BUT JESUS DIDN'T HAVE A BLUE OX

Brian Flemming is an artist and a filmmaker, and a lot of people hate him.

Why? Because Flemming questions whether Jesus Christ ever lived.

The Los Angeles Times has a good write-up on the controversy Flemming creates:

The 39-year-old Angeleno has made an hourlong documentary titled "The God Who Wasn't There." In it, the former born-again Christian argues that the biblical Jesus never lived, but is a mythological figure like Paul Bunyan.

Initially released theatrically June 17, the documentary grew out of Flemming's research for a fictional thriller-in-progress titled, "The Beast." In that film, which he hopes to release next year, a teenage Christian discovers that the Jesus she fervently believes in never existed.

"My position is that's the most likely scenario," the filmmaker said.

Asked why he chose to question Jesus' existence instead of his divinity, Flemming said: "I think that the idea that an individual could be the son of a god is already so ridiculous it doesn't need to be debunked."

We can already hear the cries of "blasphemy" erupting across the Midwest -- many coming from the same mouths that diss other religions as inferior to Christianity (some of those same pieholes also claim Roman Catholics aren't Christian and are thus bound for Hell, but that's a hypocrisy best left for another time).

Comparing Jesus to Paul Bunyan, we find the tall lumberjack falls short on several fronts:

•Jesus had 12 disciples. Bunyan had seven axemen.

•Bunyan drank milk from a purple cow. A Purple Jesus is a superior drink made with ginger ale, vodka, grape juice and Everclear.

•Jesus's beloved disciple, John, kept track of time in his account of Christ's life. Bunyan's head clerk, Johnny, kept track of everything for the big bossman.