Freethought & Rationalism Archive

lpetrich · 12-07-2002, 03:24 PM

To my mind, it is pure hairsplitting to argue that pagan divine impregnations are not true Virgin Births. It's like saying

The Christian God did not have sexual relations with that woman, Mary

lpetrich · 12-07-2002, 03:39 PM

Quote:

David Conklin:
Deists were for all practical purposes atheists. They merely claimed to believe that there was a deity for fear of what the masses would do if they believed there were no god.

I wonder how David Conklin has figured that out; they were deists because they thought that there was good reason to suppose the existence of a Deist God.

Quote:

David Conklin:
Hmmm, one wonders what they would have said if they could see the crime stats of today.

Are our crime rates really worse than those of previous centuries? I've yet to see any real evidence that that is the case.

Also, the most that that argument would prove was that the religion business is useful as the Opium of the People, that it is a socially-useful Royal Lie, that fear of some fictional Cosmic Bogeyman is useful for making people behave virtuously.

This opinion had been common in Greco-Roman antiquity and in the Renaissance (Plato, Strabo, Polybius, Cicero, Machiavelli, etc.), but it is seldom stated honestly nowadays.

lpetrich · 12-07-2002, 03:41 PM

David Conklin's whines about "cultural imperialism" seem like an attempt to seem left-wing just to win arguments.

NOGO · 12-07-2002, 04:07 PM

Originally posted by NOGO:
The better question is whether the author of GJohn was aware "that Jesus' conception was not in a normal course", as you put it?

David:
Is there any evidence he was not?

NOGO:
Yes, have you read the first post in this thread?

NOGO · 12-07-2002, 04:13 PM

Quote:

David
Common sense and logic in Paine's day would say, and did, that man could never fly nor go faster than a fast horse. Common sense and logic depend on the factual base from which you are operating. As we learn more we find that much of what they thought they knew to be true to be utter nonsense.

Could man fly in those days?

Logic does not depend on facts.
What was logically true in Paine's will always be logically true.

NOGO · 12-07-2002, 04:38 PM

Quote:

David
What we are talking about here is "parthenogenesis"...

No it isn't.
The NT does not say that Mary's ovum just developed unfertilized into a child.

I took time in my post to indicate that Matthew says that a child was conceived within Mary by the Holy Spirit.

Mt 1:20 "Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. "

This is not "parthenogenesis".
If it were then nobody can claim that Jesus is the Son of God based on such conception. The child would be the son of Mary with no father.

My bit about Hercules was to show that when the father was a God some characteristic of the child were transmitted to him from his special father.

But in the case of Jesus the Bible does not claim any special characteristics based on his birth from the Holy Spirit's conception of Mary.

I seems to me that you did not read my post, at least not past the hercules part.

David Conklin · 12-07-2002, 06:07 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by lpetrich:
To my mind, it is pure hairsplitting to argue that pagan divine impregnations are not true Virgin Births. It's like saying

The Christian God did not have sexual relations with that woman, Mary

Then you'll have to castigate the scientists who can fertilize a female egg without engaging in sexual relations.

David Conklin · 12-07-2002, 06:10 PM

Quote:

David Conklin:
Deists were for all practical purposes atheists. They merely claimed to believe that there was a deity for fear of what the masses would do if they believed there were no god.
--------------------------------------------------
I wonder how David Conklin has figured that out; they were deists because they thought that there was good reason to suppose the existence of a Deist God.

I read it a long, long time ago.

David Conklin · 12-07-2002, 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by lpetrich:
David Conklin's whines about "cultural imperialism" seem like an attempt to seem left-wing just to win arguments.

1) I don't whine.

2) I go by the facts. Always pay attention to all of the contexts that are operative.

lpetrich · 12-07-2002, 06:17 PM

Quote:

LP:
The Christian God did not have sexual relations with that woman, Mary

Quote:

Originally posted by David Conklin:

Then you'll have to castigate the scientists who can fertilize a female egg without engaging in sexual relations.

You did not get the sarcasm in my comment -- it was inspired by Bill Clinton's famous denial that he had had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.

The point of it is that even if JC's virgin-birth conception was done without sex, it was still a divine impregnation -- much like all those pagan ones.

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12-07-2002, 03:24 PM	#31
lpetrich Contributor Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Lebanon, OR, USA Posts: 16,829	To my mind, it is pure hairsplitting to argue that pagan divine impregnations are not true Virgin Births. It's like saying The Christian God did not have sexual relations with that woman, Mary

12-07-2002, 03:41 PM	#33
lpetrich Contributor Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Lebanon, OR, USA Posts: 16,829	David Conklin's whines about "cultural imperialism" seem like an attempt to seem left-wing just to win arguments.

12-07-2002, 04:07 PM	#34
NOGO Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Canada Posts: 1,562	Originally posted by NOGO: The better question is whether the author of GJohn was aware "that Jesus' conception was not in a normal course", as you put it? David: Is there any evidence he was not? NOGO: Yes, have you read the first post in this thread?

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