Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Imagine, if you will, that you’re a simple man just trying to eke out a living as an authority in economics. You publish a book, do the mandatory press tour – and suddenly buckets of people are sending you emails and flying cross-country asking if you are God incarnate.

That’s a problem, right? Well Raj Patel sure thinks so – it’s happening to him.

We’ve told you about living gods before – remember Steve Cooper? He felt he never fit in until thousands of Indians started worshipping him in droves. Now he actually feels confident enough to attend his high school class reunion with an awesome answer prepared for when his former bullies ask him what he’s doing now.

And then there was the list of four modern day deities that are roaming the earth here or there. Well someone from that list is making headlines again – headlines because some believe they’ve pieced together all the clues regarding his true identity as given by his mouthpiece Benjamin Creme.

Creme claims to receive telepathic transmissions from his master Maitreya. Some of those transmissions contained clues as to Maitreya’s earthly arrival and the form he’ll take while he’s here. Some of those clues are:

-He arrived in 1972

-He went to England in 1977

-He’ll be dark skinned

-He’s got a stutter

In the modern age it wasn’t hard to Google-search all those clues to solve that riddle – and guess what? God is an economist.

More specifically he’s an economist named Raj Patel. Patel has written a book called The Value Of Nothing, which sold big. The author, of course, was obligated to do a book tour touting his work. This outing included TV interviews – and tons of personal facts becoming common knowledge. Facts like Patel being born in 1972, his having dark skin, he stuttered on TV once, and in 1977 his parents dragged him to London for a delightful family vacation.

And then it began. This, according to the New York Times:

““It became a flood,” said Mr. Patel, referring to a torrent of e-mail messages that asked: “Are you The One?” He removed the contact information from his Web site, but dozens of pages, discussion groups and videos have emerged online proclaiming his holiness. Mr. Patel has emphatically and publicly denied being Maitreya. Bad move. According to the predictions, “Maitreya will neither confirm, or will fail to confirm, he is Maitreya,” said Cher Gilmore, a spokeswoman for Share International. Ms. Gilmore said Mr. Creme would not say if he believed Mr. Patel was the messiah.”

Well in their defense, what are his people supposed to do? If it quacks like a duck it’s a duck, right? And Patel is definitely quacking. After all – those solemnly sworn denials are the final proof anyone could possibly need.

Except that in 1988 Maitreya magically appeared before 6,000 camera-toting people in Nairobi Kenya. As Share International, Maitreya’s earthly organisation, puts it:

“Maitreya appears miraculously ‘out of the blue’ on June 11, 1988, at an open-air prayer/healing meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. He is photographed addressing thousands of people in their own language, who instantly recognize him as the Christ.”

His picture was taken (see right), and not only did he not look like Mr. Patel one stinking bit, but he was sporting more facial hair than 16 year old Raj could have probably ever dreamed of.

Sorry to debunk your God, Maitreyites, and we want you to know that we would never do that without first giving you a semi-decent substitute. As such we’ll tell you that Steve Cooper guy is still taking applications.

And over there you can still kind of get in at ground level. Imagine that heavenly potential.

Oh – and for anyone interested – here’s a YouTube schplurb about Patel’s book. Please note the obviously plagiaristic correlation between it and the book of first Corinthians.

See, he can’t help but be religiously iconic:

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