Happy Holidays! Season's Greetings!
Notice how I didn't use the words Christ or Christmas? I enjoy this time of year. Mankind has celebrated it for centuries. Long before Christ is supposed to have been born, the Romans called it Saturnalia. It's the time of the year when the days start to get longer in the northern hemisphere. When the early Christians wanted to popularise their religion they hijacked this winter festival. I resent this, because I always enjoy it for what it is: an orgy of consumerism, a break from work and a fun time with friends and relatives. But the church tries to make us feel guilty about losing the `true meaning of Christmas' when it itself stole the real message:

The sun, not the Son, is coming back.

The good news of the Gospel isn't really good news at all. We are all on a journey to damnation but we can be saved provided that we believe in something for which there is no evidence. Most of us will fail and be tortured for eternity when we die.

Jimmy Cagney never said `You dirty rat!'. Humphrey Bogart never said `Play it again, Sam.' None of the old Tarzan films featured the line `Me Tarzan, You Jane'. No episode of Star Trek has ever featured the line `Beam me up Scotty'. No Sherlock Holmes book includes the line `Elementary, my dear Watson'. Like a game of Chinese Whispers, people `remember' things that were never uttered in the first place. A similar false memory shapes the common view of Christ.

Many people think Jesus was a good person. They can't have read the New Testament. He did do some nice things, like saving the woman who was due to be stoned for adultery, but he also said some terrible things and I don't find it appropriate that we should celebrate what he said and did. Of all the religious leaders, Christ stands out as probably the most anti-family. The way that Christianity is presented as having 'family values' has to be one of the most amazing examples of 'spin' of all time. Again and again, Christ speaks out against the family.

Here are some actual quotes from Jesus as related in the King James Version -

St Luke Chapter14 Verse26:
If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and even his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

Go and look for it yourself. It's clearly stated. You must HATE your family members. I know that some of you think that there is probably some context in which it means something different. I don't see any. It's clearly designed to make people abandon their families to follow him. It is just what I would expect from the leader of a brainwashing cult. In fact I'm sure that such cults use this passage to separate followers from loved ones. It's one of many reasons I can't be a Christian. There is simply no way that I am going to hate my mother, father or sister because of someone I've never met.

In case you think that this is an isolated incident, check out:

St Matthew Chapter10 Verse21:
And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.

So I guess as long as I get all my family killed before any of them get to me, I'm OK. Thanks, "Prince-of-peace". Christ makes it clear that he is going to split families. He does this when he tells people that he has NOT come on Earth to bring peace:

St Matthew Chapter10 Verse34
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

So now you know whom to blame if you end up fighting with Mum and Dad over the turkey. We are even rewarded if we abandon our families!

St Mark Chapter10 Verse29:
And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.

This is made clearer elsewhere:

St Matthew Chapter 19 Verse 29:
And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.

We are not supposed to refer to our own fathers as `father'. How ridiculous is that?

St Matthew Chapter23 Verse9:
Call no man your father upon the earth.

In St Luke Chapter 9 Verse 60 he tells a young man not to bother attending the funeral of his own father with the meaningless nonsense `Let the dead bury their dead'. To say that this is inconsiderate of a bereaved person's feelings is putting it mildly. If someone said that to me in the same situation, they would be unconscious before they hit the floor.

Christ clearly has little understanding of human emotions. One of the big reasons to believe in any religion is the hope of meeting loved ones again in the afterlife. I think most of us imagine such reunions. They are the carrot. So what does he do? Faced with enquiries from people wanting to know what happens to a woman who marries several times in her life, he is forced to admit:

St Luke Chapter 20 Verse 35:
But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.

Does this mean that married people can't get into Heaven or just that marriage ends with death? It's not well expressed. Why can't an all-powerful deity come up with some way of making us reunite with those we loved on earth? Frankly that's the main thing I would want from the afterlife. There is of course the other problem of how I'm supposed to be happy in Heaven if people I knew went to Hell. How could I tolerate that? Would I have no conscience?

Elsewhere, Christ advocates mass murder.

St Luke Chapter 19 Verse 27:
But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.

Now that's a call to arms! Bad things are planned for those who reject Christ's messengers. Any city that rejects him suffers a fate worse than Sodom and Gomorrha. Quite how Mecca is still standing today must remain a continuing mystery. He tells his discilples:

St Mark Chapter6 Verse11:
And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.

Some of you might know some ardent Christians. How do the men react to the advice he offers to seek self-castration?

St Matthew Chapter19 Verse12:
For there are some eunuchs which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.

How do the women react to being told that if their husbands divorce them, then they themselves become adulterers and that anyone who subsequently marries them is guilty of adultery too?

St Matthew Chapter5 Verse31:
But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever that shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.

Was Christ racist? It's hard to know what to make of the next passage. When confronted by a woman whose daughter was possessed by demons, he declines to help and compares her to a dog. The woman was Greek and he told her that his priority was to treat the `children'. Does this mean that he only wanted to treat Semitic people? It's only when the woman goes along with the insult and agrees to be called a dog that he relents and treats the afflicted girl. Who is the better person in this story?

St Mark Chapter7 Verse25:
For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came and fell at his feet: The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. And she answered and said unto him, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. And he said unto her, For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.

Don't get me wrong. I don't hate Christians unless they happen to be bigots. Many admirable people want a path to doing good in the world. Most don't know about the horrors that I have just related. It's just a shame that the person they worship didn't hold such worthy ideals.

Enjoy your mince pies!