Jesus agreed to be baptized, his family paid the tax to the temple for his purification. He seemed to have led a very orthodox jewish life until his ministry.

There is no doubt, if the Gospels can be believed, that he intended starting a new religion. A new covenant is what he called it. With a new religion came new temples and new religious relics. The idea that Catholics are somehow wrong because they have temples is stupid…but what can you expect from someone who pees in a cup in order to entertain people.

What if instead of giving all that money to the Church to buy more art and collectibles for themselves so that the Church can then turn around and give it out to the poor, what if they just gave it directly to help the poor themselves?

Here’s my idea: How about if the church stopped taking money from the poor. How about if they drew a poverty line and said ‘anyone below this, never, EVER EVER give money to the church.’

Have you ever read James Randi’s account of seeing the giant money counting machines behind the scenes at Guadalupe, where the dirt poor and starving heave their humblest coins into the coffers of the church?

This is from Randi’s October 11 2002 commentary

http://www.randi.org/jr/101102.html

>> Reader George Paz writes:
>>
>>
>> While reading your article on the Virgin of Guadalupe, I felt compelled to write you. When I was thirteen years old I went on a vacation with my sister to Mexico City. It was a year after the massive earthquake of ‘86. One Sunday morning we boarded a tour bus and headed to Guadalupe. Though it was a full year after the disaster, the town looked as if the earthquake had hit just the day before. There was not one structure standing in the town, except for the basilica.
>> We arrived at the basilica about twenty minutes before mass. As we stepped off the bus, we were swamped by poverty-stricken children. All of us American tourists were touched and devastated at the sight of all the children who were clearly sick and malnourished. The dollars were passed out en masse. As we made our way through the crowd, we ended up in front of a gift shop off to one side of the basilica. We entered the gift shop to partake of humanity’s greatest invention — air-conditioning.
>> I browsed among the many statues of the Virgin of Guadalupe and numerous saints, while my sister searched through a bin of T-shirts with silk-screened images of the “miraculous” painting. The church bells began to toll, calling the parishioners to mass. We walked outside to a scene which I believe I will never forget. The entire town was emptying into the basilica, most of the parishioners crawling in on their knees, over the cobblestones. We walked in behind them.
>> Right inside the main entrance was what looked like a large fish tank, with a solid-gold statuette inside. As the parishioners filed by they dropped the meager contents of their pockets into this tank. Much of what was dropped in was US currency, the money that we tourists had given them just minutes before in the belief that we were helping to feed at least a few of these starving families. There were easily tens of thousands of dollars in the tank.
>> I was unable to go any further, and had to wait outside while I tried to process what I had just seen. My sister continued on inside and when she returned she described a scene very similar to what you did.
>> On board the bus, as we drove away from the town, I looked back at this mammoth, pristine structure among the ruins. It vaguely seemed like something from a sci-fi movie, like a massive alien ship sucking the life out of that dying harvest of humanity. I left my lukewarm Episcopalian upbringing and any notion of deities or religion, behind me in Guadalupe. It was an eye-opening and life-altering experience.
>> Thanks for letting me share.

James Randi then wrote:

> George, my own experience with this cruel farce was far more serious and shocking, but I do appreciate that you shared yours with our readers. Though I’ll someday write up my account, I’ll only tell you now that during the filming session there, I wandered down a flight of stairs — not unintentionally — and found the vast counting room where currency of many nations was being busily and noisily sorted and counted. The amount of cash I saw there was staggering. The stark contrast between the tiny copper coins the stricken poor were dropping into the many collection-boxes upstairs, and the gold-clad altars, figures, and ornaments that were set up to glorify this stupid painting as one of divine origin, stays in my mind like a scar. Just thinking about all this depresses me and re-affirms my determination to fight this sort of flummery. Thanks very much for your contribution.

How about the money that we give to these overpaid, overvalued celebrities?

or football players? but, yes. sell the vatican too…