My vote is that I have a hard time believing that. Therefore I also have a hard time believing everything else dependent upon that and preceding that.

+ another one.

If anything, Jesus is a collection of tales, fables, and parables, some fictional, and some probably related to a wide variety of historical persons across a broad swathe of the ancient timeline. From Samson, Elijah, Elisha, Daniel, and Joshua, to Pythagoras, to Homer's characters, to "the Egyptian", to Apollonias of Tyana, Jesus Ananias, and Judah the Galilean, Horus/Osiris, and Attis just to start a partial list. None of the people who inspired "Jesus tales" bear any resemblance to "Jesus of Nazareth". Virgin mothers likely derive from some of these stories culled to flesh out the proposed earthly sojourn of the mythical Jesus figure.

+100
Not a virgin. Just look up the virgin birth god meme. It's a copy. Was Jesus born at all? There were lots of men with someothing like that name. Was there one that was anything like the one of the Bible. Doubt it. Not at that exact time period.

There is significant historical evidence Jesus Christ existed.Whether he was the son of God, is debated amongst historians and theologians of various religions…as for the virgin birth, yes it is possible on two accounts…
Firstly since God is considered omnipotent Mary could have been impregnated…( in vitro -fertilisation)…and secondly…as an ex midwife I can tell you some young girls got pregnant with hymen intact…heavy petting…at the wrong time of the month was all it took.

Yet nobody can provide much more than a few accounts written after his death.


What is all this significant evidence that Christ existed? I will bet there is similar evidence that Zeus existed.

How about starting a thread with your best evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth. Without using the "appeal to authority" or "appeal to popularity" fallacies for support. So REAL evidence.

Likewise.

Of course he may have been born to a Virginian. The state didn't exactly exist at that time, but, yes, it's possible.

Ohhh Virgin... my bad!

Hey, if Horus did it, Jesus had a fair shot!

Assume you have a teen aged daughter.

Now assume she is pregnant.

Would you believe her if she said she was a virgin? Would you believe her if she said God made her pregnant without having sex withe her?

Skeptics are allowed to scoff at mysteries and miracles, but the nature of such phenomenon is that it cannot be completely or adequately explained by empirical means. Thus, the skeptics say it cannot possibly be true. Oh, well.

I imagine that in some way God (the Third Person, the Holy Spirit) combined unique, supernatural DNA with Mary's DNA, resulting in the genesis of Jesus--fully human and, simultaneously, fully God. We each have a spiritual component to our existence--the soul--which exists apart from our bodies. Jesus was unique in that His spiritual component was co-existent with his physical existence.

Does that explain things satisfactorily so the atheists among us might be so persuaded? Highly unlikely. I offer this in the hope that people will understand that in accepting this doctrine we Christians are not mindlessly subscribing to irrational, inexplicable concepts.

Yeah, it can't be explained to your satisfaction, so god did it. Yeah right.

Now using what I wrote above:

Assume you have a teen aged daughter.

Now assume she is pregnant.

Would you believe her if she said she was a virgin? Would you believe her if she said God made her pregnant without having sex withe her?

What would be the simplest and quite believable way to address this:

She lied about being a virgin.
God actually did it.

Yes, there are things that science can not explain, but this is not one of them.

Then the other born-of-a-virgin characters from other religions (most predating Jesus) were also real, right?

speaking for Myself, in a general way:

(not to Brag)

the (claimed) miracles of Christianity have migrated from 'Necessary, part of the Package' to Questionable to Distractions.

why would anyone "Need" miracles to believe in the Values of Kindness, Honesty, etc?

+

The real question is, why would religion need to teach the miracles if they actually were all about kindness and honesty?

Yup. Good point. Methinks the miraclles were made-up stories to get people's attention, added some awe & entertainment value while teaching values.

Of course not.

1% of all US births are claimed to be virgin births

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/17/us-usa-health-virgins-idUSBRE9BG1F020131217

Of course, it's all just a matter of lying to one's parents and peers so as not to appear promiscuous.



It worked for one Jewish girl 2000 years ago, and now look what resulted.

Do you believe that Horus was born to a virgin ?

If Jesus or Yeshua or whatever you want to call him existed, the only way he could be born of a virgin is if someone inserted semen without penetrating her. I don't buy the god/holy spirit explanation.

"I know this is wrong, but do you ever wonder if she just made the whole thing up? I mean, it's a pretty good one. It's not like anyone can ever use virgin birth as an excuse again. I don't really think she made it up, but I can understand why a girl would."
-Mary from "Saved!"

If any of this ever happened, if Mary and Joseph even existed in the first place, would be fun to go back and do a paternity test & DNA sampling to find out who the heck Jesus came from.

But I still think it's all fairy tales.

Yes, and I also believe spiderman was bitten by a radioactive spider.

Of course not. The virgin birth is a popular myth of the birth of gods in many cultures. I think it was invented to sell Christianity to contemporary cultures because it would fit right in with their current theologies.

Actually I'd bet there was nothing odd at all in his birth. Mary and Joseph got married and had a son, lots of daughters and sons, period. No angels, no wise men, no star, no prophesies, no decree from Caesar Augustus. I think everything was invented later to give Jesus a backstory to improve credence in his authority and familiarity with concurrent myths.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2014 04:45AM by alyssum.

"Virgin" is a mistranslation of a word that actually meant "young woman" from Isaiah 7:14, which never had anything to do with Jesus or a messianic prophecy, but instead had everything to do with King Ahaz's folly in giving allegiance to Assyria.

The author of Matthew in particular liked to take scriptures from the Torah out of context in order to trump of Jesus as the promised Messiah, but he did a very sloppy job.

There was no virgin birth. There was no PROPHECY of a virgin birth. There is no reason, in my mind, to believe in Mary's magical womb.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2014 09:18AM by En Sabah Nur.

This is exactly the issue. The accepted view is that author of Matthew was working with the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew bible.

From wiki:

"In this passage from the Book of Isaiah the prophet predicts to King Ahaz that a young woman will give birth to a son who will be called "Immanuel", meaning "God with us", and that Ahaz's enemies will be destroyed before this child learns the difference between good and evil, i.e., before he reaches maturity. The Hebrew word is "עלמה" (almah), which scholars agree means a young woman of child-bearing age, without any connotation of virginity, and the context of the passage makes it clear that Isaiah has in mind events in his and Ahaz's near future. The Greek-speaking author of Matthew, however, used the Greek translation of Isaiah, in which the word is given as "παρθένος", parthenos, meaning a virgin."



En Sabah Nur Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Virgin" is a mistranslation of a word that
> actually meant "young woman" from Isaiah 7:14,
> which never had anything to do with Jesus or a
> messianic prophecy, but instead had everything to
> do with King Ahaz's folly in giving allegiance to
> Assyria.
>
> The author of Matthew in particular liked to take
> scriptures from the Torah out of context in order
> to trump of Jesus as the promised Messiah, but he
> did a very sloppy job.
>
> There was no virgin birth. There was no PROPHECY
> of a virgin birth. There is no reason, in my mind,
> to believe in Mary magical womb.

No, no, and no. My take is the same as alyssum, that the virgin birth was just part of the package of myths from past cultures that became a basis for them to hook their tale of Christianity to.

All people everywhere have looked up into the far away heavens and speculated what lay beyond where their eyes could not see. They have also asked themselves what life meant, and what death meant. Would death be the end or dare they hope for something long term.
And thus religions were created.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2014 12:54AM by presleynfactsrock.

Could God - being all-powerful, by definition - be able to cause a virgin birth to happen? Yes, absolutely, if He desired to do so. That is in His power to do.

Whether or not He is accepted to have done so would differ by faith and by who is said to have been of virgin birth.

A Judean tramp marries a ne'er do well carpenter, and the couple doesn't consummate the marriage. Nevertheless, she's preggers. It was a go, a ghost, a god, she said. The carpenter knows he won't get child support from God. He's going to have to knock out a lot of crosses for the Romans to pay his bills.

They need to prove there was a Jesus first and THEN prove he was born of a virgin...and all the other bollocks that goes with his myth.

No..

Jesus can't be born by a virgin because I was taught God literally f*cked Mary. This is doctrine of T$CC. No matter if they proclaim that Mary was given birth as a virgin officially they are teaching different. Just check Dickhead Youngs statements on this.

However I don't believe that Jesus as he existed was conceived and born by virgin. My theory is that Mary and Jo were horny screwed around and used that story to cover up their "sins" and being distorted by them self they continued to tell this story even to their son which leads him to kind of psychiatric pathogenic illness. (just in a nutshell)
I actually met a bunch if people during my profession who believe that they are the Son of God, Satan, Hitler or even Jesus God Satan Hitler in Persona. Today we know much more about the mechanisms of the Soul (for sure not all) and we have ways to help those people - if Jesus will live today he will be at a psychiatric ward and get his daily dose of Psychopharmaca until he gets back to reality.

I too have been taught that God had sex with Mary. Let's consider LDS doctrine from a sexual standpoint.

Virgins were espoused to be married and were usually married by 13 or 14 back then. Mary is a daughter of God or a sister if it was Jehovah.

Therefore we have a paedophile situation with a God having sex with his 13 year old daughter and getting her pregnant, or a Brother getting his 13 year old sister pregnant. Either way, if all of society new past Prophets had taught this it would be soooo icky that it would pretty much classify the church as Pro Incest and Paedophilia.

Next, we are all children of God, we come to this earth meet each other, get married and have sex. So in effect the entire plan is incestual.

We will then create a world of kids that will all do the same.

So, everything in the LDS Gospel is based on incest, paedophilia, and sex for eternity. The rest, where we live, the atonement is merely a means to the end which is eternal sex with a massive number of women who are your sisters and then sex with one of your daughters to create a saviour.

Now that would make one hell of a missionary pamphlet!!!

Was he a clone?

If by Jesus you mean "black tip shark."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/10/081010-shark-virgin-birth-2.html

The term is parthenogenesis, where the ova may spontaneously grows without first being fertilized. It doesn't happen in mammals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis

This came up in a discussion with my TBM mother and brother around Christmas time last year. We were all cool with the idea that Mary wasn't a virgin, but I was the only one of the three of us to object to Mary being bedded by her Heavenly Father or played like a harmonica when her Sky Stepdaddy blew the Spirit of Christ all up inside her lady business.

Richard Packham shed some interesting light on the whole "Spirit" thing not long ago:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1141889,1142278#msg-1142278

With "Spirit" meaning "breath" it's both easy and hilarious to extrapolate how God contributed to Christ's conception, which is in a very similar way that one fills up inflatable pool toys.

The physical "miracle" of Mary made pregnant without normal sex is the EASY part to believe.

The dealbreaker for me is the sheer immorality and misogyny of it. How, exactly, is a virgin "better"?
The immaculate conception and virgin birth are not just implausible, they're INSULTING! Women the world over suffer misogynistic ignorance, prejudice, and dogma. A preoccupation with virginity is a sheerly male-domination vestige, not nearly vestigial enough. It's alive and well in ignorant and foolish stupidity like believing in virginity as a "virtue".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2014 09:12AM by amos2.

I love Ricky Gervais' take on the issue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttEnna3ttI

Maybe Mary was a girl who was just really good at keeping to her story! }:-)>

The Ebionites, and early Christian sect, believed Jesus to be the son of Joseph and Mary, adopted by God as the Messiah at his baptism.

Mark, the earliest of the gospels, makes no mention of a virgin birth.

Paul, whose writings are even earlier, never mentioned a virgin birth.

This makes later accounts of Mary's virginity at Jesus' birth a bit dubious