates going with them. I wasn't happy with the answer that "Believing that God exists is enough". I had to see it. I couldn't care less about all the stories, made up examples of how complex our body is that there simply must be something divine behind the construction. To me it was all the easy way of explaining things we can't understand. And that wasn't enough for me.
3. God is a douchbag and I don't want anything to do with him
At the end of my Christian career I started to question the fast that God is love. I couldn't believe that Christians said that "greatest of all is love" and at the same time pointed their hands towards people who weren't allowed to be or experience love. Who were we to judge what is love and what is not? Why is God interested in who we sleep with at night? The God that the Christians around me believed in was a God who said that love is great as long as it isn't love between two men or two women. I started to rebellion this theory that homosexuality wasn't love and this is still something I am greatly upset about. If God won't allow two men or two women to fall in love with each other, he is, if he exists, not a God that I want anything to do with. It is as simple as that. Not to mention the douchbag he was according to the old testament...
These are the main reasons why I left the church, the bible, Jesus and God behind me. For long time I didn't even care if there was a God or not. So what? That doesn't mean I have to agree on that I am a sinner and that I want to abandon my life as I live it today where I am convinced that the only person who can change or improve it, is no other person than myself. So what if there is a God, I am not interested in having anything to do with him. Period.
But today I am happy to say that I don't believe there is a God at all. To me it's a mind-game, brainwash, a wish rather than reality. All my Christian friends are brought up in Christian families and therefor also brought up in the Christian religion. I forgive them, they don't know better, they never had the chance to decide for themselves whether they wanted to be Christians or not. They will continue live their lives with their eyes shadowed by the fine words and stories of something better than we have today. They will continue lack the empathy and the ability to see things in different way than their own. They will continue believing and not seeing.
In this blog post I am not giving an answers or debating anything. I am just telling what I believe and what I have believed. Oh, it's not about believing anymore - it's about conviction. And this is mine.
Deep religion discussion with 14 year olds
I have been thinking about this the entire day. A life without a meaning. Why would that be so bad? Does everything has to have a meaning? Why? When I think about my own life, I get kind of frustrated even thinking that my life would have a meaning and to be honest, I am not sure my life has one. Except from living it, really. Or putting up with it, if you wish. They couldn't understand when I said "I don't really care if I go to hell or heaven, it's not important to me". I was honest. I don't care. I believe I am more likely to turn into ash when I die since I want to be cremated. I believe in destiny and the only one who might have a chance to have any effect on that, is me. I can't see myself leaving that responsibility to someone/something else. Hence, I don't do it.
About Me
Jazzper IsakssonGreetings!
Welcome to Jazzperous, the personal blog of Mr Jesper Isaksson. I am mostly writing about technology, web 2.0 and social media but also a great deal of things that grind my gear at the moment. Lately is has been a lot about religion, atheism and humanism.
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Jesper Isaksson
