Passover and Easter: Great fun for atheists
A Very Special Dangerous Talk:
Many atheists really love this time of year because it is just too easy to criticize two of the three Abrahamic religions without much effort at all. Jews and Christians just make it so easy; it is like they are handing atheists the logical death blow to their own beliefs.
First, let’s start with Passover. There is this great Huffington Post article (if I do say so myself) that talks about the fact that the Jewish Exodus never actually happened. What this means of course is that the Jewish religion is built on a proven fictional story. Down goes Judaism!
Next comes Easter, which most Christians consider the holiest of holy holidays. The problem is that Easter is NOT a Christian holiday! I know Christians hate to hear that, but it’s true. I don’t recall reading in the Bible about Jesus ever owning a hare. And what is the deal with Easter Eggs? Where does the Bible talk about egg hunts, in the gospel of Luke perhaps? The Bible doesn’t mention anything at all about Easter and Jesus didn’t even own a pet bunny. All the stuff about Jesus being needlessly tortured to death and rising from the dead has nothing to do with Easter. Christians should call their holiday Zombie Sunday or Zombie Jesus Day or something, but it is not Easter.
Easter is actually a combination of various Pagan beliefs mostly centering on the goddess Eostre (who the holiday is actually named after). I’ll get to the Goddess Eostre shortly but first I want to focus on the half-god Attis who like Jesus was born of a virgin, died on March 23nd and resurrected on March 25th. Let’s count that one out. How many days was he dead for again? One, two, three day? Just like Jesus. What a coincidence.
Now let’s look at the story of the Goddess Eostre. While there are actually many different versions of the Eostre story, the most prominent story claims that the Goddess came upon a little girl who had found a dying bird. The girl asked Eostre for help because the bird was not use to the cold weather. Eostre then melted the snow and brought about the spring. She then turned the bird into a hare that laid rainbow eggs and told the young girl to watch every year for the hare as a sign of the spring season. Traditionally, the Eostre Festival had focused on fertility to mirror the new life of nature and change to mirror the changing of the seasons from winter to spring.
Atheists should celebrate Easter even though we know that Attis, Eostre, and the Easter Bunny aren’t real. We also know that Mickey Mouse isn’t real, but we can still go to Disneyland and have a good time. Atheists should celebrate Easter because it is fun, symbolizes human sexuality, the changing of the seasons, and because Jews and Christians have made this time of year really fun for us with their ridiculous beliefs in obviously ridiculous stories, which are so easily refuted.
Happy Easter!
Filed under: Easter