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Thread: Mary was not a virgin...!

  1. #61
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    Smile Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    OK, christmas was two days ago - gloves off.
    Quote Originally Posted by timbp View Post
    [Blasphemy warning]
    There is so much argument about whether Mary was virgin. Does it matter? If it's still worth listening to after 2000 years, then whatever Jesus said is true or false regardless of whether his mother was virgin at his conception.
    That's nonsense. Something that is worth listening to is not necessarily true. Fiction is the art of describing truth by telling untruths.
    If what Jesus says depends on his mother being a virgin when he was conceived then it is irrelevant to most humans -- it only applies to those girls who get pregnant when they are virgins, or to their children.
    [/Blasphemy warning]
    The issue is this. If we are urged to believe the bible to the extent of using it as the basis of a belief system, then we are entitled to ask for an explanation of the obvious nonsenses. If the original texts, the ones that precede the Vulgate, for example, use a word that means 'young woman' more than it means 'woman who has never had sex' to describe Mary, then it's not unreasonable to ask for an explanation as to why we are to accept that the translation that makes her, improbably, a virgin mother is to be preferred to the one that does not...

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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    Quote Originally Posted by Baruch View Post
    And if he is not the son of God then a large amount of his teaching was actually meaningless.
    Nonsense.

    That's the problem. Wise words said by any man are not invalidated by the acceptance that nothing other than wisdom was responsible for them...and yet believers assume that the divine authority is what gives value.

  3. #63
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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    Quote Originally Posted by Astro View Post
    This is what Jesus was trying to put over.

    The fact that God was his father and everyone else's father too.
    I fail to see how anyone can be the child of god in the same way that Jesus (allegedly) was. Even if you accept Christianity at face value, that is simply one of those assertions that falls apart under the most cursory examination...

  4. #64
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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    To the unnamed repper - yes, the iceberg analagy was all mine own work!

    To Baruch and to DT: there is a longstanding argument that the concept of Mary being a virgin is due to a mistranslation. This is a fallacy: it is not the word 'Virgin' (or its various antecedents in other languages) that created the article of faith, it is the events in the gospels which do so.

    The only significance of the 'mistranslation' comes from the Septuagint, the greek transalation of the Old Testament, in which prophecies about the Messiah appear. There it says that the Messiah will be born of a "~~~~~", and of which word the translation may have suggested to the writers of the gospels that it was necessary for Jesus to be born of a Virgin...

  5. #65
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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    Quote Originally Posted by Double Trouble View Post
    Your attitude alienates people from their faith because they want to be faithful to God but don't want to believe in fairy stories.
    But isn't God then the Ultimate Fairy Story? I mean ...
    Hey Dude ... let me tell you a story about this awesome Dude ... TOTALLY powerful, created the universe ... sent loads of people off to get killed, and kill each other ... likes to appear in bushes, odd bit of flame, through images that only a few people can see so they are tend to be seen as loonies .... but he SO FULL OF LOVE, even though he like lets some of the not so nice people go on hurting lota of other people ... and he never really proves himself ... yet he created the Universe .... hold on man, its starting mess with my head

    ..... do you get what I'm saying? If you accept that God is all powerful then the impossible becomes possible ... so if something is written down in one of the very few bits of text to have survived 2000 years .. don't you think it deserves some greater credence than just fairy stories? To put it in perspective ... after a few hundred years of psychology we still haven't really understood how Homo Sapien works .... so why think we can understand how an all powerful deity works?

  6. #66
    Registered User Baruch's Avatar
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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    Quote Originally Posted by Double Trouble View Post
    I don't know whether to give you a virtual slap or feel sorry for you.

    Your attitude alienates people from their faith because they want to be faithful to God but don't want to believe in fairy stories.

    Blimey...even the Archbishop of Canterbury has questioned his belief...you need to wake up and smell the coffee.
    You're making a lot of assumptions there.

    If you don't like what I said, don't shoot the messenger. It's mainstream Christian teaching. I believe it, which is my right. You evidently don't, which is your right. That doesn't mean I have any less right to state and defend my beliefs than you do, or that my attitude is worse because I want to do so. If you want to challenge traditional Christian beliefs, there's no point in getting upset when those who believe them want to defend them.

    As for questioning my beliefs, you don't know what I have questioned and what I haven't. The fact that I believe something doesn't automatically mean that I do so unthinkingly or unquestioningly. Nor does questioning my beliefs automatically lead to rejecting them, as you seem to assume.

    If you want to disagree with my beliefs and discuss the things over which we disagree, that's fine. Debate is good. I will ask that you attack (if that's the right word) my beliefs rather than me personally, though. Leave the virtual slaps out of it, please.

  7. #67
    Registered User Baruch's Avatar
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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    Nonsense.

    That's the problem. Wise words said by any man are not invalidated by the acceptance that nothing other than wisdom was responsible for them...and yet believers assume that the divine authority is what gives value.
    It all depends what the nature of those wise words is. Most of Jesus' wise words were about the God who you don't believe in, for which his authority was that the God he was referring to was his father.

  8. #68
    Registered User Baruch's Avatar
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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    To Baruch and to DT: there is a longstanding argument that the concept of Mary being a virgin is due to a mistranslation. This is a fallacy: it is not the word 'Virgin' (or its various antecedents in other languages) that created the article of faith, it is the events in the gospels which do so
    Which is the point I've been trying to make.

  9. #69
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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    Quote Originally Posted by Baruch View Post
    It all depends what the nature of those wise words is. Most of Jesus' wise words were about the God who you don't believe in, for which his authority was that the God he was referring to was his father.
    OK, so what I should have understood from your post was: "if J was not the son of god then what he said about god was meaningless", which is pretty much unarguable.

  10. #70
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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    Quote Originally Posted by timbp View Post
    Unfortunately, the reason you feel able to do this is because you have a strong democratic system that allows discussion,
    Not sure if it's democracy as such, more like the ability to take the p1ss out of anything, that's a quintessentially British tradition.

    And why's it unfortunate?

    Quote Originally Posted by timbp View Post
    and if all else fails, you have a monarch who is head of the church and thus a direct link to God.

    Surely the main reason you have such strong secular intellectual tradition is the safety of knowing whatever you do you are loyal to the Crown, and the Crown is appointed by God to be head of Church and State.
    Errr... no?

    We have a strong secular tradition despite the anachronistic state religion support - C of E is now the third religion in the UK after Islam and Catholicism - not because of it.

  11. #71
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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    Quote Originally Posted by DavidJames View Post
    We have a strong secular tradition despite the anachronistic state religion support - C of E is now the third religion in the UK after Islam and Catholicism - not because of it.
    Of course secularism was brought about by religious people so that other sects of the same religion (and other religions too of course, but in the past that wasn't much of a worry) would not benefit from any state sponsorship more than others. In the UK that was protestants vs catholics; we HAD to go down the secular route. Its more urgent now than ever before that government is entirely secular.

  12. #72
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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    I worked this out ages ago... he had a wet dream and she rolled over in it, No sex involved

  13. #73
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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    Quote Originally Posted by DavidJames View Post
    Not sure if it's democracy as such, more like the ability to take the p1ss out of anything, that's a quintessentially British tradition.
    Don't think thats the full story. In many states its a serious offence to make derogatory statements about the main religion or head of State. The right to express a contrary view in the UK is something that makes being British very special to me. The fact that 'newer' religions like Islam see fit to react with violence, even within Britain, to views they don't like is one of the most worrying trend over the last 5 years or so

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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    Quote Originally Posted by Gus View Post
    The fact that 'newer' religions like Islam
    Scientology and Wicca are new religions, being last century inventions, but I'd hardly call more than 1000 years old, "new" .

    Quote Originally Posted by Gus View Post
    react with violence, even within Britain, to views they don't like is one of the most worrying trend over the last 5 years or so
    To be fair its people that react with violence not Islam - and people like that don't care if they blow up other Muslims either.
    Last edited by Dreadful Scathe; 31st-December-2007 at 02:15 PM.

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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    The story I was brought up on (even tho I am not particularly religious) is that mary and joseph had been trying for a baby before the angel spoke to mary. Therefore she could not have been a virgin.
    Unless the term virgin is being used in a looser tense as in the baby was conceived without sexual intercourse.

    However my theory is as people got married so young, and medical knowledge being poor, on previous attempts either mary or joseph (probably mary as im sure in those days young women were still married off to older men) were incapable of producing a baby, then after some time they had matured (bodily wise) and then it was capable.

    Please don't have a go at me for any part of this, religion is about personal belief afterall.

  16. #76
    Registered User Baruch's Avatar
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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    Quote Originally Posted by Katie Kicks Ass View Post
    The story I was brought up on (even tho I am not particularly religious) is that mary and joseph had been trying for a baby before the angel spoke to mary.
    Where did that story come from? AFAIK there's no textual evidence to support it.

    At the time, Mary and Joseph weren't even married, just betrothed (although that was a much more binding contract in 1st century Israel than it is in contemporary Western culture). Given that fact, and considering the customs of the day, it is extremely unlikely that they would have been trying for a baby before they were actually married.

  17. #77
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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    Thats what they taught us at primary school.

  18. #78
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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    Quote Originally Posted by Katie Kicks Ass View Post
    Thats what they taught us at primary school.
    That really is shocking. I have no problem if someone chooses for himself/herself to reject Christian beliefs, but if they're going to teach them in a school then they should teach them correctly! Speaking as a primary school teacher and R.E. subject leader, I can hardly believe that they taught you something like that!

  19. #79
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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    Quote Originally Posted by Baruch View Post
    That really is shocking. I have no problem if someone chooses for himself/herself to reject Christian beliefs, but if they're going to teach them in a school then they should teach them correctly! Speaking as a primary school teacher and R.E. subject leader, I can hardly believe that they taught you something like that!
    Well ... it was Stoke. Where would you get the Three Wise men and a Virgin etc. etc. etc.

    I wonder what education is given the RI teachers these days. In the 'Good Old Days' it would be nearly exclusively Christian .... what the heck do the poor buggers have to cope with now?

  20. #80
    Registered User Baruch's Avatar
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    Re: Mary was not a virgin...!

    Quote Originally Posted by Gus View Post
    I wonder what education is given the RI teachers these days. In the 'Good Old Days' it would be nearly exclusively Christian .... what the heck do the poor buggers have to cope with now?
    These days we quite rightly teach about all of the "big 6" world religions. It's Religious Education, not Religious Instruction, these days, which is more fitting for a multi-cultural society. Religious instruction is the responsibility of the family and of the church/synagogue/mosque etc.

    Even so, if we're going to teach about a religion such as Christianity, we should make sure of our facts. You don't have to agree with a religion to teach about it accurately.

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