Coming soon… Not Very Intelligent Design Too : Planet Earth
Kneeling Man: Oi, God! You there?
God: Yes, Neel.
KM: What made you think it was a good idea to create human virgins and then have other humans kill them and offer them as a sacrifice back to you? Seems a bit like breeding fish in a barrel and then shooting them. Or having them shoot each other. What’s the point?
God: I don’t know. You should ask the people making the sacrifice.
KM: The sacrificial lambs? I doubt they’re going to think of a good reason. Even if they weren’t dead.
God: Pedantic semantics, Neel. I meant the ones performing the sacrifices.
KM: People that do that kind of thing aren’t easy to find where I live, that’s why I’m asking you. After all, you started it.
God: No I didn’t. Priests did. They might have offered the sacrifices to me, but I didn’t ask them to.
KM: What about Jesus?
God: Jesus didn’t start it either. The Olmecs were doing blood sacrifices over in Mexico a long time before Jesus arrived. And very impressively too, I might add.
KM: So, your big party piece, the blood sacrifice to you, of your only begotten son, who is also you, was an idea appropriated from an ancient culture? Doesn’t sound like the work of a big-brained, universe-creating god. More like someone else did your homework for you.
God: What’s your question?
KM: What’s the point of blood sacrifice? Drinking the blood, eating the body, whether or not in wine and cracker form. That whole vampire cannibal shit? What’s it for?
God: Worship, Neel. Worship is the cornerstone of faith.
KM: That sounds like the sort of crap the Pope might tweet.
God: Where do you think he gets it from? Remember the first four commandments, Neel. They’re all about me and the need to worship me.
KM: Of course they are.
God: If my sheep did not have me to prostrate themselves before, what would they bow down to? Imaginary gods, Neel. Imaginary gods. That would be blasphemy.
KM: You mean other imaginary gods. Besides, human life may be better if lived standing up, rather than bowing down.
God: Don’t get like that, Neel.
KM: How many of your sheep prayed to you for their dying loved ones to recover from Covid-19? And how many of those prayers did you answer?
God: Millions. And none. Obviously. I can only answer prayers that conform to the preordained grand plan, Neel. You know that.
KM: So prayers never change anything?
God: Of course not. What would be the point of me, God, having a grand plan for everything if any old Joe Schmo could get on his knees and cause changes to the plan?
KM: So your only use is for bowing down before, even though bowing down before you will achieve nothing?
God: Half the people in any given football stadium believe their prayers get answered. So there’s that.
KM: Okay. But, just out of interest, what was the thinking behind the Covid-19 part of the grand plan? What’s it for?
God: I work in mysterious ways, Neel. You know that.
KM: That sounds almost presidentially stupid.
God: Anything else?
KM: Thank Christ you’re not real.
God: I’ll pass that on to my lad.
KM: To yourself. Yeah. Good on ya.
God: Night, Neel.
KM: One more thing.
God: What?
KM: I’ve done another book.
God: Yeah, I know.
KM: It’s about the planet they say you made especially for us. Even though most of it is absolutely uninhabitable for humans.
God: Good night, Neel.
KM: Sleep well, God.
God: You know I don’t… ah, forget it.
Not Very Intelligent Design Too takes a look at planet earth and appraises its suitability for human habitation.
The following is a short excerpt from the section on Mexico.
Aztecs, sacrificial virgins, scapegoats, whipping boys, sons of God, and the like
The Aztecs weren’t the first Mexicans. That title probably belongs to the Olmecs (1400-300BC), who sculpted colossal heads and worshipped a god that was part human and part jaguar. They’re the ones who started the blood sacrifice rituals in Mexico, a tradition that’s been practiced off and on ever since, and continues to this day. Mostly by drug cartels. The Olmecs were serious hardasses as they sacrificed infants and babies, something the cartels only indulge in when they really need to teach someone a lesson.
The Zapotec (600BC-800AD) also did their share of blood sacrificing to all manner of deities, who represented rain, light, maize, spring and anything else that needed a bit of a spiritual hurry up. They apparently believed that they came from the earth or caves except for their ruling elite who said they came from supernatural beings who lived in the clouds. Modern day descendants of the Zapotec call themselves Be’ena’ Za’a, which means cloud people.
The Aztecs were the undisputed champs of ritual blood sacrifice, which may indicate that individuals with a sociopathic lack of empathy were more common back then. Although seeing the gleeful faces in a crowd watching a young woman being publicly beaten for the crime of immodesty in Aceh province, in Indonesia, certainly challenges that idea.
Aztec priests (its always priests) would hold their sacrificial victim down, cut out her still-beating heart with a ritual blade decorated with the faces of the gods for which the sacrificial heart was intended, and cast it into a fire. Between 10,000 and 250,000 victims a year were sacrificed.
Montezuma II, was the individual all-time ritual sacrifice champion, once overseeing the slaughter of 12,000 victims in a single day. It’s a good thing they had religion to give them a moral code or who knows what they might have got up to.
Today the dominant religion in Mexico is Catholicism. This may or may not have been a positive development depending on whether you prefer the idea of having your children murdered or sodomized. Those priests, eh? Always up to something.
