Happy Palm Sunday, everybody.

The day we celebrate the kickoff to Christianity's centerpiece event, a blood sacrifice.

Strip away the stained glass in the hymns, and what you're actually looking at is an omnipotent God who decided he couldn't forgive humanity for breaking the rules he made up arbitrarily unless something innocent

bled and died first, which is the same sympathetic magic every ancient culture practiced,

just with better production value. Hebrews 922 says the quiet part out loud. Without the

shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. That's not a plan of

salvation. That's a hostage negotiation where God is both the kidnapper and the ransom.

And the sacrifice didn't even work. Sin didn't stop. Suffering didn't stop. And most humans who

ever lived are still supposedly hellbound because they picked the wrong God out of a

lineup or were born in the wrong century. And let's be honest about what Jesus actually sacrificed here.

A bad weekend with a guaranteed resurrection to partially fix a problem that he himself created,

using a mechanism borrowed from the biblical goat slaughter rituals.

So either God chose to require blood when he could just have forgiven people, making the crucifixion

cosmic sadism, or he's bound by rules he can't override and isn't actually omnipotent,

or the whole framework as ancient blood magic retrofitted on to

first century theology, which is the most parsimonious explanation by a mile.

Take your pick. And if you disagree with my interpretation of this holy week, then call in,

because the show starts now.

What? Now. What's up,

Heathens, how y'all doing this week?

I am here with Jim Burroughs.

What's up there, Jim?

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