The resurrection is proof of God’s existence and power, demonstrating that salvation is real. Jesus becomes the living proof. It goes hand in hand with the crucifixion to make Easter the most powerful of christian holy days.

Speaking as en ex-Catholic, who long ago got over the nonsense of it all.

My cousin’s an evangelical and we’ve been talking about this stuff.  They focus more on the resurrection than the death.  Of course, your perspective is reminding me of this Onion piece.

great shirt @ Norwestcon yesterday
“You worship a zombie and you think I’m weird?”

As a Christian, I now understand your cynicism. For me, it’s not about sacrifice. In fact, I’m uncomfortable with the sacrifice part, but here’s the part that makes it all worth it for me anyway: grace.  The resurrection isn’t just about Christ, it’s about Christ as a stand-in and promise for all of us, not just in his death, but also in the improbable return to live. Yeah, it’s pretty far-fetched. But in a way that give me hope that things aren’t as dreary as they seem.

Crap, now I am going to have to download the second series of The Office in order to read the last 2/3rds of this post.

“Face it, the resurrection cheapens the whole thing, and reads like it’s tacked on to give people a happy ending.”

No. That’s an interesting perspective, I’ll admit. However, that wasn’t the intent of the resurrection at all.

Not so much the Happy Hollywood Ending where Christ comes back & he and Mary Magdalene spend the rest of their days off the coast of France in a quaint little cottage - but more a living symbol that was (hopefully) something even the thickest of believers could grasp: That life does not end with physical death, but continues on to the next stage of development.

Yet seeing as how the thickest of believers (in an age where information is but a button-push away) can’t understand simple concepts like “Love thy neighbor” & instead use Christ/The Bible as “divine proof” that God loves Republicans best & Gays are an infection from Hell, it’s no wonder that Christianity gets such a bad rap these days. The original message has been twisted & perverted beyond recognition & co-opted by wingnuts with an agenda. Catholic hypocrisy - always a problem for the church since Day One - pales in comparison.

The resurrection isn’t just about Christ, it’s about Christ as a stand-in and promise for all of us, not just in his death, but also in the improbable return to live.

Cool.  So God sets up rules to some tribe about sacrificial lambs, and then can’t figure out a way around such laws, but does by sending Himself to die horribly as the Ultimate Lamb, but, you know, he doesn’t actually die, and other people die worse, but so he can now break the rules and the tribe no longer has to sacrifice sheep, and everyone can join in.

It wouldn’t have been easier to say “Hey, you Hebrews, lay off the lambs, okay?”

Let me suggest an alternative.  Saul, attempting to adapt a Jewish mystery cult to fit a larger Roman audience, ties the execution of its Messiah figure (one of several around this period) to Greek and Roman themes of resurrected gods, and uses an emotionally resonant meme of the sacrifice of animals already present in tribal Judaism.

Saul and L Ron Hubbard have more in common than you may think.

You have to think of religion in terms of self-perpetuating memes. If you can make a case that you’re following someone who’s so badass that even death isn’t permanent, that gives you a trump card, especially in a situation of narrow information flow. Oddly enough, by all rights that should make Easter a bigger party day than Mardi Gras; why it isn’t is left as an exercise, I guess.

What it doesn’t address: the theological muddle inherent in making Jesus a Passover sacrifice rather than a Yom Kippur sacrifice. My best guess is that maybe Passover was more familiar to the Hellenized Jewish diaspora than Yom Kippur, so the Original Three (Peter, James, and John) thought nothing of conflating the two for outsiders.

Saul and L Ron Hubbard have more in common than you may think.

I don’t think there’s any real dispute about that. Although I might be slightly more likely to liken him to Josh McDowell or Rush Limbaugh—an unaccountable freelancer with considerable power but no official authority.

to poach on that territory

I see what you did there.

But the story doesn’t actually have any relationship to spring, and really, it could have happened any time of year.  It was just aligned with the original Easter to poach on that territory.

That’s really the point of the holiday—it was a marketing tool for the early church as a way to get “pagans” to convert. And it seems to me like that’s the part we’ve really gotten right, because it’s a marketing bonanza for all sorts of companies these days.

Earlier today it occurred to me that the Christian symbolism re the seasons was bassackwards - should have had the Child born in the Spring, the season of birth, and dying/resurrecting with the death and rebirth of the sun at the winter solstice. I can think of some really cute rituals around this—little baby Jesuses hidden in eggs in the new grass, solstice Jesus fires extinguished and explosively relit…

If you’ve got Christian faith you get it, if you don’t you don’t.

There’s really not much point in applying your logic to another epistemological system. You will always come up empty. If you really want to understand, you can do the work of unpacking the whole system of knowledge to see how it works and how the Easter story fits in. But, you don’t get to call bullshit from the outside on one part of a foreign system of knowledge. The billion or so true believers in the world indicate that it makes sense within that system (those related systems really).

I assume you understand this so, when you say “I’m forced to call bullshit on Easter, not just because it’s a religious holiday, but because it’s one that never made much sense to me.” I’m inclined to think you’re being a tad disingenuous. I say go full PZ Meyers and own your contempt for the whole system.

If you live someplace where bulbs are the way that perennials survive, it all makes a bit more sense - things that have died do rise.  If you live at higher latitudes, this is the season when life seems to burst forth from the earth in a very dramatic fashion.

My husband lost a childhood friend after a long battle with pancreatic cancer last night, and put The The’s Love is stronger than death up on his Facebook page. You don’t have to buy into it in order to appreciate it. http://www.lyricsfreak.com/t/the/love+is+stronger+than+death_20136170.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2RtUv_PgGA

The whole rabbit handing out eggs thing ... PAGAN!  Most certainly a fertility ritual.

Think of all the brains this single zombie has eaten in 2000 years!

The ancients had scads and scads of dead-and-reborn gods. The early Christians just appropriated one of the most common mythological motifs of their time. Pretty ho-hum stuff, really.

Oh but the Office Special…“Never give up!”

Sweet illusion…

The billion or so true believers in the world indicate that it makes sense within that system (those related systems really).

Actually it doesn’t indicate anything of the sort. All it indicates is that lots of people buy into a ritual without actually trying to unpack it for its deeper meaning. Seriously—most Christians, when pressed, can’t explain the logic behind the holiday, in large part because they’ve never been asked to. They’ve just accepted it as part of an unquestionable belief system.

I wouldn’t call it logic so much as literary criticism, Bab.  As a story, it’s all over the place.

Babieca - You have to buy into the system for the system to make sense.  You need one moment of intense suspension of disbelief.  The christian mythology is no less ridiculous than Norse or Greek mythology when seen from outside.  The only thing that lends it more credence is because it was used as a method to subdue the known world at the time to Rome.  And somehow it took a deep enough hold to perpetuate itself for a couple thousand years so far.  It may continue or it may eventually die out, but to a non-believer, it’s just another mythology.  But if you can dismiss any other mythology out of hand without taking the system and society that built it, then it’s no less rational to do so with christianity.

I think we can all agree Mireille wins the Internet though right?

Jesus celebrated Passover just before he was arrested.  Passover occurs in the spring, so the arrest and crucifixion occurred in the spring.  This had a very powerful message, because the Passover celebrates when the angel of death passed over the houses of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, but, in effect, Jesus, by his arrest and crucifixion immediately after Passover did not escape the angel of death.

Steve, the difference is the pagans usually connected their myths to the real world.  Ishtar dies, the world goes dark and infertile.  She rises, fucking re-commences, and spring is here.

The way we were taught it, back in my episcopalian days, was at least superficially almost the opposite of what you’re saying. The whole point of the crucifixion story was that Jesus really truly did die, and went to his incredibly painful death believing that god had abandoned him. Dark night of the soul and all that. The resurrection part was kinda downplayed, because he came back, but he didn’t stay very long.

Of course that was in a different time, when you didn’t have brand your religion so relentlessly upbeat to keep your followers. (I remember the young blond cleric at my mother’s funeral—they wouldn’t let the priest she’d actually liked officiate—going on about how she was even now having cocktails and dinner with all the saints in heaven looking down on us, and thinking she would have been the first to call him on crap like that.)

The resurrection is just another example of how the privileged get away with stuff.

Jesus is supposed to die to balance the cosmic accounting books, or else the Galactic IRS was going to come after all of us, or something.

But because Jesus’s old man is The Man, he doesn’t have to get the full dead-forever treatment.  Oh no, he gets to twist the rules and get himself resurrected.

So we humans have to abide by all the rules or else.  But the boss’s son gets the donate-a building-to-the-university Gentleman’s C treatment — hardly fair.

As usual, them that has gets, and them that don’t get screwed…

I always thought the connection to Passover was that it’s a Jewish holiday of salvation, too.  Passover, by the way, makes more sense than Easter.  The rituals hold to the story, and the events in the story actually illustrate the main themes of salvation and chosenness nicely.

Is there a homonym involved in other languages than English? The son/sun is risen!

Of course, the Greeks had Persephone being let out of Hades this time of year. There’s Ostara, a dawn goddess who was supposedly torn apart and reassembled herself after 3 days, and had bunnies for a symbol. I’ve heard the documentation on that myth is weak, but it does explain the name Easter, especially since Eos was her Greco-Roman counterpart.

It may seem obvious that Yule is when the sun returns, but often Pagans saw that as a turning point, but that the real return of the sun was around the vernal equinox, when the sun became stroonger than the night.

Anyone know how many days it took Isis to resurrect Osiris?

@IND

That’s sort of the point…there is no deeper meaning, nothing to unpack. It’s a historical record of their savior’s sacrifice and resurrection. And they all know the significance of that sacrifice and his being risen.

It’s only for us on the outside that the fact that it’s clearly bullshit matters.

“But because Jesus’s old man is The Man, he doesn’t have to get the full dead-forever treatment.”

Of course Jesus himself is The Man, and in Christian theology precisely no one gets the full dead-forever treatment.

What Babieca said, for the most part.

Plus it would be refreshing to see Amanda attempt to dismantle the core-narratives of, and drip amused contempt for, some of the *other* major world religions for once. I hear Islam is very powerful these days—and rather patriarchal too. A big fat target for a principled feminist atheist. And both have a parent religion to which the Jesus of the Gospels subscribed, remember? You should take a whack at that one some time, if your atheism is so principled. It even has a major sacred season that coincides with that Christian one to which, oddly, the pagan goddess Eostre gives her name in English-speaking countries. (Some of you have got to like that part, at least. Plus the bunnies. There’s folk religion and there’s learned doctrinal systems. The folk like bunnies.)

Pulling out my M.Div that doesn’t get that much use, I can tell you that, from a liberal/liberationist perspective, the resurrection says that the powers and principalities of the world don’t have the final word.

If the story ends on Good Friday, then the Romans win, then the word to the oppressed of all times and places is that they should just accept their place, that they cannot possibly hope to stand up to their oppressors.

Learning a version of the Inanna myth (from this version by Dianne Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer) was a big deal to me in my self-liberation period when I was in my mid-twenties, in the later 1980s.

Now, the version of Inanna Wolkstein offers has plenty of questionable content. For me, that was largely the liberating point; Christianity stresses a Manichean polarization of a perfect God with no darkness somehow opposed by absolute, demonic evil.

Inanna, unlike Jesus, is not brought into the world in order to ultimately go through this unique death-and-resurrection cycle. She is a goddess who at some point in her evolution chooses to venture into the underworld in order to investigate imbalance; the nature of the problems she seeks to right becomes revealed to her gradually in this process. She isn’t resurrected because that was her nature; she took steps to arrange for her rescue to happen in the event of her non-return. When she confronts what she thought was the source of her problems, her “dark sister” Erishkigal, Queen of the Underworld, it becomes evident that for one thing, Erishkigal and all her scary attributes are in some sense projections or shadows of Inanna’s own actions in the past.

Then when she is resurrected and allowed to return, the karmic laws of the universe demand someone else die in her place. Demons (the “galli”) accompany her, looking for an appropriate sacrifice. As she returns she encounters people who have been mourning her loss; she forbids the galli to take them. Then she finds her husband (Dumazi; Tammuz; in some versions Gilgamesh) sitting on the royal throne running things without an apparent sad thought in his regal head—“Take him!” she says.

Then there is more about Dumazi running, his sister Geshtinanna protects him under torture but his friend betrays him and the galli get him. Then Geshtinanna (like Erishkigal she seems to be an aspect of Inanna herself, though also a distinct person as well) pleads to liberate Dumazi and in turn takes his place; they settle on an alternation, with Dumazi and Gehstinanna each spending half the year in the underworld.

The contrast between this and the Christian myth is that the latter has a basically other-worldly structure; God is perfectly good from the beginning until the end and the ways of this world are ultimately transitory and irrelevant. Since (unlike in a properly Manichean worldview) God is also omnipotent there is the problematic element that all evil is doomed to fail and the question arises, why put Creation through this painful sideshow in the first place, if it pales to nothing in comparison to Eternity?

Whereas the Inanna myth, at least as spun by Wolkstein, is Earth-centered; Inanna is not perfect, she is a seeker after some kind of livable balance just like the rest of us. Everything is a negotiation; the villains and heroes are ambiguous.

I myself interpret it as myths of a transitional era between the pre-agricultural gatherer-hunter worldview and the later patriarchy proper, in which the subordination of women is more “advanced.” Already Inanna is a queen and a war-goddess, but one tempered by what I regard as the older mentality of basic human egalitarianism (at least within ones own people).

The later Ishtar as found in Gilgamesh is, like the rest of the Akkadian pantheon, a nasty piece of work; she is portrayed as goddess of plagues, and there is a long scene where, after the gods have carried out the great flood for basically petty reasons, she belatedly, tearfully regrets the near-extermination of humanity because now those human worms aren’t offering the gods sacrifices any more. I see Gilgamesh as emanating from a later period when the Mesopotamian settlements had advanced further along the path of imperialistic militarization that would peak with the terrible reign of the Assyrians, who took bloodlust to unheard-of depths.

With that, the dominator world-view reached its limits of carrying the logic of competitive conquest to practical extremes, and the various religions afterward reflected their respective societies’ quest for a more sane, workable balance. Thus with Christianity we get a re-creation of the death-and-resurrection myth, but now reoriented toward an absolute Dominator God who however incorporates ideals of goodness. But the deep dominator values still demand a scornful devaluation of the material world in favor of the imagined ideal kingdom we hear so much about today from Christian apologists.

Babieca:

Speaking of PZ Myers, nice courtier’s reply there.

You are aware that most western atheists are quite familiar with the Christian mythology and the Bible and all, and that a great many of us were very sincere believers at one point, right? The only way that argument makes sense is to assume We Never Understood It To Begin With, and I think the vast majority of us would find that both inaccurate and insulting.

Well, wapsie, soaking in christianity all my life makes me a little more (superficially, I acknowledge) familiar with it than Islam.  I went to Sunday school all my childhood so I know all the major stories.  I would have to do some studying on on Islam, but it’s like learning a second language as an adult…  I’ll never know it like a native speaker.

It is weird that the Jesus’s death thing becomes, like, a symbol of a symbol:  that he came back to life represents _not_ that we too will come back to life but instead that on Judgment Day we good people will end up in an afterlife that’s not the same thing as life but confusingly similar, or better, or, um, something something.  It’s confusing even to believers, I think, because we’ve gotten all these stories of ghosts of our loved ones and guardian angels and such, which don’t (IIRC) have any biblical basis.  We’re all supposed to be in a holding pattern until Judgment Day, right, strictly speaking?  There isn’t this celestial furlough program where we go do something else for a while.  But that’s what Jesus does when he comes back.  That’s what’s confusing about What It All Means for run-of-the-mill, non-Jesus people.

If the story ends on Good Friday, then the Romans win, then the word to the oppressed of all times and places is that they should just accept their place, that they cannot possibly hope to stand up to their oppressors.

@ Meghan:  But even if the story ended with an ignominious death, why wouldn’t it be a powerful martyr story—among hundreds and thousands of others that animate the imaginations of oppressed peoples?

Plus it would be refreshing to see Amanda attempt to dismantle the core-narratives of, and drip amused contempt for, some of the *other* major world religions for once.

Matthew 7:3:  And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

(Perhaps the only place in the Internet where one blasphemes by quoting scripture…)

@ Meghan:  But even if the story ended with an ignominious death, why wouldn’t it be a powerful martyr story—among hundreds and thousands of others that animate the imaginations of oppressed peoples?

I like how the newer NIV’s note that the oldest Mark manuscripts end at 16:8, right after the crucifixion.

Not to mention that Jesus is about the most passive aggressive god in the book. If you don’t pay your respects to Thor or Zeus, they’ll just strike you down with a lightning bolt. But Jesus says “I died for you on the cross. Don’t you think you owe me now, never mind that I don’t do miracles any more?.” It’s somewhat like saying “I bought you this giant fucking ring; don’t you think I deserve a blow job right about now?”

@Flip, yes, then it would just be like any number of other stories, but with the addition of Easter, it becomes something more, it becomes a story of hope and of promise.

The writers of the Gospels apparently felt that their audiences needed to hear something more than just another martyr story, especially in the light of renewed Roman oppression some 40 or 50 years after the original event.

What never made any sense to me was the concept of Christ, or anyone else, dying for my sins. How can something that allegedly happened thousands of years before I was born forgive me for anything? And why does it make any kind of moral sense to kill Person A for the sins of B, C, D, and basically the entire alphabet, especially when Person A is also God?

Plus it would be refreshing to see Amanda attempt to dismantle the core-narratives of, and drip amused contempt for, some of the *other* major world religions for once. I hear Islam is very powerful these days—and rather patriarchal too. A big fat target for a principled feminist atheist.

As an athiest, I’m personally not really down on shitting on religions that are being constantly shit on by the ruling elite in this country, too.  They’re all full of stupid patriarchal bullshit, but Christianity is the religion with power in the US.  They’re the ones that need to be taken down a peg.

with the addition of Easter, it becomes something more, it becomes a story of hope and of promise

It must work, because it’s certainly been the most successful martyrdom narrative in history.  But it seems like there’s plenty of hope and promise in planning—or hoping—that something good can come of the death of a good person, as a this-worldly rallying cry against the ruthless oppression that killed her or him.  That’s how the story of the Rape of Lucretia works.

because the Passover celebrates when the angel of death passed over the houses of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt
Personally, “God massacred a bunch of peasant kids and baby animals, but not *your* kids” (on top of all the other downright evil shit he’d done in that story) isn’t really something to be celebrating…

Jesus is supposed to die to balance the cosmic accounting books, or else the Galactic IRS was going to come after all of us, or something.

But because Jesus’s old man is The Man, he doesn’t have to get the full dead-forever treatment.  Oh no, he gets to twist the rules and get himself resurrected.

So we humans have to abide by all the rules or else.  But the boss’s son gets the donate-a building-to-the-university Gentleman’s C treatment — hardly fair.

As usual, them that has gets, and them that don’t get screwed…
MikeEss on 04/12 at 11:23 AM

The major point you express here is a big part of what I mean when I say Christianity is fundamentally a Dominator religion. Morality itself is ultimately defined as the Will of the Patriarch, rather than, as in a more Earth-centered (or reality-based) inherent in the Universe itself, binding on all alike.

Now you sell the positive aspect of Christianity, which I attribute to the attempt to rework older human values that are basically Earth-centered into the Dominator framework, rather short. Jesus is our Protector, you see. He’s the Hero come to save all our bacon, because He’s Awesome. We are just crawling worms, “like some loathsome spider” as Jonathan Edwards put it, fit for the flame, but Jesus/God loves us anyway and will make supreme, heroic efforts to Redeem us. Because God is Love.

See, I don’t have to be a believer anymore to understand this stuff, Babieca to the contrary. I just don’t believe it, any more than I believe in Inanna.

BTW, Amanda, were you implying that northern European Eostre is in fact yet another name of Ishtar—that there is some ethnographic evidence that that myth is directly descended from the Middle Eastern myths through cultural transmission? Or is the name just a coincidence?

I think pretty much anyone who lives in a region with well-defined seasons will come up with seasonal mythology after all. As I suggested in my long-ago blog entry “Keep the X in X-mas” I think the season is the reason for the “season”; if you live in a place where the climate gets miserable around the winter solstice there is good reason to develop Yuletide-type customs. Similarly everyone is going to want to celebrate Spring somehow or other.

Unless they live in a place where Spring is somehow worse than winter; I can’t imagine where. Except maybe places like Maine and Nova Scotia where you get a brief “fake spring,” or Thaw, and then winter comes back in full force and the snow doesn’t melt until it is suddenly summer. For a couple months.

We have old family movies of when we lived in Northern Maine, at Loring AFB, and were celebrating the 4th of July; everyone is still bundled up and my parents keep remarking on how chilly it was still…

Apologies to Babieca; a hasty reading of your first entry confused me, and I thought you were doing the thing I’m seeing a lot of Christian apologists doing lately, saying us heathen just don’t get it. I thought you were writing as a Christian (of that type; I’ve know more intellectually honest Christians of course…)

Now upon more careful reading I see you are speaking from “outside” yourself.

I still don’t agree that we can’t address their epistemology from outside. In a sense of course we can’t; back on the TPM thread of Amanda’s I did throw my hands up in just that way at the Xtian “purity” apologist there. If you think God is writing the Cosmos like a book and has given you the answers at the back of scripture (in secret code, to be sure!) then all manner of ordinary Earth logic goes right out the window. (Thus the ancient Hebrews supposedly used a plural noun for God, “Elohim,” in Genesis, because God is really a Trinity, even though that would be an abominable heresy for the rabbis in the monotheistic phases when they wrote this stuff down to countenance—of course that can’t be evidence that the ancestors of these pious rabbis were a bunch of polytheists! Nope, they were monotheists too, at least the good ones were (plenty of bad, wayward folks in Genesis after all…)

But Christianity in particular (along with the other Abrahamic traditions—Judaism opts out somewhat with its other dimension of not claiming to be “universal” but the tribal faith of a particular people, but Islam is squarely in this corner as well) grounds itself in being in some sense the literal, non-mythic, truth, and that puts it into territory where we can and sometimes must engage it.

I for one don’t like to “unpack” Islam, Judaism, or for that matter Buddhism or Hinduism or any other such tradition because I don’t live in a country ruled by these sects, the way the USA is still under Christian sway. There is plenty to attack in all religions—and plenty of stuff to appreciate too, if you look at it positively.

The worst thing I can say about Christian, Jewish, and Islamic fundies is, they all remind me of each other.

The point, from a Christian perspective, is not so much that Jesus was freed from the consequences of his sacrifice, but that his bones—Christians believe—disappeared.  They take that as physical evidence of his divinity and a supernatural ratification of his teaching and his sacrifice.

To drive the point home, Saint Peter was crucified upside down for his Christian beliefs and now holds the keys to the kingdom of heaven, but I’d bet most Christians couldn’t confidently tell you in what season his crucifixion occurred.  It’s all about the missing bones.

We’re all supposed to be in a holding pattern until Judgment Day, right, strictly speaking?  There isn’t this celestial furlough program where we go do something else for a while.  But that’s what Jesus does when he comes back.  That’s what’s confusing about What It All Means for run-of-the-mill, non-Jesus people.
FlipYrWhig on 04/12 at 11:39 AM

I took a class on Sacred Traditions of South Asia once, and we included the Koran—we were supposed to read it completely in one week (HAH!) Why the Koran? Because a whole lotta Muslims live in India still, more IIRC than in Pakistan and Bangladesh combined, and more than in any nominally Muslim nation (except maybe Indonesia?) and they’ve been there a long time and influenced other traditions. And Indian Muslims have in turn strongly influenced the development of Islam generally.

Anyway because I was reading it aloud to Natasha (who had trouble, with her physical and vision disabilities, reading books herself) we wound up skimming, and I never read the whole thing through. But I recall some Surah about resurrection and the last Judgment and what I noticed was that Mohammad was not saying people had eternal souls, Christian-style, that float around somewhere or other waiting for new bodies or whatever. What he said in this passage (maybe contradicted elsewhere in the Koran or larger Muslim tradition) was that Allah could, and because He said He would, would, recreate all the dead people “from the dust” so that they could be judged and then live out their fates eternally afterward.

In other words, your “soul” is inseparable from your body, really a part of your natural functioning, and when you die you are just gone. But Allah restores you later. No ghosts or shades or whatnot.

I know that the Shi’tes do believe in saints of some kind, so obviously other interpretations got in there somewhere. But I believe the passage I read is closer to the generic Semitic traditions the Arabs shared with the Hebrews and the Christian notion of an eternal soul, inherently indestructable and potentially independent of the body, is something that Christianity got from synthesizing with Graeco-Roman tradition somehow. Smells like Platonism to me…

This had a very powerful message, because the Passover celebrates when the angel of death passed over the houses of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, but, in effect, Jesus, by his arrest and crucifixion immediately after Passover did not escape the angel of death.

Dana scores!  Seriously, I’d never thought of it that way before.  Very true.

Last year, as sun set on the first night of Passover, the firstborn son of a friend of a jewish coworker of mine was headed into the city for a night class when an 18-wheel truck missed an exit on an overhanging concrete structure and came plunging down onto the roadway where the young man was driving.  The truck narrowly missed the young man’s car, which crashed into the wreckage, leaving the young man without any injuries (wearing seatbelt oh yeah).  My coworker who knew the young man and my other Jewish coworkers speculated that he must have gotten some shwarma at a drive through sometime before the accident, as lamb’s blood on the door was the signal to the angel of death to pass over.

Plus it would be refreshing to see Amanda attempt to dismantle the core-narratives of, and drip amused contempt for, some of the *other* major world religions for once. I hear Islam is very powerful these days—and rather patriarchal too.

Can’t speak for Amanda but the atheist writers I’ve read (Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Salman Rushide) don’t have any reservations about knocking on Islam, too.

Er, knocking down.

I always thought the connection to Passover was that it’s a Jewish holiday of salvation, too.  Passover, by the way, makes more sense than Easter. The rituals hold to the story, and the events in the story actually illustrate the main themes of salvation and chosenness nicely.

My (jewish) friend and I were just discussing how totally dickish some Jewish holidays are, and that’s a nice example. Part of the whole *point* of Jesus getting martyred was that the expectation was that he’d open up a can of whoop-ass on the Romans and be all Old Testament about it and establish himself as a king, but instead he died *himself* (instead of killing a whole lotta innocent babies) as a way to free the people who believed in him (instead of wandering out of Egypt leaving a trail of destruction behind them.)

Sure, plenty of Christians seem to forget the whole try-not-to-kill-people-‘k-guys? message but that’s definitely a large part of the point. “Eye for an eye” wasn’t okay anymore, and everyone was supposed to switch to “turn the other cheek (even is the face of massive stabbings)” because that was the moral thing to do (and you’d get to go to Heaven! See? Like Jesus did! :D)

You need one moment of intense suspension of disbelief.  The christian mythology is no less ridiculous than Norse or Greek mythology when seen from outside.

It’s all okay if it is YOUR mythology.

I remember sitting in church at Christmas Eve with my husband and my MIL.  Teh minister went on and on about how St. Nick was but a man to whom all this magical stuff was attributed, but we know from history that he was really just a human.  HOWEVER, we KNOW that JESUS ...

husband looks at me, I look at him, we boggle together as the “we know the truth” bit continues well past credulity, shake our heads, etc.

Somehow, mr. longtime minister had intended to set up the parallel myths in opposition because we KNOW Jesus was real ... but, for us, it made the mythological and ungrounded stories of the virgin mother and wackadoodle star and all the rest all they more mythy in comparison to the St. Nick tales.

My (jewish) friend and I were just discussing how totally dickish some Jewish holidays are, and that’s a nice example.

The entire Old Testament is dickishiness of the worst kind.

I mean we’re talking about a group of books that has “Lest I come and smite the Earth with a curse” as it’s closing sentence!

I think the reason it half makes sense, half doesn’t is because it’s really two completely different tales or rather one and a half tales owing to the staple it onto another holiday idea. Thus his resurrection is on one hand the traditional God or Goddess comes back, everybody party, green is here again but only that half as his “sacrificial” or “dark times” is pathetically short. On the other hand, it’s a Lazarus sequel implying a metaphor that death and suffering are transitory.

The problem is that Amanda is noting a true phenomenon. The narrative is really screwed. The metaphor feels awkward because it’s a sequel. It’s already been covered in Lazarus and it gets covered again in Revelations. The second narrative also gets in the way of other popular narratives like God’s sacrifice was worth anything. I mean, it can be too easily compared to other Gods who spent the whole winter period in a suffered or dead state as well as too many actual suffering people. Three days, or rather 36 hours is the “suffering” of a college student sleeping at a train station during their backpack through Europe trip. It’s too narratively short to make an impact in any culture except the ones where suffering is the least tangible.

I think part of why it “makes sense” on any level is because suffering is such an abstract for most that 36 hours of pain and torment or even a week of torment seems like an actually long and horrible time at the same time we’ve been torturing brown people on behalf of the government for 8 years.

Though to be fair, the point it really fails is mostly really due to the attempt to force it into a guilt-trip narrative that you owe an entire life of mindless worship to the deity just because he died for 36 hours top and suffered about a week of horrible suck. Without that, it could be its original boring sequel and coda to the “ha, divine, mother fuckers” lampshade…

Though frankly, that story has got to be the weakest divinity revelation ever. A guy heavily guarded by his friends and whom they were the only ones allowed to touch his “dead” body “magically” rises to life…yeah, obviously divine.

Plus it would be refreshing to see Amanda attempt to dismantle the core-narratives of, and drip amused contempt for, some of the *other* major world religions for once.

Only because you don’t believe in those.  I just don’t believe in one more.  But of course, if you remember the first rule is “write what you know”, then you’ll know that I pick on Christianity because it’s the only religion that I’m actually familiar with.  I can read up on Islam, but it has no context for me, because I don’t really know the culture like I do my own.

Christian notion of an eternal soul, inherently indestructable and potentially independent of the body

Which is Buddhist as well, and the concept of monks came from Buddhism to Chrisitanity via the Silk Road, according to this gentleman.

“As devastating as that was for fans, it was fitting for a show that chronicled certain ugly realities about life, particularly Tim’s miserable existence that resulted from his chronic inability to get a break.”

But Tim’s problem wasn’t that he couldn’t catch a break (what reality would that chronicle, anyway? that some people are just plain unlucky?) - it was that he was too scared shitless to take a chance on finding something better. The whole point of the show is summed up perfectly in the line:

“If you look at life like rolling a dice, then my situation now, as it stands - yeah, it may only be a 3. If I jack that in now, go for something bigger and better, yeah, I could easily roll a six - no problem, I could roll a 6… I could also roll a 1. OK? So, I think sometimes… Just leave the dice alone. “

In other words, Tim and Dawn weren’t unhappy because life is all shitty and dark and Ian Curtis was right about everything - they were unhappy because they had settled.  In the Christmas episode they rolled the dice and got lucky for a change, and that’s perfectly in sync with the point of the rest of the show.

The really fun part of Easter is how it tweaks the Wack-jobs like the poster.

That’s Jesus’s favorite part too! (He txted me that.) Omg, you guys have like *so* much in common. (He capitalized “Wack” too!) :p

“Christian notion of an eternal soul, inherently indestructable and potentially independent of the body”

Which is Buddhist as well, and the concept of monks came from Buddhism to Chrisitanity via the Silk Road, according to this gentleman.

That seems like the kinda thing that could separately evolve in a lot of religions, so to speak. Isn’t the soul kind of a big deal for the monotheistic ones in general? ...which part of the concept of monks? The whole thing? (‘cause Buddhist monks seem cooler than Christian monks… ^^)

Which [the Immortal Soul (TM)] is Buddhist as well, and the concept of monks came from Buddhism to Chrisitanity via the Silk Road, according to this gentleman.
Dark Avenger Guardian Chow Mein on 04/12 at 01:16 PM

But via Hellenism, I’m guessing? Via influencing Hellenistic philosophy?

Funny that, too. In other adventures in Comparative Religion I took a course on that at Pasadena City College (same place I later read the Inanna book) and I remember being puzzled during the Buddhist phase by the Buddhist concept of the soul. “What happens to a flame when you blow it out?” answered the professor.

There are obviously many strands of Buddhism; he was I think highlighting a very different one than I suppose Lancaster referred to. The one that compares the soul to a flame highlights stuff other Buddhists I have met also stress; that the various “things” we perceive are generally just phases that matter goes through. A human being is after all very much like a flame, or a wave on the ocean—the material we are made of is always changing after all. (And the same thing is true of continents, our planet, the Solar System, and perhaps the Cosmos itself…) All “things” are transitory, and this approach seems like a flat-out denial of the whole Platonic view, or the generalized consensus of Hellenistic philosophy that there “must” somehow be a realm of ideal forms or eternal truths or something to cling to! (Whereas I have come to the impression that the core value of Buddhism is “detachment,” which can be interpreted many ways.)

The only way this kind of Buddhism seems to differ from straight atheistic materialism to me is that perhaps there is some notion of karma, as the conservation of some kind of cause-and-effect. The flame goes out but it influenced things and that influence continues—being itself the product of past influences…

Boy, today it really feels like it’s appropriate to push the “Blaspheme” button…

Christian souls aren’t supposed to be inherently indestructible.

Personally, “God massacred a bunch of peasant kids and baby animals, but not *your* kids” (on top of all the other downright evil shit he’d done in that story) isn’t really something to be celebrating…

It is part of the seder to not only mention but to symbolically diminish our joy for the Egyptians’ suffering and deaths.

The holiday is about freedom from slavery much less than a celebration of the deaths of the Egyptians. The story is that the Pharaoh promised multiple times to set the Jewish slaves free, reneged each time, each time the Egyptians had another plague visited upon them (boils, darkness, locusts, etc.). After each plague, the Pharaoh would agree to set the slaves free, and as soon as that plague ceased, he would go back on his word, until the final plague of the death of the first-born sons caused him so much grief that he did not stop the Hebrews from leaving Egypt. Jewish kids are not taught to celebrate the deaths of the Egyptian children, but the liberation from slavery of their own ancestors.

Those of us who believe that the bible is more mythology than history can be even less troubled by it.

So, I’m forced to call bullshit on Easter, not just because it’s a religious holiday, but because it’s one that never made much sense to me.  It’s not really about spring and it takes the impact out of Christ’s sacrifice.

This is because you come from it as the perspective of someone raised protestant, which is all about the substitutional sacrifice of the crucifixion in order to engage in an exchange of payment for our sins. The resurrection is supposed to address two things: first, Christ as the son of God/divine (and thus immortal), and the fact that the resurrection is supposed to be about saving the created world’s physical nature, as well. But yeah, if you take it from your perspective when you’re trying to figure out if Jesus’s death is purely all about payment for our sins, the resurrection seems tacked on, rather than an integral piece of the story.

I kind of like Easter better than Christmas, actually.

Watch the program when you have an hour or so, Mark, I learned a lot from it and I’ve been studying Buddhism for nigh on 20 years.

There were Hellenistic influences, but they met the Eastern influences on the Silk Road:

Artistic transmission

Another Buddhist deity, Shukongoshin, is also an interesting case of transmission of the image of the famous Greek god Herakles to the Far-East along the Silk Road. Herakles was used in Greco-Buddhist art to represent Vajrapani, the protector of the Buddha,[citation needed] and his representation was then used in China, Korea, and Japan to depict the protector gods of Buddhist temples.

The whole thing?

Yes.

The order of Buddhist monks and nuns was founded by Gautama Buddha during his lifetime over 2500 years ago. The Buddhist monastic lifestyle grew out of the lifestyle of earlier sects of wandering ascetics, some of whom the Buddha had studied under. It was not really isolationist or eremetic: the sangha was dependent on the lay community for basic provisions of food and clothing, and in return sangha members helped guide lay followers on the path of Dharma. Individuals or small groups of monks – a teacher and his students, or several monks who were friends – traveled together, living on the outskirts of local communities and practicing meditation in the forests. Monks and nuns were expected to live with a minimum of possessions, which were to be voluntarily provided by the lay community. Lay followers also provided the daily food that monks required, and provided shelter for monks when they were needed

What never made any sense to me was the concept of Christ, or anyone else, dying for my sins. How can something that allegedly happened thousands of years before I was born forgive me for anything?

Remember that your biggest sin, in this religion, is having been born from a line stretching back to adam and eve and their sin. So if you’re ok with that, being redeemed by some other guy is a piece of cake.

I’m Catholic by default—there’s a long talk here about deeply entrenched guilt and training and whatnot, but that’s a different post—and to a certain degree, belief. However, I don’t practice as such, so I don’t have the same perspective on it as many of the people who are more… devout, shall we say.

Amanda is right, Easter is another of our ripped off holidays; however, it gives me an excuse to nom on delicious chocolates and watch zombie movies all day. So while it really is bullshit, it’s delicious—and entertaining—bullshit.

On an easily amused note, the ‘blaspheme’ button is particularly apropos today. :D

I like how the newer NIV’s note that the oldest Mark manuscripts end at 16:8, right after the crucifixion.

Yes. Although that doesn’t mean right after the crucifixion, it means right after they find some weirdo sitting by an open tomb who claims Jesus rose from the dead and they shouldn’t look here for him. The original text as we have it doesn’t explain what happened. So it seems more like a message of hope than a divine Xanatos Gambit.

That’s cool re. the monks. I was wondering if there was some sort of record of transmission, like Paul’s all “hey, do ya know who’s cool? Monks!” and then everyone became one or something. :p <—is not a historian… but the biologist in me demands proof of causation! Did Buddhist monks *cause* Christian monks? ^^ (Or maybe you answered that and I missed it. Er.)

Incidentally, I don’t know enough to evaluate this, but someone claims that the earliest part of the Bible (J Text) makes a lot more sense if Jehovah or Yahu-Wahu starts out 12 years old. He doesn’t look so bad that way.

Actually, monks originated in Egypt, from Christian Monasticism:

Institutional Christian monasticism seems to have begun in the deserts in 3rd century Egypt as a kind of living martyrdom. Anthony of Egypt (251-356) is the best known of these early hermit-monks. Anthony the Great and Pachomius were early monastic innovators in Egypt, although Paul the Hermit is the first Christian historically known to have been living as a monk. Eastern Orthodoxy looks to Basil of Caesarea as a founding monastic legislator, as well to as the example of the Desert Fathers. Shortly after 360 AD Martin of Tours introduced monasticism to the west. Benedict of Nursia, who lived a century later, established the Rule that led to him being credited with the title of father of western monasticism. Scholars such as Lester K. Little attribute the rise of monasticism at this time to the immense changes in the church brought about by Constantine’s legalization of Christianity. The subsequent transformation of Christianity into the main Roman religion ended the position of Christians as a small group that believed itself to be the godly elite. In response a new more advanced form of dedication was developed. The long-term “martyrdom” of the ascetic replaced the violent physical martyrdom of the persecutions. Others point to historical evidence that individuals were living the life later known as monasticism before the legalization of Christianity.In fact it is believed by the Carmelites that they were started by the Jewish prophet Elias.

Christians make so many errors by trying to make their myth literal.  According to the Apostle Paul, crucifixion and resurrection are meant to be a spiritual path that believers follow.  What is crucified is our self centered egos that desire to advance our own agendas to the harm of other people.  What is raised is a new person who is compassionate and kind and committed to the well being of all.

Of course this is a life long path. We are meant to call bullshit on our own dickishness.  That people use this myth to continue to harm women, brown people, gays, children and others, shows that they profoundly misunderstand any and all spirituality, including and especially their own.

But… but… Cadbury Eggs! I completely adore those little balls of chocolate and goo. And it’s always fun to see Christians trying to talk their way out of bunnies = Jesus.

Actually quite a lot of the nonsense in Christianity came from Zoroastrianism via Judaism (which in turn acquired it from the Persians after Cyrus liberated the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity). That’s a much more direct connection than any with Buddhism.

WOW…..Amanda, after reading this post, you really live a sad and pathetic life.  Your ignorance of Christianity is astounding!! Nothing more to be said!

We are meant to call bullshit on our own dickishness.

And, apparently, on Amanda’s. ;p

@cookie - That’s special.

@Jackspratt - How do you account for I Cor 15 on that view? Certainly he taught that people were taken up through Jesus’ death while still alive into a renewed person, but how did Paul not take crucifixion and resurrection literally?

Christian souls aren’t supposed to be inherently indestructible.
Vojtas on 04/12 at 01:45 PM

I forget if I was ever told explicitly that the soul was immortal and indestructible by nature, but it seemed like an obvious deduction from what I was told.

Being raised Catholic I never heard of anything that could destroy them; it seemed, based on the doctrine of Eternal Damnation of the unredeemed, that even God couldn’t annihilate one once created—since obviously total destruction and oblivion would be preferable to an eternity of Hell, I had to presume that God couldn’t perform this euthanasia. It was unthinkable to me then that He just wouldn’t. And you’d think the Devil would also go around destroying souls he couldn’t snag, if he could.

As I say, it all sounds very Platonic—souls are some kind of emanation of the True World of Ideal Forms, where nothing is ever destroyed and time has no meaning or something like that. Presumably the changes we go through in this world, and probably the more or less timelike or at least sequential purgation of souls in Purgatory happen because the soul is “tainted” as it were with its association with the material world.

It’s Easter!! Have a heart!  Please to not be ruining my favorite holiday.  Please reserve the blaspheme to Christmas which is a horrid, stressful holiday but don’t pick on Easter.  It’s a nice, sweet holiday involving no forced gift-giving and it’s a joyful one.  So what if Jesus’ sacrifice may not have been totally bona fide - I give kudos to anyone who can resurrect themselves from the dead.  Besides, it’s arrogant to diminish the dying on the cross.  I dare any of you to agree to doing this even if you knew ahead of time you’d be smelling the roses soon thereafter.  This is an incredible thing to agree to and it can’t be assumed that Jesus knew for certain that it would be a happy ending.  Do you not remember his crying out to God asking why he’d been abandoned?  Do you not recall his Gethsemene?

I love this site despite being a Republican (liberal on social issues like gay marriage and immigration though but I can’t swallow the Dem fiscal spending) and many of your posts have been very thought provoking.  I appreciate how you don’t automatically assume the liberal view on an issue - you are one of the few bloggers that provides a full spectrum of food for thought.  I should have posted my appreciation back then rather than waited for now to post.

Anyhow - keep up the good work and I’ll forgive you ragging on Easter.

That’s right, cookie.  God is punishing me for not believing in him by making me sad and pathetic, though he doesn’t have that power, because he doesn’t exist.

Sorry, you can’t just use magic to make me suffer for calling out your bullshit.  Wishing doesn’t make it true.

Amanda doesn’t play reindeer games Cookie.  Got that?

Looks like Cookie hasn’t read much of her new testament, given the level of judgmentalism and belief that prosperity is the result of piety (see also pharisees).

I don’t see the need to drag the rabbits into this.  Please to be removing that nasty mug shot of me post haste!

One correction: Jesus’ birth could have been any time of the year, but the resurrection has to be in the spring because it is connected to Passover.

Other than that we’re in agreement.

@ Mark Foxwell- I believe the Catholic system requires that God can annihilate souls but doesn’t in fact do so (if they said he couldn’t, that would indeed imply that humans are neo-Platonic emanations). True death is impossible because the Word assumed human nature and used it to ‘trample down death by death,’ so the damned are redeemed into eternal life, just really, really crappy eternal life. That’s stark as hell, but there it is. The Devil’s actions are supposed to be fully circumscribed by God (cf. Job 1, Matt 24), so if it’s possible for him to annihilate a soul, they’d have to say that he isn’t permitted to do so.

“As I say, it all sounds very Platonic—souls are some kind of emanation of the True World of Ideal Forms, where nothing is ever destroyed and time has no meaning or something like that.”

There’s a long, hilarious tradition of the Eastern and Western churches accusing one another of that very thing. Allegedly, western divine simplicity implies Platonic emanation and so does eastern trinitarianism.

And yet, when it comes to holiday-related cartoon characters, I have to say the Easter Bunny has it all over Santa Claus. I LOVE the Easter Bunny. He doesn’t keep lists, or want to know if you’re “naughty” or “nice,” he isn’t judgmental in the least. He’s got a basket of candy for you and he doesn’t ask any questions.

Also, he’s based on pagan fertility symbols, and you’ve gotta love that.

Thanks for the shout out on the Easter bunny, SouthernBeale.  The Easter bunny is bona fide.

As I say, it all sounds very Platonic

There’s reason for that- the notion of the soul, and much other machinery, was borrowed from the Greek Neo-Platonic philosophers- Plotinus and his followers.

The influence from Platonism started even earlier than that. I’ve heard orthodox Catholics speculate that Paul himself may have been influenced by Platonism, and Christianity co-existed with middle-Platonism for 200 years before Plotinus.

Babieca:

You are aware that most western atheists are quite familiar with the Christian mythology and the Bible and all, and that a great many of us were very sincere believers at one point, right? The only way that argument makes sense is to assume We Never Understood It To Begin With, and I think the vast majority of us would find that both inaccurate and insulting.

@BrianX

I hadn’t read about the courtier’s reply before. Thanks. I like it.

To borrow from Meyers’ analogy, I think it’s disingenuous to call bullshit on the Emperor’s carrying a tacky imaginary knock-off Gucci bag that he clearly got the idea for from some guy selling them outside Rockefeller Center because it cheapens the whole imaginary wardrobe. I think you should stand up and scream out that the Emperor has no fucking clothes if that’s what you believe and leave making sense of his choice in accessories to the people who see them.

As for your second point, of course I’m aware of that. If you are one of those people, you know what it is like to live with Jesus’ death and resurrection as a fundamental part of your understanding of your own place within the past, present, and future of existence. I’m not talking about learning the stories in Sunday school or sitting through mass. I’m talking about being born again or catching the holy spirit or whatever your favorite sect calls the transformative spiritual experiences through which that mythology becomes your system of explaining the world around you and your place within it. If that describes you, I would find it very hard to believe that you think the resurrection cheapens Jesus’ sacrifice or have to ask why it makes sense for those who still believe. I think we would have heard about it if this was a big issue for believers. We hear about what they think cheapens Christmas and plenty of people seem to question bunnies and eggs, but not so much the resurrection part. I certainly could be wrong though

If Jesus was so special because he returned from the dead why aren’t we worshiping Lazarus and Jairus’ daughter? (when I was very young I pictured the two of them getting married and unliving happily ever after *grin*)

it seemed, based on the doctrine of Eternal Damnation of the unredeemed, that even God couldn’t annihilate one once created

Yes, but to hear a Seventh-Day Adventist tell it, that doctrine does not appear in the Bible. The most problematic passage I’ve seen for their view appears in Revelation, which as you may recall is a mushroom dream. It could probably mean anything.

Amanda:

Let us suppose someone shoves you out of the way of an oncoming car.  Let us say they save your life but die in the process.  Noble thing, no?

Let us suppose Christ was not divine and just a deluded human.  Let us say he offered himself up to the horrid way of death, crucifixion, with the best of intentions.

The difference would be…?

Um, not actually saving my life? Though I may have missed something, ‘cause I don’t know where you’re going with this.

“Let us suppose Christ was not divine and just a deluded human.  Let us say he offered himself up to the horrid way of death, crucifixion, with the best of intentions.”

...what if he wanted to die in response to nothing more than listening to the voices in his head?  And what if you didn’t ask him to make any sacrifice on your behalf?  Is he still so noble?  Or is he a sad but crazy person?...

Ooh, are we playing “what if”? http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/04/how_to_frustrate_an_evangelica.php

@vojtas:  I think that Paul believed that Jesus’ resurrection was literal, but he clearly used it as a metaphor for the Christian path as well.  He also seemed to believe that Christ would return before the present generation died, meaning that believers would be taken into the new heaven and new earth without dying.  He seemed to understand that his Damascus road experience was a vision, and not a physical encounter.

My problem with Paul is that so much that is attributed to him was clearly not written by him.  Therefore, I only take away what I like and fits my framework of a spirituality where everyone wins.  : )

MikeEss:

He didn’t want to die.  He asked that the cup “pass away” from him.  He was troubled by the whole thing, he “sweat blood” over it.  I did say he might be deluded, if you will so note.  The point of the story is self-sacrifice.  I’m not saying it’s all true but self-sacrifice is what it’s about.

Magis, if my neighbor volunteers to go to Iraq and fight al Qaeda to “protect Americans and their families from Islamofascism”, including me and my family, is he noble, or deluded? 

If I beg him not to go, but he does anyway, is he still noble? 

If he gets killed by a IED while over there, was his death noble or was he the sad victim of cynical political manipulators who convinced him to sacrifice himself for their benefit? 

Does his death in and of itself make him noble, simply because he believed he was doing the right thing?...

He is noble because he offers his life for others, deluded or not.  Must a noble act be requested to be noble?  The person who shoves the other person away from the speeding car was not requested to do so.  Suppose the person he/she shoves out of the way was an axe murderer and goes on to kill again?  Does that make the act less noble.

So to answer your question, the soldier was noble no matter how ignoble were the persons who sent him/her and how foolish the cause.  Was Don Quixote ignoble because the windmill wasn’t a real knight?

Was Don Quixote ignoble because the windmill wasn’t a real knight?
Magis on 04/12 at 06:18 PM

I haven’t read Cervantes’s classic and don’t really know much about it, but I would guess that one of the author’s points was that—yes, there was something whack about it anyway…

Regarding eternal life (of bliss or torment): actually the idea that human souls live forever because Death has been defeated strikes me as even weirder than the idea that it’s because souls are indestructible.

The influence from Platonism started even earlier than that. I’ve heard orthodox Catholics speculate that Paul himself may have been influenced by Platonism, and Christianity co-existed with middle-Platonism for 200 years before Plotinus.
Vojtas on 04/12 at 05:05 PM

Exactly. Christianity is, from the beginning, a syncretic combination of Hebrew and Hellenistic philosophy.

Exactly. Christianity is, from the beginning, a syncretic combination of Hebrew and Hellenistic philosophy.

Plus a lot of stuff from various Middle Eastern mystery cults that flourished throughout the Roman Empire at the time Christianity was developing.

No, Cervantes’ point was that nobility exists as a good in and of itself.  Are all mentally challenged challenged people incapable of noble actions?  Never read Cervantes?  Shame.  Please don’t tell me the same about Voltaire.

The story is that the Pharaoh promised multiple times to set the Jewish slaves free, reneged each time, each time the Egyptians had another plague visited upon them (boils, darkness, locusts, etc.). After each plague, the Pharaoh would agree to set the slaves free, and as soon as that plague ceased, he would go back on his word, until the final plague of the death of the first-born sons caused him so much grief that he did not stop the Hebrews from leaving Egypt.
The thing is, the Pharaoh *didn’t* change his mind, God “hardened his heart” repeatedly. Which seems kind of self-defeating, since He was preventing the guy He sent to Egypt from doing what he was there to do.

The whole thing really sounds like an excuse for God to wreck shit and make people suffer (not that Old Testament God ever really *needs* the excuse…). Not to mention that he apparently hates Egypt’s livestock so much he kills it twice over (and Pharaoh still has horses to draw those chariots somehow)...

“All things are for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds. They lie who say all is well; they should say, it is for the best.”

My (jewish) friend and I were just discussing how totally dickish some Jewish holidays are, and that’s a nice example.

Passover doesn’t bother me here, but Purim always does. And as someone who is pretty secular and intermarried, Hannukah is ... well, ironic at least. But both of those are minor holidays. None of the really major holidays are dickish.

One jewish dyke is right that the focus of the Passover celebration is freedom, not the killing. In fact, there’s a midrash about the drowning of the Egyptians when the Red Sea closes again, that God chastises the Israelites for celebrating because the Egyptians were his children, too. (And yes, I’m aware that if God really was all powerful, surely he could have found a way to soften Pharoah’s heart without killing the first born. But I don’t feel like an honest reading of the Old Testament supports the idea of a single, universal God for all people at the time that it was written. It was more Thor vs. Zeus, my god can kick your god’s ass type of stuff, and the universality came later. I’d also note that Pharoah ordered the murder of all Israelite babies first. That’s why Moses was floating that little reed basket, because his mother had to hide him. So ... one good turn deserves another.)

No, Cervantes’ point was that nobility exists as a good in and of itself.

Um, no.  Cervantes’s point is that Don Quijote is a fucking wacko trying to live life like it was in books in a bygone age.  It’s not noble.  It’s delusional.  Don Quijote isn’t a heroic, imaginative rebel until Romanticism gets hold of him and ultimately turns him into _Man of La Mancha_ dreaming the impossible dream, and thereby spawning every single Terry Gilliam movie. 

Think about George W. Bush on his “ranch,” imitating Ronald Reagan, who was in turn imitating actual cowboys.  And then Dubya starts thinking he’s _actually_ a cowboy.  That’s what Don Quijote is like.  In Cervantes, he’s supposed to be ridiculous.

Lest I seem like I’m only standing up for Jewish myths here, I don’t know that Easter is that illogical within the framework of Christian theology. On the one hand, why have death and re-birth at all? But having accepted death and re-birth (and it is a very common theme in one way or another in many religions), why not add eggs and rabbits and floral print dresses?

We were out at brunch today, and I was looking at everyone in their Easter finery, and at first it seemed odd that it was so festive. He died, right? But then I was like, oh, yeah, resurrection ... that’s happy ... and I went back to my mimosa without feeling too troubled.

That’s not what the word “noble” means.

2 a. Having or showing qualities of high moral character, such as courage, generosity, or honor: a noble spirit.
b. Proceeding from or indicative of such a character; showing magnanimity: “What poor an instrument/May do a noble deed!” Shakespeare.

Yes, it does.

No, it doesn’t

As far as one thing equating with another, you are wrong, at least as far as Catholicism is concerned.  While I left the Church long ago I can remember as a child even the smallest personal sacrifice being equated with the sacrifice of Christ.

FlipYrWhig:

Quixotic:
1. Caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals; idealistic without regard to practicality.
(emphasis added)

The humor comes from the absurdity of the situation not from the madness of the hero.  IIRC he regains his sanity and turns away from chivalry.  Sanco doesn’t like the new person as much as the old one.

I about died laughing when a friend sent me a “Happy Zombie Jeebus” card today.

Again, Magis, I don’t know what this could possibly have to do with any topic in this thread. Maybe you just want to recommend the practices of Liber Astarte? Because if you want lovely madness, Crowley seems like the way to go.

“Concerning a notable danger of Success. It may occur that owing to the tremendous power of the Samadhi, overcoming all other memories as it should and does do, that the mind of the devotee may be obsessed, so that he declare his particular Deity to be sole God and Lord. This error has been the foundation of all dogmatic religions, and so the cause of more misery than all other errors combined.
The Philosophus is peculiarly liable to this because from the nature of the Method he cannot remain sceptical; he must for the time believe in his particular Deity.”

Go, Zombie Jesus! ♫He is risen. And wants your brains~♫

Man, can we tack on happy endings to all the sad stories? *possible spoiler* Tess of the D’Urbervilles was at least 25x better than Jesus’ lame story, so can we bring her back? Please?

“As far as one thing equating with another, you are wrong, at least as far as Catholicism is concerned.  While I left the Church long ago I can remember as a child even the smallest personal sacrifice being equated with the sacrifice of Christ. “

Listen, this whole “Jesus sacrifice” thing is a big load.

If I threatened you with torture, and then my brother, (or son, who was actually me in disguise wtf?) came along and said, “listen, I’ll make sure Pal doesn’t torture you, all you have to do is WORSHIP ME FOREVER!” wouldn’t you be a little bit skeptical?

I would be, because that’s a freaking scam.

Let us suppose someone shoves you out of the way of an oncoming car.  Let us say they save your life but die in the process.  Noble thing, no?

Let’s say they’re Superman and they throw the car at you.  And then they catch it.  And in the process bruise a cuticle.  How noble is their sacrifice?

God made the rules about people going to hell.  And then He supposedly “saves” us by offering himself to his own damned rules.  Only it’s not a sacrifice because he didn’t really die.  WTF?

The only theology that seemed vaguely logical was in John Fowle’s _The Aristos_.

My personal Easter miracle this year is Sarah Pulis revealing that one can imclude a “♫” character in text.

Sarah, I still have no idea how you typed that; I’m just pasting it in. I assumed it was some special HTML thing; imagine my surprise when I looked at the source code—and found the ♫ right there still!

Quixotic:
1. Caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals; idealistic without regard to practicality.
(emphasis added)

Yeah, that’s the Romantic period influence I cited… it wasn’t in Cervantes until the 19th century started putting it in there.  Don Quijote is a byword for “delusional” until then.  Charlotte Lennox wrote _The Female Quixote_ in the middle of the 18th century:  it’s about a woman who reads so many romance novels that she thinks that’s the way life works, which makes her the butt of jokes.

“Quixotic” means “prone to making wildly impractical plans” for a long time.  Those plans aren’t supposed to be _good_ or “noble,” they’re supposed to be crazy and/or stupid.  Until Romanticism started claiming rebels and tortured souls as heroes, Don Quijote was a joke, like that cartoon staple, the insane guy who thinks he’s Napoleon.

IIRC he regains his sanity and turns away from chivalry.  Sanco doesn’t like the new person as much as the old one.

Right, he turns away from it because it’s idiotic.  And Sancho is a bumpkin with a boring life.  We’re not supposed to identify with either one of them.  We’re supposed to laugh at them, not sympathize.

Dan:

So the nobility of an act is completely independent of the consequences of that act or of the mental state and situational awareness of the person performing it?
Seems like you’re defining the word “noble” so broadly as to make it virtually meaningless.

Well, then, suppose you define nobility?  How earth-shaking and rare must an act be to be defined as noble?  How pure must the motives be; how sane must the doer be?  Are casting away god only to insist that humans be god-like?  If nobility does not reside in the act and the intentions where does it reside?

Are you trying to tell me if someone sacrifices their life but the sacrifice was in vain the nobility of the sacrifice becomes null and void?

Christianity, and indeed all religions, might indeed be bunk.  Does that mean that they have had no positive effects?  Might you be throwing out the baby with the bath water?

Let’s say that an American president really truly down to his duly elected toenails believes that country X poses a clear and present danger to the United States.  So he mobilizes the armed forces and sends them over to invade that country, remove its leader, and impose a new government upon it, one hopefully more amicable towards our desires.  (The discerning and informed reader will recognize G.W. Bush and Iraq here.)

And let’s say that the doctors and medics who treat the casualties from that invasion and the ensuing occupation come back to the U.S. with lots of new techniques for treating trauma patients and are able to save the lives of more victims of accident and violence than they would otherwise be without their wartime experience.  (Which did happen with the Vietnam War.)

Is the president who ordered the invasion noble because he really truly believed right down to his duly elected toenails that country X posed a clear and present danger?  Does it matter that evidence was later found that country X did not pose a clear and present danger to the U.S.?  Does it matter that the lives of some Americans were saved or made better by the skills of those medical personnel who gained experience treating wounded in the invasion and occupation of country X?  Does it matter that the ruler of country X was a really bad guy?  How do the lives of the people living in country X factor into this?

Quixote was only one man, tilting at windmills; he could harm himself and little else.  Christianity, in its varied and various forms, harms believer and unbeliever in the manner of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, though on a far grander scale.  That believers find comfort in their belief does little to balance that damage.

Is the president who ordered the invasion noble because he really truly believed right down to his duly elected toenails that country X posed a clear and present danger?  Does it matter that evidence was later found that country X did not pose a clear and present danger to the U.S.?

Yes, no.  He was wrong, not ignoble.  How then, pray tell, does one decide whether to act?  Never act because one might be wrong?  Remain frozen waiting for new evidence?  On a practical level, one would have to ask what was the apparent need for speed.  But since you send “present” danger one could assume the need for speed.

As to increased medical knowlege that falls more under “The Law of Unintended Consequences.”  The medial aspect was not the reason for the act and so does not enter in.

It would be easiest to say that American lives should always trump foreigners but in fact we have often stayed our hand, sometimes through our own detriment, in our “Rules of Engagement.”  I’m certainly not, and never will, defend our Iraqi incursion.  First and foremost there was no causus belli. 

But now I might turn it around.  Because Iraq was an evil war, a bad cause and a fool’s errand does that mean that none of the acts performed there might be said to be noble?

Nobility is what you call foolishness in the presence of people for whom the fool is a loved one.

But now I might turn it around.  Because Iraq was an evil war, a bad cause and a fool’s errand does that mean that none of the acts performed there might be said to be noble?

No, it doesn’t.  But does the nobility of individual acts—however meritorious they may be—make the war as a whole a noble act?

And one point of the Iraq war analogy is that the deleterious effects of that war do not fall under the Law of Unintended Circumstances any more than getting into a car, disabling the air bag, not putting on the seat belt, and driving into a tree at 120kph makes the driver’s death an accident.  The people who came up with the idea for the war and ordered it to be done failed to plan for any contingency other than immediate and overwhelming success.  The aftermath was forseeable and preventable, even if only by the dramatic step of not invading in the first place.

Two thousand years later, we’ve all seen the damage Christianity can do.  Most other religions damage people in many of the same ways.  (Which is not to say that there aren’t exceptions—the Quakers and Unitarian Universalists come to mind as exceptions that prove the rule; both, from what I’ve seen of them, take deliberate steps to minimize the damage they do to believer and unbeliever alike.)

And what do you mean by acts of nobility?  Is, as many Christians seem to believe, human suffering inherently valuable?

“And what do you mean by acts of nobility?”

...apparently any act driven by a person’s “better nature”, regardless of circumstances, is inherently “noble”, at least that’s what I get from what Magis says.  And the more dangerous/fatal the act is makes it more noble…

...apparently any act driven by a person’s “better nature”, regardless of circumstances, is inherently “noble”, at least that’s what I get from what Magis says.

I’m not sure how you *would* define it, though, if not as a product of the person’s worldview and the actions they take with that worldview. Assuming you believe that *anything* can be noble (and aren’t just trying to define it out of existence), are you requiring that the person doing said act know every detail of every consequence that might come from the act? ‘Cause then you end up *not* pushing babies out of the way of cars just in case they become axe-murderers later (and I’m pretty sure we can all agree that letting toddlers get run over is *not* noble. :p)

Or is it some sort of Schrodinger’s thing, where saving the kid is neither definitively noble or ignoble until the kid has clearly become an axe-murderer or not? I don’t think actions can become *retroactively* ignoble, yanno? What if I spend my life tirelessly working to develop an amazing vaccine, but then it’s administered to someone who goes and kills some people? But what if one of the people *that* person kills was going to grow up to kill even *more* people? Trying to trace every reaction to a single action is stupid, so I think the only realistic definition is based on what is known *by the person acting* and *act the time of the action*. (To address the Bush in Iraq example, I believe he knew better and didn’t give a shit, but happily put other people’s lives on the line to boost his ego. That’s not noble no matter how you swing it, ‘cause there wasn’t even good faith on the part of the actor.)

Er, “act the time of the action” should be “AT the time of the action”...

No, it doesn’t.  But does the nobility of individual acts—however meritorious they may be—make the war as a whole a noble act??

  No.  Each act must stand alone; that’s the point.

And what do you mean by acts of nobility?  Is, as many Christians seem to believe, human suffering inherently valuable?

  See definition above.  There is nothing inherently noble about suffering.  I will allow you that there are some who see “mortification of the flesh” as a good thing.  I think it’s whacko but the point of it is to shift focus from the material world to the spiritual one.  It is actually a selfish act, done for one’s self and not for another and therefore lacks for me any nobility.

...apparently any act driven by a person’s “better nature”, regardless of circumstances, is inherently “noble”, at least that’s what I get from what Magis says.  And the more dangerous/fatal the act is makes it more noble…

  In a nutshell, yes.  Except, the nobily comes from risking or giving up something of value to one’s self.

Two thousand years later, we’ve all seen the damage Christianity can do.  Most other religions damage people in many of the same ways.

No historian can argue that a vast number of horrid things haven’t happened ‘in the name of religion.’  Still to say so and to accept that at face value evinces a bit of naivité.  Yes they were done in the name of religion but were they actually done for hidden motives?  How many of the Crusaders actually believed in the cause and how many actually saw it as a golden opportunity for hegemony and plunder.  Some might have even seen it as a ‘twofer.’  The motto of the Conquistidor was Glory, God and Gold.

Surely you do not believe if you wiped out religion tomorrow you’d end war for all times; nor greed, nor violence.

Saving babies from getting run over is a good thing.  Since the potential harm any individual baby so saved might cause is unknowable, that harm doesn’t have to be considered into whether the act of saving them as a baby was a good thing.  (Yes, even if that baby were the young Adolf Hitler.  As bad as he was, presumptively allowing infants to die on the off chance they turn out to be genocidal megalomaniacs ought to be even more repugnant under any reasonable moral system.)

I contend that invading Iraq was morally wrong and wrong from an utilitarian perspective; the costs of it in both dollars and in human suffering are considerably higher than the costs of not invading.  And there was ample reason to believe that those costs would be higher than any benefit claimed by those prosecuting that war.  Given that religion, on the whole, is used to increase suffering, I cannot morally support it.

Which is not to say I would work towards its eradication, only that religion, like masturbation, should be kept private.  Public masturbation is a form of sexual assault; public religion seems to me to be a form of moral assault.  (And often physical assault as well.)

Surely you do not believe if you wiped out religion tomorrow you’d end war for all times; nor greed, nor violence.

Did I state anywhere that I did?  See the paragraph immediately preceding your quoted sentence.

Still to say so and to accept that at face value evinces a bit of naivité.  Yes they were done in the name of religion but were they actually done for hidden motives?  How many of the Crusaders actually believed in the cause and how many actually saw it as a golden opportunity for hegemony and plunder.  Some might have even seen it as a ‘twofer.’ The motto of the Conquistidor was Glory, God and Gold.

Actually I did not have the Crusades in mind when I wrote of the harm caused by religion, or in religion’s name, but more current and concrete things like the religiously-motivated campaigns to keep queer Americans from being able to marry, adopt, inherit, etc. and to keep women from being able to control their bodies and their reproduction.  The Roman Catholic Church’s statement that condoms make the HIV/AIDS epidemic worse.  Religion provides moral comfort for those who would punish women for being raped in many parts of the world.

None of which is to say that the people who do those things lack other motivations, but let them state those motivations openly.

What an odd discussion to be having on Pandagon. I did enjoy Mark Foxwell’s Inanna comments, fascinating stuff.

I can’t really think the version(s) we have in the gospels of this story can be fairly judged as “literature” because they are presented as history or news (according to their writers), somewhat magnified as legend, but not nearly to the extent that, say, the Greek myths were. Presumably because they are far younger, and were captured in their current form early on in their development. But they certainly aren’t presented as one coherent narrative, however they came to be told as one by the later churches.

The significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection was expanded on by the later books of the new testament, sharpened and clarified as part of the task of winning new converts and keeping current converts in the religion. And most of what we think of as its meaning comes from those efforts, which yielded more sophisticated concepts like the harrowing of Hell, the nature of eternal life for all the saved, etc. etc.

As far as poetry/beauty of the story itself goes, it really depends on whether you believed or not; if you didn’t, it’s not going to be anything but noise. But when I was a believer, I found some Easter services and music deeply moving that presented this story as one of mercy (God knows your suffering and has felt it too), love and courage (Jesus allowing himself to be slaughtered as a blood sacrifice [and the idea of purification through blood sacrifice is hardly unique to Judaism/Christianity]), and hope (death is not the end; not for Jesus, not for you if you believe; Love is larger and more permanent than Death, which will one day pass away.) 

And as others have said, even knowing you would be resurrected didn’t mean a crucifixion was going to be a happy fun time; the whole point of Passion plays is that Jesus truly suffered, quite horribly, and the power of his godhood was set aside for that time.

But like I said, this is pretty inside baseball for people who don’t even believe to have much interest in, I would think.

And there was ample reason to believe that those costs would be higher than any benefit claimed by those prosecuting that war.  Given that religion, on the whole, is used to increase suffering, I cannot morally support it

Agreed that it was the act of a deluded hegemon but these two statements, non sequitur  As a matter of fact Iraq might be the best example of non-religious self-delusion in recent history.

Did I state anywhere that I did?  See the paragraph immediately preceding your quoted sentence.

Well, yes, sort of.  The previous paragraph delt with the Law of Unintended Consequeces.  Purposely driving into a tree is not appropos because it is an act of volition.  Accidently discovering new ways to treat burns, etc., etc., are not.  It was in this context that I used LUC, in response to a question.

...the religiously-motivated campaigns to keep queer Americans from being able to marry, adopt, inherit, etc. and to keep women from being able to control their bodies and their reproduction.  The Roman Catholic Church’s statement that condoms make the HIV/AIDS epidemic worse.

All demonstrably evil and in my world view un-Christian.  I believe I should love my queer neighbors as I love myself.  To deny them nothing that I would give others.  I should rejoice if they find happiness in this “vail of tears.”

There are liberal Christians and Jews, ya know.

All demonstrably evil and in my world view un-Christian.

Isn’t this a restatement of No True Scotsman?

There are liberal Christians and Jews, ya know.

And there are queer Republicans.  A similar conflict seems present there also.

For anyone still reading, this YouTube video ties it all together with ... The Holy Gospel of the Easter Bunny.

Isn’t this a restatement of No True Scotsman?

In my view, 180° opposite.  “Love thy neighbor as you love yourself.”  I’ll let you decide who’s wearing the kilt and who isn’t. 

And there are queer Republicans.

Yes, and God bless them.  One has to admire folks who persist in getting into a tent that isn’t big enough to hold them.

“Love thy neighbor as you love yourself.” I’ll let you decide who’s wearing the kilt and who isn’t.

Yes, I remember this from Sunday School.  (And, more entertainingly, from William Burroughs.)  But Christianity—like any religion—is more than its texts.  You are not wrong about what Jesus said according to (most of) the Gospels.  But Christianity as a religion and a political entity stopped being about what Jesus said according to (most of) the Gospels pretty much immediately.  You may well say they’re all wrong, but the people who use Christianity as a bludgeon form the currently dominant paradigm.

One has to admire folks who persist in getting into a tent that isn’t big enough to hold them.

I certainly do not.  When asked, queer Republicans (who, to the best of my recollection tend to be white men) usually say something about disagreeing with the Republican Party on the specific issue of homosexuality and other social issues but are siding with the Republicans on economic policy.  Which, to me, sounds like they’re willing to sacrifice their rights and mine for a few percentage points on marginal taxes and maybe some regulatory issues.  Exactly what about that is admirable?

Mr. Foxwell, it is accomplished by pressing Alt and 14 on the keypad. Since I’m on a lappy, I keep a big text file of all the little characters I use and just copy and paste them as needed. ♫

Exactly what about that is admirable?

I suppose I could point that my attempt at humor was not taken as intended, but so be it.  Very well then.  If indeed they are “voices crying out in the wilderness” and some how, some way they are able how would you view them in retrospect?

Political parties do tend to ‘morph’ themselves over time.  In both parties there is always an argument about whether to stay inside and attempt reform or to bolt to the other party or, more often, to form or adhere to another party.  Since, however, the resilience of the two party system has proved utterly resolute one might as well stay inside.

If you were a Conservative Gay Person or, God forbid, a Christian Conservative Gay Person, what would you do.  I’d suggest self-flaggelation but that joke probably wouldn’t work either. 

<blockquote>...but the people who use Christianity as a bludgeon form the currently dominant paradigm.<blockquote>

Care to prove that?  In truth the evangelicals are a minority, a loud one to be sure, but a minority nonetheless.  Most of us aren’t interested in bludgeoning anybody, or converting anybody for that matter. 

I certainly don’t want to be dismissive.  If you are a member of a group that is continuously being labled as sub-human, or an abomination, by another group that happens to wear the Christian® trademark, I certainly can’t blame you for hating the haters.  I would ask, however, that you don’t commit the same sin of painting with an overly broad brush.  For if you seek toleration, grant it.
There are millions of people of faith who do not share their contemptible feelings or join in their hateful pronouncements.

ooops,

able to persuade the rest of the troglydytes [sic]

I never thought of the resurrection as something that ‘lessened’ the impact of the death of Christ. At the least, I wouldn’t want to get crucified and then sucked up into some ‘heaven’, away from my family and friends.

A big fat target for a principled feminist atheist. And both have a parent religion to which the Jesus of the Gospels subscribed, remember? You should take a whack at that one some time, if your atheism is so principled.

I smell Fatwa envy.  Anyway…

When I was young and didn’t think too deeply about the whole Easter story, I found the story mildly compelling, in as much, as the notion of sacrifice for others is compelling if you don’t examine motives too deeply.

Nowadays, the older I get, the more psychotic the Easter story gets on re-examination.  Basically, we are all upsetting some sort of karmic balance with all our lyin’, cheatin’, fuckin’, and polyester fiber wearin’.  In order to right this balance, god either has to chuck a certain number of sinners into hell for eternal torment…or, he can send his son (who is also himself) down to earth where he (his son who is also himself), will be tortured and killed for our sins.  (Of course, he gets a magical, get-out-of-dead-card, which, as Amanda notes, kind of obliterates the notion of sacrifice.)

But either way, it seems that god has to atone to someone or something (Cthulu?) for our sins.  Which would imply that he really isn’t in charge at all.  If he was all powerful, the maker of the universe and all its rules, then he could just change the rules and wipe away our sin, and guarantee our souls a happy eternity in heaven.

And this is where apologetics types start babbling about free-will, and how god wants us to be free to choose to be with him in heaven.

Which suggests that god is an insecure little twit, who is always looking for assurance that we really, really, really, really, love him.

Me thinks the Almighty could use some counseling.

I’ve come to believe that Jesus’s real feat was putting up with human jackassery for 33 years, knowing full well that once he was gone his message was going to be hideously corrupted, understanding that he was going to be horribly killed for his troubles, and still going through with all of it. Personally, after a few interactions with unrepentantly ignorant and the intolerant, I’d say, “Fuck it. You idiots are on your own. I’m gonna go hang out with the Sybils and get high in caves.”

Pulling out my M.Div that doesn’t get that much use, I can tell you that, from a liberal/liberationist perspective, the resurrection says that the powers and principalities of the world don’t have the final word.

If the story ends on Good Friday, then the Romans win, then the word to the oppressed of all times and places is that they should just accept their place, that they cannot possibly hope to stand up to their oppressors.

Spoiler alert. Rome wins.

The people of Palestine never overthrow the empire. Rome and then Constantinople rule there for another 600 years until the Caliphate arrives. The rabbinic Judaism that survives is founded as a compromise with the blessing of Emperor Vespasian. Constantine destroys Christianity’s street cred forever by branding it the religion of the oppressors. With the debatable exception of a few Assyrian patriarchs still bending to Islamic theocracy, every Christian schism remaining today is a descendant of Constantine’s church in Rome.

I’ll take Return of the Jedi.

Surely you do not believe if you wiped out religion tomorrow you’d end war for all times; nor greed, nor violence.

Of course not. Wiping out religion is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for that end goal…

And no. I’m not kidding.

Chingona:

Passover doesn’t bother me here, but Purim always does. And as someone who is pretty secular and intermarried, Hannukah is ... well, ironic at least. But both of those are minor holidays. None of the really major holidays are dickish.

Yeah, it’s so terrible to be happy that your ancestors were preserved, and their persecutors killed.

I see nothing wrong with celebrating the demise of murderous people. Then again, I’m not the “Kumbaya” type.

Hmm ... not sure exactly how you’re responding to me here. Not sure if you’re agreeing with my position on Passover or disagreeing with my position on Purim and Hannukah.

My problem with Purim isn’t that Haman gets it. It’s the 10,000 of his tribesmen, who presumably could not all be individually responsible for his scheme, get it. Of course, a lot of people think that story never happened at all, and the whole thing is a farce. But it makes me uncomfortable.

With Hannukah, yes, it’s a story of preservation, but it’s also a story of a civil war between Jews who were religiously observant and those who were Hellenized. Given that I would be the modern-day equivalent of a Hellenized Jew, then yes, it is ironic.

If you need to ignore those contradictions to maintain your faith, well, whatever gets you through the night. Personally, it’s more meaningful to me in all its messy reality.