Each Christmas, I enjoy hearing the story of Jesus’ birth, but it has been many, many years since I believed in his virgin birth. Neither can I believe that Jesus walked on water, turned water into wine or came back to life after he died. I outgrew these beliefs in the same way I outgrew my belief in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. As the Apostle Paul put it, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
I no longer believe in supernatural explanations because I now know the natural causations of things like birth. In biology classes, I learned that people are not born of virgins ”” they are born from the union of eggs and sperms. In history classes, I learned that virgin birth myths were common in the ancient world. Great men (they were always men) were born from the union of a mortal woman and a male god. For example, Alexander the Great was alleged to be the son of Zeus and a virgin, while the Greek philosopher Plato, the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and the Roman emperor Augustus were supposed sons of Apollo.
Even the Bible does not believe wholeheartedly in the myth of a virgin birth. Jesus himself never said he was born of a virgin and never instructed his disciples to pass along such a teaching.
God as absentee landlord…
One is at a loss to say what Jesus he believs in. Why not believe in Hillel? After all he said many of the things that Jesus said.
The comments in the original article are fascinating. Such opposition!
I learned that Matthew and Luke were written between 100 and 120 A. D. I never knew that before.
He gets so much wrong, starting with the fact that Greek demi-gods (children of gods) weren’t conceived by virgin birth. The god took human form and nature took its course. It’s dishonest to say that “the bible doesn’t even believe wholeheartedly”. Grammatically speaking, the bible doesn’t believe anything, but rather, presents the beliefs of the people of God, guided by the Holy Spirit. That a particularly doctrine appears less often than this preacher thinks it should is an interesting notion, but I wonder if the same criteria should be applied to his own pet doctrines. As Christians, we don’t need to play numbers games with the bible.
What this guy is pushing is a kind of ethical materialism. The material world is all there is, and Jesus was a great guy.