I was just viewing an image online from a devoted “Christian” car. He/she had written on the car “First God, then people…”.

I don’t know about other religions, but I have a good understanding of Christianity, since I studied it both in school and church, like any other good Greek would do early in life. And at least for Orthodox Christians (and for most Catholics too), the New Testament is the *main* book of Christianity. Meaning, that while both the Old and the New Testament are accepted, the New Testament is exactly that: “a new deal between God and Man”. And as every new deal and contract, it has new rules. New rules that Jesus put forth for his believers that overwrote the old rules that were put forth by a jealous, revengeful, self-centric God. That’s why Jesus’ cult became so popular in the first place: because the new rules made more sense to people who have been asking for a humanitarian-based religion, in a world ravaged by war.

The new rules are these: love, forgiveness, love your neighbor as you love yourself, etc etc. Christianity aims to make the living world a better place. And this can only be done if you put people first, not God. If you put God first you end up being a mujahid, not a true Christian. If you put God first, you are missing the whole point of Christianity. This is no different than idolizing the never-present school board for giving out the rules on how to behave in the school playground, instead of actually enjoy playing with the other kids, and be nice to them in the process. Putting God first makes no freaking sense.

As I have written in the past, I am not a believer anymore, but I do consider myself an “atheist humanist”. The way I live my life is not different than what I was taught by the Church. If I can help a fellow man, I will. It’s just that I don’t believe in the supernatural, and I don’t do things because of fear of a being called “God”. When I’ll die (and I feel it might be sooner rather than later), I will just die. The end. This blog will be the only thing that’s left of me for those who choose to remember me. This is why I get so personal some times in public.

But one thing is for sure, even in my deathbed, when I will probably start praying despite being an atheist (part of the human nature, I guess), I will still not put God first. If he exists, he should feel free to put my praying requests at the bottom of his queue if I am on the wrong about my priorities.

Here’s what I don’t get.

Remember that douchebag who said that the Holocaust never happened? He was jailed for expressing his opinion — albeit an admittedly misguided and wrong opinion. He was jailed for disrespecting a powerful slice of the western society, for something that happened 70 years ago and doesn’t directly affect the everyday lives of their descendants today.

And then, there’s the Pope. Who went to Africa and told people to not use condoms! He also expressed his opinion that people should only have sex with their exclusive partners, and as such they don’t need condoms. Thing is, life ain’t like that, people have sex all the time — married or not. By instructing the much-struck by AIDS African people to not use condoms, he instigates a major violation of public health, given that the Pope is a person of authority and has millions of followers.

So the crazy guy who simply professed that a HISTORICAL event didn’t happen, but didn’t really hurt anyone (except possibly some feelings), gets jail time and death threats. The guy who puts the lives of millions in danger TODAY, gets to go about his business.

Sign o’ the times my friends, sign o’ the times.

“A United Nations forum on Thursday passed a resolution condemning “defamation of religion” as a human rights violation, despite wide concerns that it could be used to justify curbs on free speech in Muslim countries,” says Reuters.

Sad, just sad. A step backwards for freedom of speech. I don’t understand how the western countries allowed the fundamentalists win this one. A disgrace of a law.

I am not religious at the slightest, but my brother’s family is. They were fasting during the first 15 days of August (Orthodox Christians usually fast before Christmas, Easter and leading to Mother Mary’s day). Greek Orthodox fasting disallows all blood animal products, meaning that eggs, dairy and meat from fish/birds/mammals are disallowed, but shellfish are allowed (because they have nothing that resembles red blood — obviously a convenient technicality even if the Bible mentions pork and shellfish as unclean in general). On Good Friday, olive oil is disallowed too.

As a kid I was forced to fast for Easter (usually just the week before), and I hated every minute of it (even if I loved the Easter time in general). Truth is, while my mother is an excellent cook, she has a limited repertoire when it comes to recipes and ingredients. She only wants to eat and cook the recipes passed to her by her mother. She is extremely closed-minded regarding new ingredients and tastes (I can easily picture her face of disgust when I mention mushrooms or shellfish, for example). This severely limited our tastes during the Holy Week, making it almost as unbearable (on purpose, I suppose) as the tortures Christ had to undergo for the week.

So here are some very nice recipes I have gathered that could really make the fasting time pleasant. They are all Mediterranean-inspired, and delicious, all carefully cooked by Kalofagas — a Canadian Greek cooking blogger. Some of the recipes might include some dairy elements, but these can easily be omitted without diminishing the taste of the dish.

- Mussels Saganaki With Mustard. Omit the feta cheese. Great with mushroom wild rice.
- Vegetarian pizza, with non-dairy (fasting) cheese (sold in some places in Greece). I did this twice for my brother and his wife in August. I used non-dairy hard cheese, bell peppers, chili peppers, tomatoes, olives, onions. Mushrooms are equally nice but unfortunately in my home area, Epirus, very few people trust mushrooms so I didn’t use them.
- Prawns saganaki. I cooked this last night! It was delicious. Omit cream cheese.
- Prawns Tourkolimano. Again, omit feta cheese.
- Grilled Sesame Scallops. Great when served with some pasta or fries.
- Tomato Fritters (omit the egg) and Kolokithokeftedes (again, use fasting cheese). Serve with a fasting dip, like the Macedonian Makalo (which is the Greek version of ketchup), or Hummus.
- Tagliatelle With Zucchini, Tomato and Fresh Herbs. Add some stir-fried shellfish or mushrooms to make this recipe even better.
- Potato Salad for Good Friday (no olive oil). And another potato salad too.
- Vegetable soup.
- Briam Florinis.
- Thai Green Curry With Scallops & Shrimp. Might be a bit difficult to get all the ingredients in Greece.
- Soup With Mussels and Ginger. Omit the heavy cream.
- Greek Chickpea Soup. Substitute chicken stock with vegetable stock (note: not all vegetable stocks in the market are vegetarian).
- Scallops Provencal.
- Shrimp With Capers and Dill
- Octopus and Pasta Bake
- Cuttlefish Lemonato, and Artichokes a la Polita
- Dolmades Gialantzi
- Black-Eyed Pea Salad, and Octopus With Vinegar
- Ladenia (Greek pizza)
- Kampanoules With Peppers and Basil (omit the cheese)
- Seafood Pasta
- Shrimp With Mastiha liquer
- Cuttlefish With Saffron and Potatoes
- Melitzanosalata (Eggplant Salad)
- Spanakorizo. Another local variety asks for more spinach, and some lemon too.
- Rice salad
- Shrimp Salad With Avocado and Pasta Shells
- Roasted Red Pepper Dip
- Imam Baildi
- Rice Salad
- Leonidio, Tsakones and Eggplant (replace feta cheese with tofu)
- Fassoulotavas Makedonikos
- Shrimp and Pasta

And of course, there are all the “normal” Greek fasting foods, ranging from bean soups to lentils (in this lentils recipe omit the sausage, and use olive oil), and from yemista (use some olive oil) to green beans (use some olive oil).

A 17-year-old Iraqi girl was murdered by her father in an honour killing after falling in love (no sex) with a British soldier she met while working on an aid programme in Basra, it has been claimed.

This is why I don’t even wanna hear some shit that some westerners are writing about muslims that “they are not all like that” etc etc. Well, here’s the thing: 80% of them are, in the most fanatical countries. Yes, I pulled this number out of my ass, but I can very well imagine how life is for women in most of these countries, while the rest of the westerner who surprisingly try to excuse the muslim culture can’t.

I have a father, who while he is a Christian in a European Community country, has more in common with the muslim way of looking at women and their rights (or lack thereof), than with the rest of the westerners. And the rural place I am coming from, it’s full of such men like my father. Greece is in the crossover between Middle East and Europe, and so older people in rural places are still very old fashioned. Things are turning of course, but I’ve already lost something there.

So, don’t give me that shit about how the muslim world is misunderstood. Between the forcing of women in marriage, genital mutilation, honor killings and daily beatings, I dislike that culture more than anything in the world (and ANY culture that doesn’t respect women’s lives), and I hope these men who engage in these actions die a horrible, slow death. Yeah, go ahead and call this blog post a “hate post”. But I’ve been the victim more than once of such behavior in my life, and not only I can’t condone it, but I have no choice but to fight it any way that I can.

Update: To explain this blog post: I certainly don’t mean disrespect to people who live in these countries but are NOT abusive. But what I write here is NOT just about the death of this girl and other honor killings. So please stop emailing me about “how can you criticize 1 billion people when only 1000 can do these things”. You see, what I am criticizing here is the WHOLE women rights problem, and that doesn’t adhere to just 1000 abusive patriarchs, but to about what, 100, 200, 300 million men? That’s a BIG number to simply ignore. You don’t have to kill your daughter for me to dislike you. A simple beating of your wife is enough to put you on the same bag with people I don’t like (this INCLUDES westerners btw). And especially when the government does not recognize equality between males and females, then the whole establishment is wrong, not just “a few people going bad”. And as I said above, I have no choice but to fight that, because I am a woman, and I’ve been there myself.

“Austrians are locked in a nationwide debate touched off by the brief display in a prestigious Roman Catholic museum of an etching that depicts Jesus Christ and his disciples having a [gay] orgy during the biblical Last Supper”, reports CNN.

Austrians and who ever else is offended by this, should shut up. This is no different than the Muhammad cartoons in Denmark. Depicting someone having sex, or actually depicting someone at all, are all wrong reasons to get angry about. We westerners made fun of the Muslims about the cartoons, but many westerners are not as open minded as they think they are either.

It’s the Church’s right to remove the artwork of course, but don’t go against the artist. If this artist is actually gay, his artwork is nothing more of how he sees Jesus in his eyes. Kind of like the black Jesus and black Madonna that you see in Africa. People CHANGE the way they see God, in order to fit better with their own lifestyle and beliefs. It’s their right to do so, just like it’s the church’s right to remove the artwork. But don’t crucify the artist for seeing the same God in a different light than you do.

Besides, God is a fictional entity (in my opinion), so envisioning him one way or another, is always acceptable. Now, Jesus is quite possibly a historical person, but still, we haven’t really seen him for real, we never saw him on TV or heard him on the radio either. So envisioning him differently than anyone else, is cool too. People should just grow some skin.

So, this is the next big thing for those who can’t give up religion: “I see God’s hand at work through the mechanism of evolution”, says Francis Collins, the director of the US National Human Genome Research Institute. So basically, if you are religious and you can’t give it up, and at the same time you can’t refute evolution anymore, that’s the next big argument: God chose evolution.

I guess now Jews didn’t plant the fossils in the 1920s for the scientists to find, and the world is indeed older than 4,000 years? Wow.

A guy claims that youtube’s Anonymous Anonymous videos are all censored. I don’t know if this is true or false, but I know that even on Digg now their posts are “buried” and never see the light of the front page anymore. I don’t know if this is just coincidental, or people had enough of the Anonymous Anonymous group, or if organized Scientologists fight back the same way as the group does. Hopefully Youtube clears up the situation.

Regarding Anonymous Anonymous’ actions, while I fully support their opinions about Scientology, I don’t think they go the right way about it. If they want some action against this for-profit “religion” (for the record: I personally don’t consider it a religion), they should write to their congressman, raise money to post ads, and educate people to not join the cult. Picketing outside the Scientology offices proves and brings nothing at the end. Scientology is what it is, and it’s not going to change, so picketing outside their offices is a waste of time.

For years I’ve been ranting against organized religions, but I was never comfortable calling myself either an agnostic or an atheist. I couldn’t fit on any of the two types. Tonight, I finally figured out what I truly am.

I am an atheist Christian.

I live by the core teachings of Christianity which is forgiveness, love, and occasionally being the good Samaritan when the opportunity arises. I try hard to be what someone would call a “good person”. And at the same time, I don’t believe in the existance of God, or any supernatural power for that matter, or the fairytales of Jesus Christ coming back from the dead (nice trick Peter).

“Religion” should just be a way of life, a code of conduct, a guidance on morality. The old stories, the clergy and the churches never had and will never have a place in my life (or death).

Update: Apparently some have similar beliefs too (not necessarily exactly the same).

Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, rallied Friday in a central square and demanded the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear “Muhammad.” [...] The protesters streamed out of mosques after Friday sermons, as pickup trucks with loudspeakers blared messages against Gibbons… [...] “Shame, shame on the U.K.,” protesters chanted.

That’s what you get from unintelligent people who are pushed by their religious leaders to go left or right. I mean, think about it. The “official” punishment for this “crime” is 40 lashes. Regardless if this is a fair punishment or not, these guys stormed out of their mosques and demanded execution instead. This just shows people who don’t know what they are doing and are easily convinced by their leaders. They show no personal character.

And no, I have nothing against Muslims. I have everything against religious fanatics though, regardless of religion.