No Accounting For Easter

During a beer at happy hour on Good Friday, I commented that every Friday should be called Good Friday, given that it was the last day of the work week.

One of the people there was apparently offended at my cavalier commentary on "the day Jesus died." Delighted to find a religious scholar amongst the sea of suds, I thought I would seek some enlightenment for something that was puzzling me.

I asked him, "Help me out with something. Jesus died on a Friday, right?"

"Everyone knows that," he responded.

"So that's Good Friday. And Easter is when we celebrate his resurrection, is that right?"

"Yes."

"And how long did he lay in his tomb before being rising again?"

"Three days."

"Interesting. So even though Jesus supposedly died at three in the afternoon on a Friday, and was already off and gone to Heaven by the time Mary came to his tomb on Sunday at Dawn - a span of about a day and a half - they just counted it as three because they counted funny then?"

"I don't know. Asshole."

People get so touchy about their religion sometimes.

Actually, this did lead to another interesting discussion with someone else there who was actually educated in the religion he espoused (about the word Easter coming from the pagan Goddess Eostre, eggs from Spring fertility celebrations, the reconciliation of holidays in the early church days, the Council of Nicea, and how history gets rewritten over time). I actually learned quite a bit that I didn't know before.

The conversation wrapped up with a discussion about how why it was that so many people who categorize themselves as religious (over 90% in the U.S. according to a recent poll) know so little about the history or tenets of their chosen religion.

He smiled, and reminded me that faith rests not on reason, just belief. You don't need facts or logic for faith.

I then made some snide comment about so many with faith being assholes, and he asked me what I thought about Richard Dawkins.

Touche.

We agreed that "turning the other cheek" does not necessarily mean you must must show your asshole as you turn them. We agreed that the dimension of faith/no-faith was orthogonal to the dimension of assholedness. And we agreed that it was the assholes the world needed to worry about, not necessarily those of strong faith.

If only everyone could be so reasonable.