Miracles of the Gods: A New Look at the Supernatural (147 page)

Theologians, full of ideas and skilled in dialectics, recently sought a path which would lead out of this dilemma, but it terminated in a dead end.

They now say that God the Father did not so love the world that he sacrificed his only begotten son, but that Jesus sacrificed himself of his own 'free will' out of love of mankind. Unfortunately this about-turn does not produce any significant conclusion.

God the Father and God the Son are unalloyed and inseparable, according to Christian dogma (the Nicene and Chal-cedonian creeds). So it makes no difference what one or the other does. Either way the sacrifice remains senseless. Father and Son were (and are) 'one' from the beginning according to current doctrine. Hence both of them knew what was going to happen at any given moment. As this does not resolve the contradiction, the ecclesiastical teachers thought up an - absolutely final? -

interpretation. Jesus wanted to show mankind how they should live in order to please God the Father.

Does that bring us back to the beginning again, to zero? If the whole of mankind is supposed to become 'pleasing to God', then the Almighty would simply have had to plan that our ancestors Adam and Eve should become so, according to his divine will. That would have been quite within his powers, wouldn't it?

Surely the dogmas of original sin and redemption lack any kind of foundation when considered in the cold light of reason?

Even in the interests of the Christian churches, I consider blood sacrifices and redemption by the crucifixion to be dangerous doctrines. Made dogmas by the early councils they became the authority for torture and murder during the trials of heretics, they became the approved rituals of the Inquisition and even today they 'inspire' salvation-seeking youth and members of obscure sects to ghastly exorcistic ritual murders with those sacrifices these criminals still pretend to 'propitiate' God.

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In the Gospels according to St. Matthew and St. Luke it says Jesus was 'born at Bethlehem'. St. Mark, on the other hand, names Nazareth as the place of birth. Right from the birth of the Redeemer confusion and contradictions make the Bible adventurous reading.

Mary is universally mentioned as his mother. His father, Joseph the carpenter, is not the physical father, for Mary received the sperm by 'immaculate conception' with the co-operation of the Holy Ghost. That is Christian popular belief, for reason cannot grasp this process of impregnation. So especially illuminated theologians take great pains to prove what is meant by 'immaculate conception'.

According to the official biography, the New Testament, the trail of the infant Jesus is lost after his birth until he suddenly crops up again in the Temple as a twelve-year-old runaway-in heated