#teamreason

The bible instructs you to stone to death anyone who should work on the sabbath day (even if they are just gathering sticks). My favorite part is that Jews and Christians can't even agree on which day is the sabbath.

"They found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day. ... And the LORD said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones.... And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the LORD commanded Moses." Numbers 15:32-56

Since I work at a portrait studio, and most of our business is on the weekend, I often work both weekend days, so either way you slice it (Jew or Christian) I would be violating the sabbath. I work this job to support my family, as the primary breadwinner.

Should I be stoned to death for trying to earn a living to feed my family, because I have violated the sabbath?

Most sane and rational people would say NO, of course I should not be put to death for the "crime" of working on the weekend. 

If you are deliberately and knowingly disobeying God's order of stoning me then you are, in essence, saying that your morality is greater than God's. The same goes for anything else that you pick and choose in the bible. Acceptance of gays, eating pork, not stoning to death non-virgins... the list goes on.

    This leads me to my question:

We all hate labels.

I hate to put a label on my sexuality. I do not think gender does (or should) have anything to do with romantic love. The term for this is technically pansexual, but people don't typically know this, and so it is easier to just call myself bisexual. People who are truly atheists at heart are quick to label themselves similarly by calling themselves agnostics, because it is the "easier" term.

Of course I do not KNOW that there isn't a god. I have never met a self-identified atheist that would make this claim. The term atheist literally means "lacking a belief in god". I don't think Zeus or the Judeo-Christian god or Odin or Osiris exist, much like I don't think fairies or leprechauns or Santa Claus exist - because I have not seen any evidence to make me think otherwise. If I drove my car into a brick wall I think I'd be just as likely to wind up in heaven as I would on Platform 9 3/4. I do not hate god (do any of you guys hate unicorns?) but I do hate the oppression and violence done in the name of religion. 

I'm sure many of you self-identified "agnostics" feel the same way. But you are afraid of the stigma that comes with the label atheist. And so you are perpetuating the problem. If you are of the opinion that "there probably isn't a god" or "it's possible that a god might exist but I really don't care/doubt it/etc" YOU ARE AN ATHEIST. A-theism = without god(s), not against god(s).