Good morning, My name is God, and these are My instructions:

(1) As your Creator, I have given you a good brain, but I do not want you to use it, unless you are a priest.

(2) If you are a priest, I would like you to use your brain to invent lies and deceits about the origins of Christianity, to edit and suppress inspired scriptures you do not like, to invent good spiritual reasons why women should be oppressed and discriminated against, and to assemble dogmas which equate pleasure with evil, and Christianity with churchianity.

(3) Also, if you are a priest, I want you to use your brain to invent a theory of substitutionary atonement which embodies each of the following signifiers:
(a) A chap gets killed a couple of thousand years before the current generation is born and, therefore, a couple of thousand years before the current generation has thought or done anything.
(b) I, God, permit this chap to be killed instead of killing the current generation myself.
(c) This gratuitous murder wipes away all the current generation's sins two thousand years before the current generation has had the time or the opportunity to commit any sins.
(d) The gratuitous murder buys a lifetime ticket to heaven for the current generation, providing that each individual in the current generation goes through the motions of parroting the appropriate religious mantras.

SNIP