No. No more than it ever was, anyway. If you rearrange the letters in the word SACRED you'll get the word SCARED, and this is as it should be since fear is the ultimate basis for all forms of worship.
A casual peek at ancient religions will show that each had a god or goddess for lightning, for death, and, should a volcano be near, for that also. In other words, we learned early-on to 'Revere What We Fear'. Further examination shows that religions evolved out of man's early attempts to explain things. Whether is was thunder, rain, the sun, the earth itself, or fertility, there was a fanciful fairy tale to explain each; anyone who is a parent and has had to field offspring's questions can identify with these Ancients. It has ever been thus, and the current crop of religions is no different. Except ours, of course.
The Gospel According to St. Pooch©, besides being an irreverent (albeit humorous!) novel coming out in June of this year, plays havoc with the RULE OF EXCEPTIONS (See RULE OF EXCEPTIONS elsewhere at this site) in that it acknowledges the fact that the world would be a better place if we all were Saints ... and the Last Chance Cathedral & Discount House of Worship takes steps in that direction!
For some two millinia now, one church has claimed the franchise for granting sainthood, a clear violation of both fair trade/anti-trust laws and common sense. The fact that they took in other religions' sacred entities and made them saints (such as the Celts' St. Brigid, and others) is demonstrative of their political motivation in gathering as many as possible beneath their umbrella to further their power.
The Poochian Order sees life as we know it as miracle enough to warrant recognition, and the fact that you are possessed of enough intelligence to seek out this site is defacto proof you are worthy of Sainthood. You want to be a saint? Fill in the form and press the button. You want something tangible to prove you're a saint to the unwashed heathens in your life? Fill out the rest of the form and get a snappy parchment Certificate of Canonization, suitable for framing. (Makes a wonderful GIFT, particularly for those Ass-Holier-Than-Thou types).
Meanwhile, feel free to browse among the collected esoterica, or add to it with an observation of your own ... unlike that other church, we're open-minded enough to listen rather than issue edicts, and all our Saints are equal in our eyes ... except perhaps for St. Malmo The Slender, who is getting to be a bigger pain in the ass by the day. Meanwhile, here's a pragmatic take on Genesis.
This played havoc with the mass, of course, causing it to compress and compress and compress until some of the stuff in the center (which had gotten there early) reached critical mass and the whole shebang exploded. Now Everything was hurtling out into the void like a ruptured pinata in zero gravity. Once Everything got used to the idea of hurtling out into space (actually OUT is a relative term, since everywhere you looked was out when Everything was in one place) and began obeying the laws of physics, chemistry, quantum mechanics, supply-and-demand, etc ..., which is to say, all the little pieces were drawn toward the bigger pieces in accord with their relative masses.
As the little pieces collided with the bigger pieces, the bigger pieces absorbed them and got bigger still. Thus, the bigger pieces could now attract the same smaller pieces much farther away, and even larger little pieces closer in. In short, Everything started trying to get back together again. And so it will, eventually, though not as completely as the first time, or the second, etc .... Some of the random pieces that went off more-or-less alone will never quite make it back before the next explosion happens. Thus, they will either be passed by freshly-exploded matter that DID make it to the epicenter and that great cosmic orgy of compression, or (having a headstart, as it were) they will be propelled even farther out and will never ever make it back to the epicenter again. Unless, of course, some of the freshly-exploded matter collides with it (which it will, eventually) and renders it into smaller pieces again, which will be attracted by the larger pieces, etc..., etc ...
This is what has happened, more than once. This is what is happening, and this is what will happen again and again and again. If viewed from afar, say from one of those orphan chunks of matter that never quite make it back, for instance, it would appear very like a jellyfish swimming. Everything would gather its skirts and form into a compact wad, then there would be a spasm and Everything would fly out again, perhaps propelling the whole in some direction, perhaps not. That, too, is unimportant since everything is in one place so there's no great rush to get somewhere else, right? And this is what eternity is really composed of, in the macrocosmic view.
The ancient Greeks & Romans had their own version of things, what with Atlas holding the world on his shoulder and all. And the ancient Chinese (and others) had the world (earth) balanced atop a great turtle, paddling through the heavens. Neither of these theories is any more far-fetched than the Judeo-Christian epic (God was bored one day and decided he'd whip up a little Science Project; the Earth, mankind, all the critters and plants, fossilized bones in the sub-strata to confuse us, T-1 lines, Martha Stewart, and all) version of The Creation.
The thing is, once you get past the human-invented concept of TIME (which is actually a measure of Distance, once you think about it), the COSMIC, BIG-BANG(s), DYNAMIC theory of EVERYTHING, as just postulated, is pretty damned amazing in itself and doesn't stop with the origins of this puny little orb. The question I'm sure many right-thinking ancient Greeks must have asked (indeed, I wondered this the first time I saw a depiction of Atlas) is, 'What the hell is he STANDING ON, while he holds the world on his shoulder, and WHERE THE HELL AM I when I see him doing it?
Back to the Cathedral
So, what's this stuff about THE RULE OF EXCEPTIONS?