Once they'd have been burned at the stake for these heresies although it's never too late for lots of reasons, not the least this outfit's veneration of tradition. That pleasant prospect aside, the popes acknowledged that previously believed fables (walking on water, miracles, Adam and Eve, et al) were fiction, as if we didn't already know that, nevertheless the ethereal god chap (copying Mark Twain, the small cap is deliberate) did kick off the Big Bang, therefore baying at the sky was still a goer.
And how do they know this? Well, they don't and as with all superstitions simply made it up, otherwise described as faith. So much for Benedict's impertinent criticism of the American design creationists when he's up to his eyeballs in it himself.
Every society over our 40,000 years has invented deities, with more than 2500 recorded. The popes' deity, Jesus, issued worthy human relations platitudes which, as with Islam and Judaism, were largely nicked from the Zoroastrians 600 years earlier and with roots to even earlier sources. Nothing unusual there. As long as man has existed we've had messiahs and no end of silly buggers eager to ascribe them mystical powers.
With my life-long appetite to taste everything I'd have a crack at the messiahing lark myself, providing the standard promise of eternal existence, were it not such a crowded field. There's enough at it now to form a messiahs' union. And that's not counting the second coming claimants, who do keep coming. Competition aside, the prerequisites of wearing a beard, ballgown and sandals simply wouldn't work with smoking a pipe.
My family lawyer David Butler once represented a prominent citizen who, with others, had been subpoenaed by a nutter. The plaintiff duly opened his case. "I am the Messiah," he proclaimed loudly, glaring at the judge. "That may be so," the judge replied, "but what is your case?" "I am the Messiah," he repeated in a booming voice.
The judge then declared he would dismiss the case whereupon David, now thoroughly enjoying proceedings, piped up urging caution. "I suggest, your honour, we box carefully - after all, he may be right." This proposal was declined, yet another example of killjoy judicial decisions depriving the public of entertainment.
Still, despite their amusement value, it's a tragedy that all of history's numerous messiahs weren't similarly rejected, particularly the superstition purveyors and the unballgowned Karl Marx. Then again, in fairness, were they to have known the enormous harm subsequently to be done in their name, they might have knocked messiahing on the head from the outset.
Take Jesus. Two thousand years of some highly dubious priests skulking about in nighties, frequently up to no good, and hundreds of thousands of lives stagnating in monasteries and nunneries, all in his name.
What certainly would have caused a mind change, though, was being slowly and painfully murdered on a cross then, figuratively rubbing salt into his wounds, by telling him that his subsequent followers would venerate the instrument of his death.
On the positive side, this particular voodooism has given us glorious cathedrals, Easter eggs, hot cross buns, some splendid music (offset by the dirgy stuff) and Christmas presents so it hasn't been entirely bad, although then again, the eggs, buns and temples, as with all Christian rituals, emanated from earlier superstitions. Despite those attractions I'll stick with science rather than fairy tales.
All the primitive praying never saved us from the Creation's syphilis and rabies as antibiotics have, this just one of the thousands of examples of our debt to science.
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