Was Jesus a Witch doctor, Happy Hellowean

 I think the Bible is mostly the word of witch doctors, so how about a Happy Helloween card with Jesus riding on a broomstick that looks suspiciously  like a cross between his legs.  Across the top of the card: " Why didn't Jesus fly over to the Americas and bring back chocolate treats for the Old World kids ?"  { Sarcastically}: Well maybe he did and then told the kids to keep it a secret. It would be very tempting for children not to tell anyone about their secret stash of chocolate that Jesus had given them.  Jesus could have given them a never emptying jar of chocolates as in Elijah's oil jar of 1 Kings 17v16. Maybe Jesus encouraged them to keep the secret by warning, "Now keep the chocolate a secret kids or I'll send you to hell forever"  Is Christianity the ultimate treat or trick ?  

   What about a Hallowean card with Jesus wearing a witches hat with a thorny halo above it stirring his cauldron with soup made from wing of bat, leg of toad & some reptiles & rats after Acts 10v12, "four footed animals, reptiles, birds". The caption would have Peter saying, "Surely not, Lord. I'd rather go to McDonald's" and Jesus replying,"Woe to him who betrays the Son of Man. Eat or be damned, I poured blood sweat and tears into making this"

p.s  I thought I was joking about the bat but I have just remembered about Leviticuss 11v13-19 which lists bat as a bird.

If Eve had tasted forbidden knowledge she would have realized life eveolved.

ADAM & EVEOLUTION

If Eve really had eaten a fruit of forbidden knowledge then she would have realized that 'God' had been lying to Adam and that in fact organic life on Earth started about 3.6 billion years ago and evolved from there by natural selection, i.e without the assistance of a deity. She would also have realized that the Americas split away from Europe & Africa over 100 million years ago and that many of the best food crops lay over the pond in America out of reach, so Eve would have pointed out that Adam had not been given a chance to name all the plants and animals since if the garden of Eden was in Babylonia it only had Old World plants and animals, and only a percentage of the possible Old World crops at that.

So with a whiff of this forbidden knowledge Eve would have cottoned on to the idea that either God was making stuff up or that Adam was making stories up about God. At any rate she would pretty soon be demanding that Adam get across to America and bring back some of the forbidden and out of reach chocolate if he wanted to touch the other forbidden fruits she had to offer him.

Eve should have also realized that the "Garden of Eden" was in fact a bit of an Orwellian wilderness intellectually and materially, rough experience with bush tucker, very short lifespan, pain in childbirth, tooth ache, disease, fights for survival etc and that in fact there was a  much more promising way of living that could be achieved by slamming the door on the God delusion & taking massive leaps in information and technology as witnessed in the best of what the 21st Century can offer : in pain free dentistry, much reduced pains of child birth, more interesting activities to fill ones life with, several more decades life expectancy, freedom from worries about non-existent religious threats, much more diverse diet, better clothing, hygiene, you name it. [ however also in some cases polluted water, air & general environment depending on location & lots of new troubles and stresses ]

The theory of angels has had its chips

The Bible has very rare moments pointing to reality.
Acts 23v8,” The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits ” ,well said by them, unfortunately it is only a set up for the apologist to give his punchline Acts 23v8, ” but the Pharisees acknowledge them all ”

Mark 11v18, ” Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection ”

Lukw 20v27, ” Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection ”

But these comments are said in an attempt to have them refuted by an appeal to authority – from Jesus – Luke 20v35 ” In the resurrection from the dead…and they can no longer die for they are like the angels”

Acts 17v18 has Paul meet a group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers who dispute with him and say, ” What is this Babbler trying to say ?”
Pity Acts doesn’t quote the Epicurean paradox
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” — ‘
The same could be said of angels, why do they achieve virtually nothing, do they not exist ?
It is propaganda spin to miss out key bits of information. Did the authors of the Bible texts deliberately miss out information that would have shown Babble ideas to be nunsense ?
Since Epicure is a variety of potato I think the other epicurean paradox is how come no Old World priest predicted the existence of potatoes in the Americas and how come no angel flew a few seed spuds over to Europe a few millennium earlier? The theory of the existence of angels has had its chips.

The evolution of Jesus, which component parts coalesced to touch down as the Christ ?

Before the gospel stories about Jesus Christ formed there were possibly forerunners that bore similarities, What if a fictional teacher of righteousness story was superimposed on the Jewish religious custom of Purim ? Then the story got fleshed out by rewriting  Elijah & Elisha as Jesus. In the same way that Christmas and Easter were overlayed on previous 'pagan' myths maybe the N.T. was just a warping of older customs and folklore ?
Some of the early plant cell life was a symbiotic relationship between various organelles. So various independent units maybe coalesced to form the Jesus story ?

In, " The Golden Bough " chapter 5 " The crucifixion of Christ / the scapegoat " James George Frazer looks at the possibility that there was a real raving rabbi Jesus who got caught up in the Jewish festival of Purim. Oxford university press edition
 p 666 - " We have seen reason to think that the Jewish festival of Purim is a continuation, under a changed name, of the Babylonian Sacaea, [ p642-652 ]and that in celebrating it by the destruction of an effigy of Haman the modern Jews have kept up a reminiscence of the ancient custom of crucifying or hanging a man in the character of a god at the festival. Is it not possible that at an earlier time they may, like the Babylonians themselves, have regularly compelled a criminal to play the tragic part, and that Christ thus perished in the character of Haman ? The resemblance between the hanged Haman and the crucified Christ struck the early Christians themselves; and whenever the Jews destroyed an effigy of Haman they were accused by their Christian neighbours of deriding the most sacred mystery of the new faith."
  p670 " The hypothesis that the crucifixion with all its cruel mockery was not a punishment specially devised for Christ, but was merely the fate that annually befell the malefactor who played Haman, appears to go some way towards relieving the Gospel narrative of certain difficulties which otherwise beset it. If,as we read in the gospels, Pilate was really anxious to save the innocent man whose fine bearing seams to have struck him, what was to hinder him from doing so? He had the power of life and death; why should he not have exercised it on the side of mercy, if his own judgement inclined that way? His reluctant acquiescence in the importunate demand of the rabble becomes easier to understand if we assume that custom obliged him annually at this season to give up to them a prisoner on whom they might play their cruel pranks. On this assumption Pilate had no power to prevent the sacrifice; the most he could do was to choose the victim.
   Again, consider the remarkable statement of the Evangelists that Pilate set up over the cross a superscription stating that the man who hung on it was king of the Jews. Is it likely that in the reign of Tiberius a Roman governor, with the fear of the jealous and suspicious old emperor before his eyes, would have ventured, even in mockery, to blazon forth a seditious claim of this sort unless it were the regular formula employed on such occasions, recognized by custom, and therefore not liable to be misconstrued into treason by the malignity of informers and the fears of a tyrant ? "....
  "The part of Mordecai was played by Barabbas "
   p 674 ~ "the theme of such dying & rising gods was common over Western Asia and may help to explain the spread of the Christ story."
  My opinion - what if someone hung a new story on the tradition of Purim. It was any old person who was hung as Haman but gospel authors made the event mean something else, rewriting the O.T. supermen Elijah & Elisha into the new adventures of superman Jesus. Several threads converged in the gospels ? But for Jesus to be a hero he needed to cancel Hades otherwise to only save a select few is to behave barbarically

On WEIT article,” Rabbi Sacks goes after atheists ” 29th September 2014. At comment 16. Simon Hayward posted the hilarious Youtube video of “Not the Nine O’clock news,Monty Python Worshipers”, kanizu00 channel, which reversed the idea of who was doing a parody – with a film, ” The life of Jesus Christ ” being a parody on the real life of John Cleese (ref to life of Brian }

So the link is with the life of Jesus Christ being a parody on the Esther, Mordecai, Haman story which itself is a parody on the Babylonian festival of Sacaea or Zakmuk in the spring month of Nisan in March/April held in honour of the god Marduk during which the person playing the part of Zoganes dies. Zoganes during his five days in office personated not merely a king but a god, whether that god was the Babylonian Marduk or some other deity is not yet identified.

Before the cotton cloth canvas was woven there were threads and a structure – loom & gin, before the threads there was cotton on a bush, before the bush there were seeds.
There were religious customs & structures & temples before the Jesus story got going, there was also a lot of scripture material, plenty of other myths and legends.
Is the Jesus story a cotton twill textile like Denim or plain woven fabric ?

Charles M. Schultz, " Peanuts " cartoon

Snoopy is writing a book on theology titled, " Has it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong "

Peanuts: therefore the Old World Gods were figments of the witchdoctors’ imaginations.

Pumpkin: therefore there is no God. None of the superstitions claiming supernatural assistance predicted the Americas
Pumpkin : The Jesus myth is squashed.

Thanksgiving Day could be viewed as a celebration of the Columbian Exchange which I think should put an end to the claim of religion to divine revelation.

Turkey : Jesus is stuffed.

If religion claims a magical Noahs’s flood at 2300 BCE ( see Ussher chronology ) then how come so many important food crops were unique to America? Why would a God have magically put them out of reach of his chosen children of Israel ? Out of reach of Jesus ? Why did Adam & Eve never mention missing chocolate & popcorn or pumpkin pie & maple syrup after being excluded from the garden of Eden ? Our diverse choice of diet now is more a ” garden of Eden ” experience than any Babylonian located one could ever have been. [ in the unlikely event of one existing ]

However if these food crops were evolving due to selective actions by humans, what effect would a large influx of Europeans have had if they arrived in the Americas 2000 or 3000 years earlier? Would some of the crops have been lost, would their breeding have been disrupted ? Would the native American Indians have given up on sweet-corn in favour of wheat ? Or were they already well enough developed by that stage ? I wonder how big tomatoes, potatoes etc grew at 1000 BCE ?
I think I read that Cassava from S. America has been a boon to Africa. Any angel worthy of the name could have transported some American food crop plants over to the Old World tropics without necessarily informing anyone of their origins but no such thing occurred.

The argument from peanuts (Arachis hypogaea)is slightly undermined by the Bambara groundnut ( Vigna subterranea ) & Hausa groundnut (Macrotyloma geocarpum) both native to West Africa. Apologists are going to say the Old World had plenty of nuts. Seems these three groundnuts belong to the family Fabaceae. Does this mean that they have a common ancestor which dates back to before S.America split from Africa 150 Ma ago ? How come peanuts are mentioned in Bolivia, Paraguay & Peru but not so much in Brazil ? Did they die out in Brazil ? How does the eating quality of Peanuts compare to Bambara & Hausa ?

Snoopy : Has it ever occurred to you to ask how come the scriptures never told of this New World and its bounty ? Thomas Paine considered this question

Religion a form of mimicry of reality whereas Evolution by natural selection is reality

Are religions a form of mimicry ? Maybe religion mimics reality ? The stories of religion recorded in scriptures succeed because though wildly improbable they appear to still be ‘possible’ and contain ideas that people wish to be real.
The shaman / priest uses their stories to trap and parasitize their flock. If people had sufficient knowledge of history & science and tried to apply them critically to the religious stories then they would soon see the difference between the mimic of reality and probable reality.

Are the errors of scripture like Cordyceps fungi ?

See. Cordyceps: attack of the killer fungi – Planet Earth Attenborough BBC wildlife on Youtube BBCWorldwide channel

Maybe the opposite of religion is the theory of evolution as it gives the reality that everything evolves by very gradual processes where as religion expects instant mysterious magic. The religious stories can be seen to have evolved from Torah to O.T. to N.T. to Koran to Book of Mormon to Watch tower. Maybe the Koran virus has lost its eyesight like the Mexican tetra or blind cave fish (Astyanax mexicanus) The Koran has had the tolerant ideas found among the N.T. mix stripped out. It has lost the inner conflict of the debate- were we meant to follow O.T. laws or Pauls idea of living by spirit guidance? So instead of healthy doubt there is more unhealthy tendency towards certainty to follow barbaric 7th century morality.

Harebraineddim ones on El-AL flight to celebrate anniversary of A&E

From Wikipedia
Rosh Hashanah, Traditional greetings :
Ketivah VeChatimah Tovah which translates as "A good inscription and sealing [in the Book of Life]" (Hebrew: כתיבה וחתימה טובה‎).[24]

The next time the Mishnah gets rewritten there needs to be a minor edit;
Ketivah VeChatimah Tovah which translates as "A good inscription and seating [in the Booking of Life]" (Hebrew: כתיבה וחתימה טובה‎).[24]

Maybe the pilot should have blown the shofar in short, long and staccato blasts that follow a set sequence:

Shevarim (3 broken sounds) Numbers 10:5;
O'Teki'ah (long sound) Numbers 10:3;
Shevarim (3 broken sounds) Numbers 10:5;
repeatedly
Then sung out,
L'shanah tovah tikatevu v'tichatemu meaning "May you be inscribed and seated for a good year"

The Yamim Nora'im are preceded by the month of ELAL, during which Jews are supposed to begin a self-examination and repentance, a process that culminates in the ten days of the Ya mum No sitt'im there, known as beginning with Rosh Hashanah and ending with the holiday of Yo mum Kip & purr next to me.

So the Harebraineddim ones need to accept that there is no good reason not to sit next to women & consider it a privilege. Also reflect on the fact that evolution by natural selection means there was no first Adam & Eve and so no anniversary to celebrate.. However there are other things to celebrate such as the arrival of the winter rains & start of the new growing season. Also celebrate the theory of evolution as it offers the best structure for explaining why life on earth is the way it is and why people so often behave not much better than dumb apes.

In prayers composed by the classical rabbinic sages for Rosh Hashanah found in all machzorim the strongest theme of the prayers is the "coronation" of God as King of the universe in preparation for the acceptance of judgments that will follow on that day, symbolized as "written" into a Divine book of judgments, that then hang in the balance for ten days waiting for all to repent, and be "seated" prior to Yom Kippur. The assumption is that everyone is seated for the flight and therefore the next festival is Sukkot (Tabernacles) that is referred to as "the time of our joy" (z'man simchateinu). Note if God was seated for the Coronation then do thou likewise

Rosh Hashanah is also the day of "Yom Hadin", known as Judgment day. On Yom Hadin, 3 books are opened, the book of life, for those who took their prescribed seat promptly among the passengers, the book of death, for the most evil who stood in the isle will receive the seat of death back in the departure lounge waiting for the next flight ( which might never arrive ) , and the third book for the ones living in doubts with non-evil sins, who were quickly persuaded by the flight chauffeurs to take their appointed seat. The final judgment is not done from Yom Hadin before the start of Yom Kippur, it is sometimes possible to receive the seat of life by asking for forgiveness. 
[ Rafi Norm on Ynetnews.com pointed out
Fact check: LY4 had 24 min delay at departure and 14 min at arrival compared to the average... ]