Virgin birth of Jesus

[Lion IRC]

DrZoidberg asked me a question.
Same as PyramidHead.

In humans?

In higher life forms?

I don't think its polite to bait and switch.

 

[Lion IRC]

The shallow mind can't see the distinction between saying what you think and caring whether or not DrZoidberg agrees with what you think.

 

[bilby]

The shallow mind can't see the distinction between saying what you think and caring whether or not DrZoidberg agrees with what you think.

If you don't care whether he agrees with you or not, why bother saying anything at all?

That would be almost as pointless as carrying on a discussion with someone while pretending to yourself that you are not talking to them because they hurt your feelings by down-voting some of your posts. Is it even possible to successfully lie to yourself? I didn't think so, but having seen your posting history here, I am beginning to wonder.

Perhaps it's some kind of psychiatric disorder?

 

[Lion IRC]

Mind your own business bilby

 

[DrZoidberg]

The shallow mind can't see the distinction between saying what you think and caring whether or not DrZoidberg agrees with what you think.

I care about what is true. I like discussing how likely or reasonable statements are.

I believe religions are more sophisticated than most religious people give them credit for. I think the people who wrote down the Christian myths had no problem keeping reality apart from allegory or metaphor.

The Biblical stories of Mary and Jesus are riddled with clues that these are fictional characters. That would be true even if Mary and Jesus were real people who actually existed.

Sons of ancient carpenters did not start religions. Especially not religions based on the fusion of Greek and Jewish philosophy. Whoever Jesus really was he was a well educated member of the Jewish elite.

We also have common practice in the ancient pagan world. In paganism they had the concept of a hero. Whenever somebody became famous it was standard practice to re-write their back story and insert all manner of auspicious events. It wasn't lying. The ancient world was largely illiterate. There were no hall of records to look things up in. It was just backward reasoning. If somebody was famous he "must have" done such and such.

There's also the pagan concept of demi-gods. Don't forget that the virgin birth wasn't present in the early versions of the Bible. It was inserted sometime around 200 AD (if I remember correctly). By ex-pagans. To them it was common sense that any hero was the offspring of a god and a human. To them Jesus must have been the son of a god.

Because of the conflict between Jewish and Egyptian Bibles (no virgin birth) and European and Anatolien Bibles (virgin birth) there was a debate about it where they agreed on a compromise. God didn't actually seduce Mary and put his penis in her (pagan standard demi-god narrative). Instead they invented the "Holy ghost" that did it. The nature of this ghost and the sexual act was left intentionally vague. A compromise.

Like I said, I care about what is true. I like learning things and discussing things. There's just too much we actually know about the details surrounding the virgin birth that it seems pretty unlikely

 

[Sarpedon]

There's also the well-worn trope of making up origin stories for real historical people that suit the needs of the mythology. Take Jesus for example: He was born poor, to satisfy one group of the target audience. But he was of royal lineage, Joseph being of the house of David. Add to that the divine parentage and viola, you have a perfect origin story. Hercules and Dionysus have similar backstories. But of course lots of historical people also get this sort of treatment. Lenin, for example was born of a well off gentry, but the communist party invented a humble origin story for him, that glossed over that. Washington has a whole slew of stories about him. Name any person who went from ordinary origins to become a great leader, and chances are that someone tweaked his biography.

 

[DrZoidberg]

There's also the well-worn trope of making up origin stories for real historical people that suit the needs of the mythology. Take Jesus for example: He was born poor, to satisfy one group of the target audience. But he was of royal lineage, Joseph being of the house of David. Add to that the divine parentage and viola, you have a perfect origin story. Hercules and Dionysus have similar backstories. But of course lots of historical people also get this sort of treatment. Lenin, for example was born of a well off gentry, but the communist party invented a humble origin story for him, that glossed over that. Washington has a whole slew of stories about him. Name any person who went from ordinary origins to become a great leader, and chances are that someone tweaked his biography.

Yes, rags to riches stories fits in with one of the most common narrative trajectories of the ancient world. The ancients did not like reality to intrude on their stories. When bards would recite the stories of heroes they had a ready set of stories and just replace the names. They'd do this in their heads while rhyming in real time. Quite the skill. The Jesus story in the Bible fits right in with this tradition. Just the fact that he's both a lowly carpenter while also being a known decendent of David is absurd. A clue we're dealing with a fictional narrative constructed to entertain and engage rather than to document the real life of Jesus.

Him being of humble origin fits in with his days zero sum view of economy. They thought that the only way to become rich was to take someone else's money. There was always something suspicious of rich people. That's what the "it's harder for a camel to pass through than for a rich man to get into heaven" is all about. To ensure that nobody thought Jesus was a crook he had to be given humble origins. Jesus the carpenter is just too perfect of a narrative vehicle to be believable. It looks writerly.

But him being in the lineage of David is not completely crazy. Ancient rulers kept large harems and typically produced masses of off-spring. It's estimated that something like 75% of all Mongolians living today are direct decendents of Genghis Khan. This was established recently using DNA tests. There might be a similar situation with Jews and David. But of course, there was no way of knowing it without DNA tests. So Jesus or his family wouldn't have known.

 

[Sarpedon]

They'd first have to establish that David was a real person. Its been a century since the British Empire gained control of the Holy Land from the Ottoman Empire. Since then there have been massive excavations and huge numbers of artifacts unearthed. However, none of them successfully establish the existence of David or Solomon.

 

[DrZoidberg]

They'd first have to establish that David was a real person. Its been a century since the British Empire gained control of the Holy Land from the Ottoman Empire. Since then there have been massive excavations and huge numbers of artifacts unearthed. However, none of them successfully establish the existence of David or Solomon.

Cool. I didn't know that. Looked it up. Seems legit. I learned something today.

Also, fits the pattern of ancient rulers. When there's a usurper to the thrown they often invent ancestors from way back in time to make their rule legit. There's many many known examples in history from this. Especially in Babylon and Assyria who had the great foresight to write all this down and let us find the records. So we can compare dates.

A telltale sign is when contemporary names are used in allegedly "old" texts. We have evidence for this in the Bible. They've typically added about 500 years to any historic age to add to the legitimacy. That was very important in the Roman world. The Romans held anything old in high regard and worthy of respect. But when they add 500 years to a text that text should have the names used when it was supposedly written. But this isn't true for the Old Testament names. Archeology can back this up.

If there was a legitimate claim to the throne the ruler would instead try their utmost to keep the dates accurate. But they didn't in the Bible which should make us question even the existence at all of the older Biblical characters. There's good reason be believe that David was wholly fictional.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

We've only recently learned that the hanging gardens of Babylon are really the hanging gardens of Nineveh. We know also that the story of Noah and the flood is just as plagiarized. There's a lot of this transference in these ancient texts, which is how they created their stories.

Unless we're religious and have a double standard when it comes to literary honesty, we today see this as not legit. But to the ancients it was their way of creating histories. It's important to not commit anachronisms when reading these ancient stories and fables.

 

[DrZoidberg]

We've only recently learned that the hanging gardens of Babylon are really the hanging gardens of Nineveh. We know also that the story of Noah and the flood is just as plagiarized. There's a lot of this transference in these ancient texts, which is how they created their stories.

Unless we're religious and have a double standard when it comes to literary honesty, we today see this as not legit. But to the ancients it was their way of creating histories. It's important to not commit anachronisms when reading these ancient stories and fables.

Yup. The post-printing press world got a relationship to the truth that we didn't have before. That's when, for the first time, we got authorities wholly external from any human. We could look it up. Before this what was true was quite tenuous.

We know from studying contemporary illiterate societies that these societies have a much more relative relationship to the truth. Everything becomes questionable and there's no dependable authority that can settle disputes. Truth is just whatever we agree is the truth for the sake of maintaining friendships. Whether or not a religious myth was literally true was nothing they lost any sleep over. In fact we know that pagan Greeks had no problems holding two or more contradictory beliefs in the head at the same time. It's not that they were stupid or didn't realise they were contradictory. It was more that they had no issues with it. They just accepted the mystery. Greek pagan religious thought encouraged this self-contradiction. After all, the gods were inherently mysterious. Religious myths were both real and allegorical at the same time. To a Greek pagan this was not a problem. And this is the intellectual environment that birthed Christianity.

I don't think early Christians thought the Jesus stories were literally true. That's not how that society worked. They probably thought the stories were sort of true. They probably thought the stories had some elements of truth to them. That was the best they could get in their world.

 

[blastula]

What's amazing to me is that atheists here DONT understand the doctrine of Incarnation.
And that you insist on all Christians holding to a very recent and quite contentious notion that Mary and Jesus were both immaculately conceived.

No, you are using the term wrong. Immaculate conception doesn't mean virgin birth. It means born without original sin.

Don't go spamming the thread over and over again with a Wiki page (of all things!) that does nothing more than describe an ambiguous doctrine which many Christians think is unbiblical and heretical.

Nobody is saying you have to agree with the doctrine, I DON'T, just that you are misusing the term to mean something it doesn't.

Jesus was miraculously conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, sinless and became incarnate completely absent of male/female sexual intercourse. That is not true of Mary and her two biological parents who were both born into original sin.

So in order for Mary to be free from original sin, she would need to have become incarnate herself in the same way as Jesus. And there is no support for this idea in scripture. Hence, people are free to make doctrinal claims for or against the idea.

This is just your own alternate unprovable theology, no more convincing than Catholic theology. And if you are going to disagree with Catholics, it doesn't help your case that you've shown you don't know what you're talking about.

 

[Sarpedon]

We understand the concept of incarnation better than you, as you have only your own self-invented and self-serving notion of it, while we look at all the religions of the world and can study the phenomenon of believing that the divine can take human form from an outside, unbiased position.

Your interpretation is typically protestant, believing that Christ's incarnation was an independent event, while Catholics would have the immaculate conception of Mary as a necessary preparation for the incarnation of Christ. From the point of view of Catholics and Protestants, a heresy worth killing over. From ours, a curiosity to be catalogued and studied. Other religions have divine incarnation WITH sex. In fact, that is the most common form of incarnation. Other stories have it via eating or drinking, through plants or animals, or a variety of different means.

 

[Lion IRC]

Atheist absolutely insisting that there's only one true definition of "immaculate" incarnation/conception which everyone must agree on and use exclusively is bizarre.

 

[Lion IRC]

Go on blastula, tell everyone how recently the RCC decided that Mary was supposedly immaculately conceived.
Tell em which pope decided to make it dogma.

...and then tell them why

 

[blastula]

Relevance?

 

[LordKiran]

Go on blastula, tell everyone how recently the RCC decided that Mary was supposedly immaculately conceived.
Tell em which pope decided to make it dogma.

...and then tell them why

If you're allowed to change the meaning of your books after the fact, then why even bother with it? You might as well just burn them up and make your own from scratch.

If the bible is open to interpretation then how does it function as a strict codex of ethics and morality? Typically, instructions are supposed to be clear, concise, and universally understandable.

 

[credoconsolans]

Go on blastula, tell everyone how recently the RCC decided that Mary was supposedly immaculately conceived.
Tell em which pope decided to make it dogma.

...and then tell them why

If you're allowed to change the meaning of your books after the fact, then why even bother with it? You might as well just burn them up and make your own from scratch.

If the bible is open to interpretation then how does it function as a strict codex of ethics and morality? Typically, instructions are supposed to be clear, concise, and universally understandable.

It doesn't. People only pretend that it does.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Go on blastula, tell everyone how recently the RCC decided that Mary was supposedly immaculately conceived.
Tell em which pope decided to make it dogma.

...and then tell them why

If you're allowed to change the meaning of your books after the fact, then why even bother with it? You might as well just burn them up and make your own from scratch.

If the bible is open to interpretation then how does it function as a strict codex of ethics and morality? Typically, instructions are supposed to be clear, concise, and universally understandable.

You're describing a Christianity that's the product of the reformation. Don't forget that Christianity is the first beta version of a religion where your belief matters. Nobody is going to get it right on the first attempt.

I think Alan Moore got it right. Sacred texts were magical. The fact that somebody could write something and then somebody else could understand it and read it with the meaning in intact was actual and genuine magic to the ancients. Listening to a priest reading from the Bible was a bit like people today watching Penn and Teller perform. The mere fact that any of it was intelligible was amazing enough for them.

When the Christian cannon was compiled (by the Bishop of Alexandria) he just picked the most popular Biblical texts (used in Egypt). That tells us what his priorities were. His only concern was that his churches shouldn't have to throw away Biblical texts. He wanted to maximise the investments in Bibles already made. That's why several of the evengeliums are basically the same story. Pure practical issues. It had nothing to do with creating a Christian manual. At the point of compiling the Christian Bible Christianity was still evolving. Nobody knew what Christianity would become. It was a work in progress. Don't forget that Christian Biblical texts were continuously being written. I don't think they can be more than inspiration. At best metaphors.

The attempt to streamline what Christians believed was a never ending Catholic project. The reformation when Luther wanted to go back to Ad Fontes was idiotic. The idea was that if you only studied the Bible closely enough all would be revealed. Ehe... no. That's not how it was written or compiled.

 

[bilby]

Atheist absolutely insisting that there's only one true definition of "immaculate" incarnation/conception which everyone must agree on and use exclusively is bizarre.

Whereas a theist who doesn't know the meaning of a theological concept, but truly believes that he does, is so commonplace as to be almost banal.

You have been singing the lyrics of your favourite song wrong all your life. But that doesn't make your version correct, no matter how embarrassing it might be to admit your error.

When I first heard, many years ago, of this idea of immaculate conception, I myself was very surprised to learn that the immaculate conception refers to Mary being conceived without sin, and not to Mary's conceiving of Jesus; the incorrect interpretation does seem more sensible from the perspective of an outsider. But as the details of fictional stories are up to the authors, (no matter how much we might think they should have been written differently) I understood my error, changed my beliefs to match reality, and got over it. You probably should too - doubling down on your mistake only makes you look ever more foolish.

By the way, the phrase is 'immaculate conception'; you just made up 'immaculate incarnation' to try to look less like you don't have a clue - but it's having the opposite effect here in the rest of the world, outside your head.