28 lines
4.0 KiB
Plaintext
28 lines
4.0 KiB
Plaintext
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Happy Newtonmass! (Yes, today is the anniversary of the birth of our rationalist saviour, Sir Isaac Newton.)
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I have a personal tradition of always putting in some working hours on December 25th — not being Christian, and being a bit of a curmudgeon, it seems important to do so (even if I subsequently drop round on some friends and eat and drink far too much). I can just about categorize blogging as work (it's marketing/communications, dammit!) so this is my work for the day.
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Because I'm a curmudgeon (the "G" in my initials is short for "Grinch"), the Christmas spirit thing really irritates me. A big part of it is the saturation-level advertising that crops up at this time of year: it leverages the winter festival to convey the message, "you will get into the festive spirit and Buy Our Stuff, otherwise you are socially inadequate". I do not care to be lectured about my social inadequacy by big box retailers: I especially dislike being defined as socially inadequate because I don't follow someone else's religiously-ordained festive tradition. Consequently, Christmas puts me in a contrarian mood. As a contrarian, right now nothing would cheer me up like a nasty, mean-tempered flame war — just to prove that the turbulent masses (this means you) haven't suddenly been turned into insipid, saccharine carol singers chorusing goodwill to all and peace on earth.
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But I couldn't make up my mind whether today's blogging should be "gun owners: evil or wicked?", or "abortion: if you oppose it, you are murdering women"; I'm sort of in donkey-starving-to-death-between-two-mangers mode today. (Normally I try to avoid starting flame wars. Turning to the dark side, I suddenly find myself in a target-rich environment!) So I decided to go with something a little less controversial; why Jesus Christ bears such a remarkable similarity to Osama bin Laden that by 2312 there may well be a syncretistic religion worshiping him as the second coming ...
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1. Jesus Christ is not his name. If he existed, his actual name would have been rendered in our alphabet somewhat like Yeshua bin Yussuf (he was later renamed Jesus™ by those pesky greeks). Also: forget that long-haired hippy 16th century Spanish nobility lordship you see in portraits of Jesus: he probably looked more like the guy on the left, only short and brown-skinned.
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2. Yeshua, like Osama bin Laden, was born as the heir to a family construction business.
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3. Yeshua, like Osama bin Laden, was a bit of a mystic and a dreamer. He dropped out of the family business, and took a good look at the society around him. In particular, he retreated into the desert for a while and tried to avoid the temptations of the flesh.
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4. Yeshua, like Osama, decided that it was extremely important to get the imperial hegemon of the day to pull its troops out of the holy places of his religion.
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5. With his followers, Yeshua attacked a major banking hub — the Wall Street of its day — in the shape of the money lenders in the temple grounds. (Due to the non-availability of weapons of mass destruction in his day, as opposed to Osama's, the temple survived.) (See also Revelations 18:11 and Revelations 18:19.)
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6. Yeshua, like Osama bin Laden, preached subversive sermons, which were widely circulated among the masses suffering beneath the imperial jackboot.
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7. Eventually Yeshua got up one privileged nose too many, and wound up being executed in a grotesque manner, to warn the masses (and his followers) what happens if you speak truth to power. See also Seal Team Six.
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8. Over the subsequent decades and centuries, the numbers of his followers increased — principally finding recruits among middle-easterners pissed off at the imperial hegemonic power's continuing occupation and exploitation of their holy places. The followers of Osama Yeshua multiplied in numbers despite organized clamp-downs and purges.
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9. Osama Yeshua's followers are — or were — big on holy martyrdom.
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10. ... Okay, I've now run out of immediate similarities between Jesus and Osama bin Laden. Help me, somebody?
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