(May be sung to the tune of “Oh Tanenbaum,” aka “Oh Christmas Tree.”)

Oh, blasphemy, oh blasphemy
We sing thy praise sweet blasphemy
Through blasphemy we say to thee
There are no gods that we can see
No Allah or Persephone
No Jesus, Zeus, or trinity
From myths that cause us injury
Blasphemy can keep us free
From anxiety about reality
From insecurity and complexity
From futility of immortality

Come join us in our blasphemy.

by Edwin Kagin.
(c) 2012

 

 

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”                                               Edmund Burke

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”   William Butler Yeats

What if Charles Martel had lost the Battle or Tours? Or Napoleon had prevailed at Waterloo? Or Cleopatra and Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium? Or the Confederate States at Gettysburg?  What if William, not Harold, had died in the Battle of Hastings?

These climactic events were preceded by extended foreplay. Other results that changed everything followed protracted, if less orgasmic, human interactions. What if Christianity had not become the official religion of the Roman Empire? What if Christendom had actually won the Crusades? What if religion had succeeded in shutting down the Renaissance and the Enlightenment? What if the Protestant Reformation had been stillborn?

If any of these events had occurred, we might now be speaking Egyptian, or French, or German. If those who think our country is based on the Bible had prevailed in setting up our laws, we, like the biblical characters in Sunday school stories, might be living in a land without democracy, a concept not mentioned or practiced in the Bible.

What if Charles Darwin had stuck to his religious studies at Cambridge and not signed on to sail to the Galapagos on HMS Beagle?

If science and critical thinking had not replaced Bronze Age mythical explanations for the origin of things, religious Fundangelicals might not now be building museums of nonsense. There would be no need to attempt to prove that evolution is wrong, that religious mythology is science, that the Earth is only six thousand years old, that dinosaurs lived in vegetarian harmony with humans, and that humans were created from dirt. Everyone would believe that. There would be no reason not to.

We might now be in the dark ages, not opposing a return to them, and there would be no need to oppose the terrorism of this ignorance, and the child abuse of teaching children, that science is wrong and that faith and dogma trump truth.

But things happened as they did, at least in the only universe we know. And things are happening now that could change all that is. Because we know history, we can avoid mistakes of the past.

And therefore we must once again defend civilization against its traditional enemies. The usual suspects are at the gates.

If the American Religious Civil War is lost, everyone will believe those things that our martyrs to truth rejected. Or they will be dead, in jail, or in hiding.

Those who would impose a theocracy upon us will not, as yet anyway, make a visible frontal assault. The plan appears to be a “Wedge Strategy.” A wedge looks like this: ▼.

The idea is to get the little end into the piece of wood and then to tap, or to hammer, the wedge in, like in splitting a log, until the gap made grows wider and wider as the wedge is forced in and the unity of the item into which it is forced is lost.

An axe is a wedge. A guillotine is a wedge. Creationism and Intelligent Design (ID) are wedges. Get the edge in a little bit, and you can then get in more and more, wider and deeper, until the wedge has gone all the way through the log, or the society, dividing, separating, destroying, and prevailing.

Thus, things urgently pressed by fundangelicals, things seemingly harmless alone, are neither harmless nor alone.

Well meaning people have said, often with great passion, that it is wrong to oppose those who hold a Creationist world view. Ideas are sacred, the argument goes, and it is not right for those who accept evolution and scientific laws to ridicule and mock those who believe in creation by a deity. Both sides are part of what such folks understand as “cultural wars.”

It is impossible to describe, or even imagine, just how dangerous this attitude can be. The seeds of Post-Modernism have fallen upon naive and fertile ground.

All ideas are not of equal value or merit. They simply are not. Things cannot be made fool proof because fools are so ingenious. Imagine for a moment a school in which all ideas have equal purchase. A precious godly child’s certainties that the Baby Jesus and Santa Clause are real, and that storks bring babies, should be given equal weight in politically correct public schools as the views of some Camp Quest infected secular child who has other explanations for Christmas, for the disappearance of the milk and cookies, and for the appearance of baby sister.

The ultimate aim of the wedge of Creationism is not to promulgate an alternate scientific theory to Evolution. The aim of the proponents is to promulgate their understanding of the Christian religion and to establish a theocracy. To “Win America for Christ.” Lying when the truth will do is no problem. Knowingly disregarding, distorting, or destroying evidence is also fine, because, in their world view, if the facts contradict the dogma, the facts lose. “Reason” is seen as something harmful that should be avoided. As Martin Luther is said to have observed, “Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his Reason.”

On Memorial Day, May 28, 2007, “Answers in Genesis” opened a sideshow called “Creation Museum” in Northern Kentucky. It cost 27 million dollars and was paid for by the faithful who want the myth taught, to the exclusion of scientific facts, that the earth is about 6,000 years old, that dinosaurs and humans lived at the same time, that the myth of Noah’s Arks is literally true, that all animals were vegetarians prior to the magically created Adam and Eve gaining knowledge of good and evil, and that accepting science instead of this fairy tale leads to all of the perceived evils of the world, including abortion, homosexuality, and, worst of all, Atheism.

People from many different organizations and orientations, believers and non-believers, came from many different places to stand with one mind outside of the gates of the Creation Museum to let the world know that the childish world views being therein vended are not shared by all good people, as the creationists would have the world believe. And the world was there. The press from many nations took note that many people, of many differing views, had, at their own expense, come together to bring a message that wrongheaded and dangerous religious nonsense, while lawful to present, is not something that cannot be lawfully endorsed by the state and that faith in absurd things is not only sad, it is dangerous. “Rally for Reason” let the world know that everyone was not playing in the sandbox of the Arkonuts. See: http://www.edwinkagin.com/RALLY_4_REASON/rally4reason.html.

Please note that this “Rally for Reason,” directed against the Creation Museum, is not the same thing as the later, and magnificently successful, “Reason Rally” on the Washington Mall.

Ignorance is a form of terrorism. Teaching children to accept magical ways of explaining reality is child abuse. Persons so conditioned might, in some future Katrina, spend their time praying that the levees hold rather than getting off of their knees and repairing the levees. Such persons will then see themselves as “victims.” Not victims of their deadly doctrines, but perhaps of some god displeased because they had not killed off the Atheists within their midst.

Belief can create a kind of filter across the stream of information that enters the mind. Imagine that articles of faith are the size of BBs and that scientific facts are the size of marbles. A Fundangelical filter is set to stop anything larger than the BBs. Therefore, the filter automatically permits the BBs to enter the mind but stops the marbles. They simply do not get through. Dare we say that Creationism causes believers to lose their marbles?

The Rally for Reason was wildly successful, far beyond the expectations of the organizers. There was of course criticism and mocking from some who did not think the Rally was a good idea. “Well, why didn’t you go out and protest against the anniversary party for the alien spaceship crashing at Roswell?” for example. “Isn’t creationism so self evidently wrong that you only advertise it by protesting against this museum?”

Yes, of course the idea of aliens at Roswell is dumb. But such is not based on religious doctrine that the proponents want taught in public schools. And the errors of creationism have already persuaded a huge proportion of Americans to reject science for faith, for belief in things hoped for and for the assurance of things not seen. If no objection is made, the faithful can correctly say, to people who make laws, that no one seems to object.

If those who are peddling the snake oil of Creationism, or its womb mate Intelligent Design, have their way, the foundations upon which the Enlightenment, and hence the modern world, are built and sustained will be weakened and perhaps destroyed. The attempt to replace science with superstition endangers the very underpinnings of knowledge. Unchecked and unchallenged, ignorance could wash over us with a fury greater than that of any mere physical tsunami. Our race could, within a generation, be once again in a dark age, gaining knowledge from priests and supernatural revelations. In such a world, as in the past darkness of our species, reason and critical thinking could be punished in most barbaric ways.

All of human history can be seen as people standing in one of two great lines, two queues. In one line are those who, regardless of race, sex, nation, or religious belief, seek progress, exploration, rationality, and knowledge, those who accept objective truths, and who seek to improve the situation of creatures occupying our world.  In the other line are those who hold that faith and magic are more important than science and reason, those who seek to repress any contradictions to their beliefs, those who have tried, and who are now trying, to impose their religious views on the people in the other line. They have been successful in the past. They can be successful again.

Creationism is, in a very real sense, ground zero in the American Religious Civil War. This is not simply a cultural war. This is a war for the survival of a way of life and for a view of the universe that can yet take us to the stars. If the Wedge works, if Creationism is accepted by the state as something that can be properly taught as science, then the ARCW will be lost. Everything else that is needed to create a complete theocracy will follow. Truly a “domino” theory. The Fundangelicals realize this.

The battle is not over. It has only been joined. Quite literally, the fate of civilization awaits the outcome.

Which line are you in?

Edwin

 

Edwin Kagin © 2012.

The future waits in one of two great lines, two endless human queues
And each of us is in one line—there is no other line to choose.

Our journey as human creatures has fashioned these two lines
With very different features following very different signs.

Through kingdoms and through ages these lines unbroken run
One line snaking into darkness; one line straining for the sun.

One line holds shining visions of what humankind can be
When at last we make decisions free of myth and tyranny.

Our race, our creeds, our sex, and the religions we proclaim
In this line yield to human needs we cannot always name.

Some careless few within this line may hurt you and make you cry
But villains in the other line will kill you to watch you die.

Those marching in that other line seek to control not to achieve
By trying to deceive our minds with lies that they believe.

Prizing money over friendship, and power over human need
They do not work for kinship but only for their greed.

Anyone can leave their line, whenever they see fit
If perhaps they change their mind, from facts, or acts or wit.

No one must stay within a line where rules are learned by rote
That dictate how we all must live, and breed, and love, and vote.

In the coming great election, one line will finally decide
If our future takes direction from the bright or evil side.

Set aside all pious passion of who you are and where you have been
What now must be in fashion is “Which line are you in?”

How will you answer to the future when a new world starts to dawn
How will you tell your children which side of history you were on?

There are but two great questions to be raised when life must end,
“How did you use your roads and days?” And “Which line were you in?”

Edwin

Edwin Kagin (c)

It is Easter. The Sunday after the Sunday when Jesus Rode into Jerusalem on an ass.

The story reaches temporary end.

There are Easter Sunrise Services put on by lots of different Christian denominations. For this is the very guts of Christianity. The celebrants believe that because the tomb into which Jesus was laid on Friday was, on Sunday morning, vacant, Jesus had recovered from being dead and left the tomb.

What do Easter Bunnies, and hunts in lawns and living rooms for hard boiled eggs variously colored with dye, have to do with the Christian myth that Jesus had arisen from the dead? Absolutely nothing, that’s what. What do Easter bonnets, Easter parades, and such have to do with the Christian Easter story? Absolutely nothing, that’s what.

You doubtless have noted that Easter happens on different dates in different years. That is because the date is not fixed, but always changing. Easter is the first Sunday, after the first Monday, after the first Full Moon, after the Vernal Equinox. Now you know.

Just when Jesus left the tomb we cannot know. Maybe he wasn’t there on the evening of Good Friday. The scriptures say that after Jesus died he descended into Hell. The Mormons say that Jesus came and ministered to them, in what is now the United States of America, after his resurrection. Whether Jesus left the tomb on Friday night, or at any time on Saturday, is a topic to which theologians should give much greater attention. All one can say about it for sure from the bible story is that it was discovered that he had gone missing on Sunday, thereafter known as “Easter” by Christians.

When the disciples saw Jesus after he had left the tomb, all of them believed he was Jesus alive again. Except for the disciple Thomas. Thomas, the only rational skeptic in the room, wanted to touch the holes in his hands before he would believe.

It should be here noted that since the bible stories of the crucifixion of Jesus were put forth, it has been conclusively proved that the Romans nailed people to crosses through their wrists, not through their hands. Cadaver studies have shown that nailed hands cannot hold up the body, and that the hands pull off of the nail, causing the condemned to pitch forward with his feet still nailed to the cross. Not pretty to think about.

It wasn’t a “cross” anyway. The Greek originals of the gospels say it was a stake. This was a cheaper, and therefore a more popular, method of execution than a cross.

By the way, all of these events were not set down in writing until 80 to 200 or so years after the event. That is about like someone today trying to provide an eyewitness account of something that happened during the Civil War.

The gospel accounts of the so called Resurrection of Jesus, the myth that forms the basis for Easter, are all contradictory. The only feature they all have in common is the presence of Mary Magdalene at the tomb of Jesus early on Sunday morning. A newspaper reporter once asked me if it was true that I had actually, in my writings, called Mary Magdalene a “deranged hooker.’’ “Sure is,” I said. “Have you seen where I called the Holy Eucharist ‘Swallow the Leader?’” The reporter left confused and unable to continue the interview. I really have to stop doing that sort of thing.

Here is how Christianity works. If you believe the story that Jesus died as a blood sacrifice to god for the sins of all personkind, and that he arose from the dead, then you get to go to live in Heaven with Jesus when you die. If you do not believe that Jesus died for your sins, you will, when you die, be assigned to a place of torture called Hell. It is a remarkably simple program. Far more simple than the highly complex mythical stories of Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Hindu, and dog knows how many other religions.

And after using the Latin cross for centuries as a symbol for Christianity, in the lawsuit by American Atheists over a number of 12-foot-high crosses being put up near Utah highways to honor fallen officers, the defendants tried to argue that the cross is not really a Christian symbol. Do not know for sure yet if this will be the argument of the defendants in the American Atheists’ lawsuit to force removal of a 20-foot-high, 10-ton, metal structural element that resembles a Latin cross, found in the wreckage of the World Trade Center, following the horrors of 9/11, at Ground Zero. If so, let us hope that such a ridiculous argument is disposed of as it was in the Utah case.

Stay tuned.

Happy Easter.

Edwin
Edwin Kagin ©

It is “Holy Saturday” following “Good Friday,” previously discussed, of “Holy Week.”
When Jesus was on the cross yesterday, Friday, things were quite busy. The bible reports that various people visited him while hanging; the soldiers who nailed him gambled for his clothes (this part was the inspiration for the novel and movie “The Robe”); Jesus prayed to his Father God, one of the three co-equals of the Trinity, to make the whole thing go away, and then realized that what he was praying was inappropriate because what Father God’s wanted controlled. When Jesus died, there were great and unusual weather and seismological abnormalities; the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom (there are lots of theological explanations for this—none of them making any sense); he was offered “water and wine,” which he refused. A soldier stabbed a spear into his side to make sure he was dead.

Most curiously, when Jesus died, dead people were reported to have come out of their graves or tombs and walk around where they were seen and recognized by “many.’ We are not told the state of decomposition of these zombies. One would think that dead people walking around and being recognized by many would be a lively topic for reporting, and retelling down the years, but sadly there is no record of this incredible event outside of the bible. We might wonder if the animated corpses got their property back from their heirs. Don’t know the law on that one.

Jesus was said to have been buried in a “new tomb,” and a stone was rolled in front of the opening. It is memorialized that soldiers were stationed to guard the tomb. The various reports, from the four gospels, are wildly contradictory.

Lots of other things happened that Saturday. Check the Gospels for details. Sabbath ended at sundown on Saturday.

Jesus spent the entire day being dead in the tomb—so far as we know that is. This is the only full day Jesus was in the tomb. Just how he could have been in the tomb, as prophesied, for “three days and nights” when the reports of scripture say he was entombed from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning, is another of those mysteries of faith.

Big day tomorrow.

Edwin
Edwin Kagin ©2012.

Flagellates scourging themselves; people hanging on crosses; people climbing up cathedral stairs, abrading their knees. All causing pain, and producing blood, the staple of Christian beliefs and practice. It is Good Friday, the day they nailed Jesus.

According to the bible, Jesus was seized by the Jewish ruling body, the Sanhedrin, late Thursday night, or early Friday morning, of Holy Week. They wanted Jesus dead. After all, he had been in town almost a week, after riding into it on an ass, and had, inter alia, cursed a fig tree, raised a guy from the dead, and said he would destroy the temple and rebuild it after three days.

Judas got an unfair rap from history. On Thursday night, Judas had left the Last Supper to go off and betray Jesus for the thirty pieces he had been given him to do so by the Sanhedrin. After the L.S., Jesus et al when to the Garden of Gethsemane, on the Mount of Olives, just outside of the walls of Jerusalem.

Judas let the agents of the Sanhedrin to their little group and identified Jesus by kissing him. It is not known if this was something that was done before this time between them. The Gospel of Mark says that Jesus had with him a young man, with a garment tossed over him. When someone grabbed for him, the garment came off and the young man ran away naked. Odd detail to put into this action packed story.

One might think that Jesus would be well known to those whose tables he had overturned, to those who had been whipped by him, and to those who knew he had cursed a fig tree, raised a dead man from the dead, etc. But we are told Judas was necessary to identify him, and the bible is said by some to be inerrant.

Today, as throughout the history of Christianity, Judas has been reviled and hated as the greatest possible of villains. Yet consider that without him there would be no sacrifice of Jesus as god had planned, no resurrection, no post mortem immortality, and no forgiveness of sins. Christians believe all of this would not have happened if Jesus had not gotten crucified as called for in the program. Salvation is only possible, they believe, because Jesus got crucified as a blood atonement for the sins of humans. So if Judas had not done as he did, we would all still be in a state of hopeless sin and doomed to an eternity of punishment by fire.

After being seized, Jesus was hauled before Pontius Pilot, the representative of Roman rule in Jerusalem. We are to believe that a bunch of much marginalized Jews could wake up Pilot in the middle of the night, and that Pilot would conduct a sort of summary trial on the spot. It is even stranger that the Jews, who did not practice crucifixion, would be permitted to crucify Jesus without a Roman judgment finding guilt and a finding that crucifixion was the proper punishment. Everything about the story of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus was mind bogglingly bizarre. But the bible says it’s so. Jesus was nailed on Friday and was dead a few hours later on Friday.

It usually took the condemned several days to die on the cross. That was the great agony inflicted by this inhuman method of execution that was usually reserved for the worst of traitors. A couple of thieves and a rabble rouser would have hardly met the criteria.

Then consider that Jesus was nailed up on Friday of Holy Week. The Jewish Sabbath started at sundown Friday, so all of those hanging on the crosses needed to be dead before sunset, when work was not permitted and when bodies should not be on crosses. A Roman execution would be a different matter, but Pilot had put the Jews in charge of this one. When it was time to break his legs so he would die faster, because he would no longer be able to push upward to take a breath, it was found that he was already dead. So he was taken down and put in a tomb. Another problem. In Roman crucifixions, the dead body was usually not taken down and buried but allowed to nakedly rot on the cross as part of the punishment and as a warning to others.

So, the Friday of Holy Week, that started with Jesus riding into town on an ass ended with Jesus being dead and put in a tomb.

It is hard to understand just why believers should be upset by this. It was all part of god’s great plan for salvation—have a kid, raise it to manhood, then have it killed as a blood sacrifice to god for the sins of other people.

Great system, huh?
Edwin

Edwin Kagin © 2012

If blasphemy is not your thing, or if you are offended by making fun of ridiculous religious beliefs, you would be well advised to go to another blog, read your bible, or go to a meeting of fellow travelers caught up in the world of Christian religious myth. You have been warned. It is not your narrator’s desire to injure anyone or to destroy their child-like faith.

What we really want to avoid is having the villagers come after us (me) with pitchforks and torches.

In the highly disjointed and inconsistent accounts of the last week of Jesus in mortal undead human form, today, Thursday, was his last full day to be alive. And he was quite busy. After he rode into town on an ass and cursed unto death an innocent fig tree, according to one or more of the four gospels, he did at least the following: raised one Lazarus from the dead; had his feet annotated with precious oil; told several “parables” emphasizing how important he was; told people they should pay taxes to Caesar because Caesar’s head was on the coinage; informed that there is no marriage in Heaven; taught that many are called but few are chosen; instructed that loving god is the greatest of the commandments; praised the actions of a woman who gave a farthing, all that she had, to the church; said that those who did not have a sword should sell their garment and buy one; washed his followers’ feet and said they should wash each other’s feet. It is unclear if all of this happened on Thursday, but it is clear that it happened before Friday. According to the story, that is.

These are but a few of the behaviors and sayings ascribed to Jesus that occurred between the time he rode into town on a donkey on Sunday and the time he was arrested late Thursday or early Friday of that week, a period of time which has come to be known as “Holy Week.” Jesus and his disciples were homeless, and they either stayed at the home of followers or outdoors in the nearby Mount of Olives. Perhaps the week should be known as “Homeless Week.”

It is hard to believe that all of this could have happened in the time allotted by the scriptures. It was now Thursday, the Jewish “Passover.” Jesus had his sycophants acquire a location for them to eat the Passover meal. This is known at the “Last Supper.” It has been the inspiration for a lot of very decent art.

Anyhow, at the dinner, Jesus invented the practice of Holy Communion, i.e. the eating of his body and blood—a story taken literally by many. Just how this can be understood as something other than cannibalism is not known.

Jesus predicted that one of the twelve apostles would betray him. Upon hearing this, Judas got twitchy at the supper and left. He, as you probably know, had been given thirty pieces of silver to betray Jesus to the officials, which he did after dinner at the Garden of Gethsemane, on the Mount of Olives, just outside of the walls of Jerusalem, where Jesus and his homeless crew had been sleeping while visiting the Holy City.

Either late Thursday, or early Friday morning of Holy Week, church officials hauled Jesus away. Nobody had slept very well that night, except maybe Peter who fell asleep with some of the others of the now eleven followers, before saying three times that he had no idea who Jesus was. As Jesus had foretold, right after Peter’s third denial of knowledge of Jesus, a rooster crowed.

It was therefore officially Friday morning. This is known as “Good Friday.”

What happened then is another story.

Edwin
Edwin Kagin © 2012.

Of the four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, only Matthew and Mark report the following incident.

Sometime after Jesus went on a rampage (or, as Mark would have it, before he did) and knocked over tables and flung money about in the temple, while using a whip he had made of ropes, we come to the adventure with the fig tree (Jesus was not generally inventive, so this is an interesting aside. According to the movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” by Mel Gibson, surely one of the most watched homo-erotic BDSM stories ever told, Jesus also invented the dining room table. Ken Ham should ask, “Were you there?”), he became hungry and came upon a fig tree that was not producing figs.

Instead of wishing the tree well for its growing up, development, old age, or whatever, and going his way to a more productive fig tree, Jesus becomes angry with the fig tree and cursed it. And, in response to the curse of the Prince of Peace, the fig tree withered up and died.

This story in the Holy Bible has proved problematic for many theologians. Why would a god, the Savior of the World, get upset because a fig tree did not, at the time he encountered it, have any figs on it?

One can take their choice of a number of allegorical interpretations to explain this ungodly behavior of the Messiah. None of them really work very well because it does not seem to us ordinary sinners any great crime, certainly not one worthy of death, for a fig tree not to have, at the moment it met Jesus, any figs on it.

Fig trees get a fair amount of ink in the Holy Scriptures. You may recall that when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree, and gained knowledge of good and evil, they realized they were naked. This shamed our first parents, the only then living humans. So, in a act of preserving the modesty of the two now prudes he had created, god slaughtered some innocent animals he had also made, and, from the skins peeled from the dead bodies of these first dead animals, made Adam and Eve clothes wherewithal to cover their shameful nakedness. Prior to this ungodly violent moment, A & E has attempted to cover their shameful genitals with fig leaves. According to Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum, this was the first time that death entered our world. Before the great sin of eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, A & E did not know that they were naked. And nothing alive ate meat. The great teeth on certain dinosaurs were, according to the arkonuts, for cracking open coconuts. Imagine, if you would, a great Bengal Tiger lunching out on a bucket of Brussels sprouts.

One might well wonder just how A & E might have been expected to know the difference between good and evil, and to know it was evil to disobey god, before they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and thereby learned the difference between good and evil. Must be another of those mysteries of faith.

But I digress, and we should be more reverent. It is, after all, Holy Week and we are exploring just what the soon-to-be-resurrected Lord did during that week before he was killed as a child sacrifice to his Father God and came alive again after two nights and one day in the tomb in which his dead body was laid.

So far this week, Jesus has ridden an ass into the city of Jerusalem. He has engaged in delinquent behavior by his actions of criminal mischief in the temple, and he has cursed unto death an innocent plant, a fig tree that did then in fact die.

Wonder if Jesus thought having a fig tree that had no figs on it was worse than a female hemp plant that had lots of leaves on it? Or humans who had no clothes on them?

There are adventures yet to come in our discussions of Holy Week. So check back and see what other foolishness religion wants us to believe on the pain of our immortal souls suffering forever in a lake of fire.

We are, after all, on a countdown to Easter Sunday. Time to stock up on hot cross buns and to dye them Easter eggs. What do these things have to do with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus? Nothing whatsoever.

And, it was noted today, from a posted notice, that the local court clerk’s office closes at noon on this coming Friday to celebrate “Good Friday.” How can that be in a country that does not permit the state to do anything in support of any religion? The answer must be another mystery of faith.

And now you know why god hates figs.

Edwin.
Edwin Kagin © 2012,

Jesus needed to go into Jerusalem because that was where he was to be killed as a blood sacrifice to his Father God on Friday of that week and where he was to rise from the dead on the first day of the following week. He knew that. It was part of the deal. Jesus, God the Son, was God, as were God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. God the Father always seems to have had the last say over God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. But together they are worshiped by Trinitarian Christians as one triune god. The Trinity. Never mind if that doesn’t make sense. It is not there to make sense. It is there for you to believe, no matter how irrational or improbable. That’s how things are in religion. If it made sense, it would not be a religious teaching, but a demonstrable fact.

Outside of Jerusalem, on the Sabbath, Jesus instructed his followers to go and steal a colt, the foal of an ass, and bring it to him. If anyone questioned, they were to tell them the Lord hath need of it. Just why hauling off the animal, the property of another, is not forbidden work on the Sabbath is not explained.

Jesus and his followers trooped into the town, with Jesus riding on a donkey. Some threw leaves in their way. One might wonder if this gesture was mean as praise or as ridicule.

Jesus’ first reported act in Jerusalem was an assault upon merchants lawfully selling things like doves for sacrifice and changing money, whatever that means. It could mean exchanging Jerusalem money for, say, Egyptian money. Anyhow, in a violent act against merchandising and free trade, Jesus forced the money changers to abandon their work stations in the temple. One account, the Gospel of John, says he made and used a whip, drove merchants and animals out of the temple, and overturned the tables of the merchants and the numismatists. It was an ungodly outburst of temper and quite unfitting behavior for a gentle ass riding messiah. Or so it seems. Under today’s secular moral code, known as “laws,” the behavior of Jesus could be prosecuted for at least assault and criminal mischief.

Just how, or why, one wonders, do the money changes of today, and many very wealthy merchant families, insist on our government passing laws to protect that which they do best. It is perfectly lawful that they do so. But to credit Jesus with being the inspiration for their mercenary ways is somewhat amazing, given the tantrum in the temple story.

For the rest of this week, this blog will attempt to tell you more about Holy Week. You have been warned.

Edwin
Edwin Kagin © 2012.

Press Release

For Immediate Release:

Who: Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director for American Atheists

What: will speak at Eastern Kentucky University on why people believe in gods and on “The American Religious Civil War (ARCW)”

When: 7:00 pm, Thursday, April 5th, 2012.

Where: Herndon Lounge, Richmond, Kentucky.

Admission is free.

Edwin

Edwin Kagin
National Legal Director
American Atheists, Inc.
P.O. Box 666
Union, KY 41091
Phone: 859.384.7000
Fax: 859.384.7324
Email: ekagin@atheists.org
Web: www.atheists.org