Jesus

On this day of Easter, let us not forget this important fact: Jesus did not exist.

Now, don't get me wrong. It's entirely possible, perhaps even probable, that there was a guy named Yeshua who came from Nazareth and preached in Jerusalem and was crucified for his beliefs.

But that's not the person that Christians are talking about when they talk about Jesus. They're talking about the son of God, born of a virgin, who performed miracles and rose from the dead. That Jesus never existed. And that Jesus is not the same person as Yeshua. If he is, then Santa Claus lived in Turkey in 300 AD.

And we know next to nothing about the "real" Jesus. The only writings we have that talk about Jesus and were written anywhere close to when he actually lived were written by Christians, and were talking about the miraculous version.

EDIT:
And it's entirely possible the "real" Jesus didn't exist either.

Cargo Cults Get a Bad Rap

Cargo cults are religions that formed in pacific island cultures when they came into contact with Europeans. They sought to replicate the Europeans' material wealth and technology by imitating it. They didn't know how those things were made, so they thought they were gifts from the gods. They built imitation airstrips and control towers thinking those were rituals to summon planes.

The term cargo cult has also been applied in other contexts, such as cargo cult science or cargo cult programming, to mean imitating techniques and procedures without what they're for or why they're used. I don't object to that usage, because it seems pretty accurate, but it does give a poor representation of cargo cults.

As far as I can see, cargo cults are the most rational religion in existence. They're still wrong and irrational of course. But compared to more mainstream religions like Christianity and Islam, they're downright sane. Cargo cults have real evident miracles.

Airplanes and radios and all sorts of magical things. You don't need to have faith in those things. Their explanation for those things was wrong, but that's not necessarily irrational. The irrational part of cargo cults is refusing to give up that explanation when it fails to work. Compare that to Christianity which is entirely based on irrationality and faith.