Suffer the Little Children

It is so very Christian to want an image of Jesus suffering on the cross (a violation of the commandment against "graven images" by the way). And so super Christian to want those crucifixes made by hand by virgin children in Chinese sweatshops. What is more holy than knowing that your worship of The Lord is causing little children to suffer just like the scripture says.

Why Sunday?

One could argue that God loves football and was just planning ahead. Or, perhaps, God is really into politics and wants to be able to kick back and watch all those political chat shows on Sunday mornings. Equally, one could argue that for Romans the worship of the Sun God morphed into Christianity and they took their Sun Day worship habits with them.

One thing is certain, Sunday is not the Sabbath of the Old Testament so all those Christians filing into church on Sundays are kicking that "observe the sabbath day and keep it holy" commandment in the teeth.

Thanksgiving Roots

The symbol of Thanksgiving (excluding the turkey) is the Cornucopia. The Cornucopia comes from Greek mythology. It is the horn of the goat Amalthea that fed the infant god Zeus. Thanksgiving itself, of course, is simply an ancient harvest festival brought into the 21st century.

Fascist Beatifications

Pope Benedict XVI was a member of the Hitler Youth as a child. I've never cared much; he was 14 years old, a German, and membership was about to be made mandatory. It was more a coincidence of geography and age than it was a matter of belief. I'm rethinking that. The bulk beatification last October of 498 Spanish priests killed during the Spanish Civil War leads one to wonder about Benedict's relationship with fascism.

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was between the established government (called Republicans and Loyalists). They were Socialists and supported by the Soviet Union. The opposing forces were the monarchists, Roman Catholic Church, and Falangists (fascists) and were supported by Nazi Germany. The Falangists eventually won leading to the longest Fascist dictatorship in world history, 36 years (1939-1975). There were atrocities on both sides. The Loyalists "Red Terror" killed some 40,000 Spanish, including several thousand priests and nuns. The subsequent Fascist "White Terror" killed between 200,000 and 800,000 Spanish loyalists and Basques.

The beatifications followed efforts in the Spanish Parliament to remove statuary and other venerations of Francisco Franco's bloody rule. In essence, the Church is making a political statement in support of the Franco regime. Proof this act is in support of Spanish Fascism and not the Church rests in the bloody hand of Father Gabino Olaso Zabala. In 1896, Olaso tortured a Catholic priest (Fr. Mariano Dacanay) in the Philippines because Dacanay supported Filipino Catholics against the Spanish colonial rule of the time. Olaso is one of the beatified.

This does lead naturally to the question where Pope Benedict XVI (nee Joseph Ratzinger) rests on the question of fascism?

Christian Polytheism

How many Gods are there in the Christian religion?

The Trinity
Ask a Christian to explain the Trinity sometime when you want a good laugh. To Christians, there is One True God, who is in fact three Gods. There is God the Father who is the Old Testament Jewish God, Yahweh. There is God the Son, Jesus, born of a woman and ascended into Heaven. And then there is the amorphous Holy Spirit. Three completely separate entities with three very different personalities. They pray to them as separate individuals. Sounds like three gods, yeah? Not very monotheistic of them.

Christians explain this in an abstruse, labyrinthine concept call The Trinity. Basically, the three gods are one god, the one god is three gods, and if you don't understand that you are an ignorant twit who will burn in Hell.

The Mother Goddess
Many Christian sects worship the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. There are icons and statues to her. She is prayed to regularly. She appears to people (sometimes as a toasted cheese sandwich) and preforms the occasional miracle. The whole goddess gig.

Angels and Demons
Angels are immortals akin to the servant gods of the Sumerian religion, the igigi gods. According to Sumerian legend, mankind was created because the igigi gods were sick and tired of doing all the work for the greater gods. Mankind were made to be servants to the servants. The concept of rebellious servant gods (fallen angels) goes back to those same Sumerian legends.

Saints
There are over 10,000 demigods, called saints. They are prayed to like gods, perform miracles like gods, are worshiped like gods, yet were once human. Part man, part god - the definition of demigods.

So, according to the Christian faith, Heaven is crawling with gods, semi-gods, and demigods. The pantheon of the Christian religion has many more gods than any of the classical polytheistic religions. Valhalla or Olympus would need annexes and high-rise apartments to house all the deities in the Christian Heaven.

Cheap at any Price

The Mother Goddess, the Virgin Mary, is cheapening her market value with her habit of appearing on all manners of low cost consumables. At right is the Virgin embossing a toasted cheese sandwich that was sold at auction three years ago for $28,000. She has appeared as a Rold Gold Honey Mustard pretzel and as a smudge on a school cafeteria pizza pan. Allah is no better. He has etched His name on the inside of tomatoes and on a serving of beans and eggs.

It is a bad decision to low-ball the franchise like this. No one has ever seen the Virgin Mary on Filet Mignon or on a Perigord Black Truffle but wouldn't a God (and His mommy) want to appear on the very best?

The Malaria Question

Consider the malaria protozoa (left). Flying creatures, birds and mosquitoes, were created on day five. Everything else, including man, was slapped together in a hurry on day six. Between crafting elk and mole rats He constructed a small tube of protoplasm specifically designed to murder millions of humans, mostly children, every year.

Malaria is a human parasite. It doesn't bother with cows or chickens, it will only use human blood cells to reproduce. The mosquito is merely the trolley it uses to travel from victim to victim. For pure heartless butchery, malaria is master of the world. No human despot, not Hitler nor Stalin nor Mao, can match the human suffering of this creation of God. One to three million dead, half a billion sick, every year.