EASTER IS ABOUT EGGS, NOT GOD.

With Easter upon us, I wonder just how much truth there is in the traditional Christian story; I suspect, very little.

Almost 1800 years ago, representatives of the relatively young Christian church met at the First Council of Nicaea and established some very basic rules for determining the date of Easter for, even at that time, there was no consensus on this simple fact. Ever since, there has been debate and refinement and yet no one has ever produced a smidgeon of evidence for an actual date of the events being commemorated. As an aside, it's also the case that Christmas has nothing whatsoever to do with the birth of Jesus but is associated with the timing of ancient pagan festivals which seem to have been adapted for the purposes of the early Christian church.,

There is, of course, evidence of the existence of a Jewish preacher whose name was Latinised into 'Jesus', though what his real name is remains unclear. Possibly he was Yeshua, which equates to Joshua in English. While there is much made of the assorted stories in the Christian Bible, very little is really known about the life of this man and, indeed, even the various branches of Christianity are unable to agree on the right interpretation of his life, status, and works.

Much of what is considered to be 'known' is based on apocryphal writings many hundreds of years after the events. The mental images of the 'Last Supper' are based entirely on wholly imagined paintings from the early Renaissance period. Stories of 'Holy Grails' and miraculous happenings are no more than fables made up by believers.

The enduring nature of Christianity strongly suggests that there is a basis to the faith but that doesn't mean that all of the ritual, mysticism, regalia and flummery have any basis in fact. The truth is that there have been hundreds of religions in human history and most have failed the test of time or been absorbed into others; Judaism, Christianity and Islam now dominate and are integrally linked while also having huge, and sometimes violent, disagreements, but they are no more valid than any of those that have vanished. Why should anyone believe in one any more than in any other ?

Religions are beliefs, faiths based on flimsy evidence that has been exploited by unscrupulous people for their own ends. In the past, religions were used to control the population by terrifying them with stories of the horrors to come after death unless they worshipped a chosen deity or deities, and accepted the sometimes gruesome rituals that were demanded; today, much the same remains true though, thankfully, many people now resist this nonsense.

Whatever the truth about Jesus Christ, Easter and the rest, the fact is that there is very little to support the nonsense of Christianity nor of any other religious faith. Indeed, for most in this country, and many others, Easter is about eggs every bit as much as Christmas is about presents, and neither has much, if anything, to do with any religion.