Intro to Jesus Mythicism: A Presentation BY Michael Turton

                                               Taichung Skeptics in the Pub Presents

                                               Intro to Jesus Mythicism:

                                               Was Jesus a Historical Figure?

                                               A Presentation BY Michael Turton

                                             Saturday, June 28, 8 pm  Terrior Wine Cellar 

      Michael Turton has been blogging from Taiwan since at least 2005. He studied at Miskatonic University in Salem, MA and Chang Gung University here. He is an ESL teacher. He’s married to a Taiwanese woman. They have no kids. He’s not a vegetarian. He rides a bike all over the island. He looks to be in his 50’s. He’s an atheist. He could be my friend. He didn’t respond to my telling him I was an IWW delegate, nor did he comment on the article I wrote about Lim It-Fang and the sneaker thrower. He wrote, “Taiwan is run by neoliberals who shit,” and he seems to supports Taiwan independence. He’s short and heavy and seems to have a good sense of humor from the photos I’ve seen on his Facebook page.

       Michael Turton is a fascinating studier of the New Testament which he can tear apart line by line to prove that Jesus, though he might have existed as a person was victim, at best, to a myth perpetrated by Mark and Luke. I felt very comfortable being there with six other people, at least three of whom are friends of Michael Turton, the most verbose being Wade. One Indian woman was slightly taken aback by Michael's condensed findings but mature enough to stifle herself. I wanted to keep it personal, meaning, how everyone had come to be there last night, especially Wade and Michael. Michael had been interested in tearing apart the Christian myth since he was eleven and Wade after he was about to go to seminary school and was distracted by love with a woman.

      Since I knew something about Michael from having researched him on the internet, I felt it was only fair that I shared some of my past with him; I would like to remain friends. I told him when we were the first there with the wine store proprietor, Wade, and the five other guests later on, how I had come to my involvement with Chinese people and my experience with my goyem friends as a young man, the friends who abandoned me because 'my people had killed Jesus.' 

     Michael is an excellent blog writer and I complimented him on it. He said that his blog was in the top three in popularity at one point, in some respect. He knew me through the taIWWan blog and Facebook. After ten years, my blogs will be as complete.  Michael has a niche in the mythicism of Jesus and many followers and followings. His political rants, however, are problematic for me because he's a kvetcher and cynic without direction. His flippant 'KMT neo-liberalism shits on workers' statement leaves his leanings falling off the edge of the world; I asked how what he studied was helping humanity, though studying what he does for its own sake and literary value are fine with me. At least Wade addressed my concern mentioning how a large percentage of homeless in America were gay youth thrown out of their homes by Christian closed-minded parents. Since my unionism has been relegated to the similar non-status of Michael Turton's atheism, his by choice and mine by default; I have no stones to throw at his house. 

     Despite citing examples of how Michael's knowledge would be sacrilege to most of the people I knew at FDR (I was thinking of Joanne, for instance) I told him there was one word that would throw fear into the hearts of colleagues in schools and workplaces more than 'atheism' would, and that word was 'unions.' Being an atheist and organizing your colleagues wouldn't get you expelled from school or lose your job but organizing workers or students into a union certainly would, unless done clandestinely. 

      I don’t know if Michael Turton keeps a journal. It may be that most of his thoughts put into writing go directly into his blog, and he does comment on articles in his “View from Taiwan” blog regularly. I write over four hundred pages of journal last year (though most of it is garbled because it wasn’t saved correctly) and don’t comment on most of the articles I post on the blogs. Improving and adding to my blogs takes a back seat to my journal and creative writing. Furthermore, I am not studying or adding to my art/craft/interest (other than reading excellent novels and short stories) and I don’t spar with other bloggers or try to convince or debunk anyone.

I have more dialogue with myself than I do with others; this is my Achilles heel.

      I tried to get around to asking if I could have a presentation next Saturday at the wine store in memorial to Jim Morrison. Michael didn’t think the open mike at Salut Pizza would be a good venue for my poetry reading as I suggested I might pursue but said he knew of a venue in Taichung and said there was a bi-weekly poetry reading in Taipei, which I had heard of. The wine store dude didn’t understand my request and instead handed me a headset with a microphone to read, at what he thought was my insistence, to the six people at the table. No one else held his mockery and I put the headset down. I did read “I only need to ride the river” before I thanked everyone and said goodbye around 10:15pm. I apologized for not drinking the quantity of wine from two bottles the knowledgeable proprietor opened; I would have if not riding my bicycle home. For the few sips I had, I was approached outside when I was unchaining my bike and asked me for a 270NT contribution as he’d ask the others inside finishing two bottles. Two guests who’d left earlier contributed nothing. I gave 300NT and he joked about my leaving him an illegal tip. I told him not to tell anyone. His was the only bad taste left in my mouth.