Quote:
Originally Posted by stone hands
i agree with the premise of this post(let people believe what they want without judging them), but at the same time...its not really a strawman? knowing how biology and procreation works, the idea is that god literally impregnated a woman is frankly ridiculous and worthy of ridicule, regardless of how many people have been indoctrinated into believing it, no?
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I agree. Ridicule the ideas that religion specifically promotes, but then you also must counter re-expressions of many of these ideas that have developed over time to find compatibility in the modern world. The straw man to which I was referring was that concocted by DuffMan, which DOES NOT actually reflect Christian doctrine—at least not in the sense that Christians believe it and teach it.
There are more sophisticated ways by which Christians have bypassed and argued around more primitive expressions of the faith, such as the virgin birth. In other words, there are Christians (I was one such for a long time) who do not believe that God magically impregnated the virgin Mary, but rather hold to this is part of a larger expression of Christ's being and his work of salvation—it's part of the myth. Making juvenile jabs about " God impregnat[ing] a virgin, from space, with himself" does not help to move the conversation about God, religion, or modern theological scaffolding in Christianity forward.