"Religion is bunk"

The "Passion" movie reveals Christianity's underlying sado-masochism glorifying and romanticizing misery and suffering. Worse yet, until the fifteenth century it was thought that only Jesus as a unique son of God could bear such torture, but German monk Thomas a Kempis in 1418 wrote a book "Imitation of Christ" putting forth the thesis that everyone should suffer like Jesus and that suffering is good for you.

Just because there is a movie about something does not make it true. The chronology of the passion story is highly implausible. Knowing how slowly court systems work, it is highly unlikely that someone should get arrested late Thursday night and be executed at nine o'clock the next morning on Friday. Furthermore, Jesus would have to go through not just one but two legal systems--- both the Jewish courts and the Roman courts. Also, the Jewish Sanhedrin court was not allowed to meet during Passover and furthermore had to wait 24 hours before rendering a verdict in a case. Jesus'death after only three hours on the cross is also highly suspect since victims of crucifixion did not usually die for two days or even longer. Thus the local Jewish population rejected the passion story as bogus and only faraway Gentiles unfamiliar with Jewish customs and practices accepted the story.

There is the further problem of Matthew 12:40 saying Jesus would lie dead for three days and three nights but Matthew 28:1 saying he rose from the dead only two days and two nights later on Sunday. There are also many other inconsistencies in the various versions of the passion story in the Bible.