I'm going to present some "blasphemy" regarding religion/women's rights/abortion.

[forgotmylogin]

The lynchpin of the Fundamentalist Birth Cult (AKA "pro-lifers" ) is that they believe god will be mad at them if an abortion interrupted the "Second Coming" of Jesus.

The easy response to this is that any deity worth their salt could probably make sure that didn't happen.

The entire "virgin birth" myth is the underpinning of the Christ mythos.

The Bible is essentially a amalgamated almanac of useful "good living" information and history written and translated by hundreds of people including elevated parables about real people and practices, many of which have become essentially moot in modern times. An example:

And the pig, though it has a split hoof completely divided, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you. You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you.

In today's context, the Bible is the "word of God" even though god didn't write it. It was accumulated history and wisdom meant to benefit everyone.

They said pork was "unclean" in the eyes of god - primarily because there was no technology to process that meat in sanitary fashion so it was not a dangerous health risk. Today most people can safely eat pork if it's not against their personal beliefs.

In this same line of thinking, the terrifying fridge logic is that the "immaculate conception" might have been a young girl or woman who was married or betrothed but the relationship was not yet consummated and she became pregnant allegedly without doing the deed.

Who is to say this girl either didn't completely understand how babies were made and was taken advantage of, or wasn't a virgin as expected and didn't want to admit to that fact?

Remember back then they used to often stone women to death for doing the dirty on the down-low.

A young woman who was either betrothed or married where they hadn't yet consummated the relationship I'm guessing didn't have a lot of options to explain away an unexpected pregnancy.

[sop]

1. Blasphemy is also conferring "personhood" on whatever these religious nutjobs believe is an "unborn baby."

[Voltaire2]

2. It's mythology.

It might have symbolic meaning within our culture, it almost certainly has a lot of that, but it doesn’t point at anything in the real world.

[forgotmylogin]

4. Right.

Last edited Sun Mar 3, 2024, 08:47 PM - Edit history (1)

Without meaning to dive directly into Atheism (I myself identify as "spiritual, not religious" ) so much of what went on in the Bible could have been deifying and mythologizing natural occurrences and making extraordinary stories and life-lessons out of many humdrum things. Things like the great flood might have been localized. Like someone who lived in Pompeii, had they survived and wrote about it, likely beleived they were witnessing the end of the world.

Like Cain slew his brother and was exiled from the (parking lot around the?) Garden of Eden where he went on to marry a wife and have children. Um...where did all these new people come from? Either they've skipped a bunch of plot-relevant material, or the same deity or other deities (?) seeded multiple populations and he went and joined one of them? There's a leap of logic here that basically starts the foundation of racism.

Jesus "fed a starving multitude with two loaves and two fishes"? Over what timespan? The multitude might have been a village over years whom he taught how to fish and how to farm and process grain - still an awesome accomplishment, but how was this potentially embellished in the telling to make an impressive story. You know "give a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man to fish, he eats for the rest of his life..."

Again, I do not mean in any way to trash religion directly and understand it's personally valuable and a great thing for many people. We just really need to get back to the GOVERNMENT being secular and not founded in any one specific religion's mythology.

[Voltaire2]

5. The Greeks had better myths.

The dominance of christianity was a 1000 year cultural setback and we periodically aren’t done with its regressive tendencies.

We need better imaginaries.

[3Hotdogs]

6. I know of a virgin birth. Really.

He was dry-humping her and he came in his pants. She got pregnant.

[forgotmylogin]

7. I'm not quite sure that's really proving the point the way the Bible people want...

I get what you're saying, but I think that's an unfortunate conception rather than an immaculate conception.

It's kind of one of those edge hypotheticals, like a happily married, sexually-active lesbian who has never had penetrative sex with a man gets IVF to have a child. Is that an "immaculate conception" or more specifically a "virgin birth" if a penis was never in the same zip code as her uterus?

I might hypothesize that seminal (including male DNA) penetration would carry the same credentials as penile penetration in canceling out virginity - I'd venture for the Biblical "immaculate conception" a paternity test would have to come up "null" - no human sperm involved.

I'd say this might also fall into the category of placing too much mythical importance on the concept of "physically penetrative virginity" as a measure of a person's worth or a sign of their character as well.

I remember our health teacher once gave us the somewhat cryptic advice: "It doesn't matter so much if an employee makes it to work with everyone on the express train or has to climb up the outside of the building to get into the office; if the employee gets to work he gets to do his job...and you might have a baby."

[forgotmylogin]

8. I don't know if that goes toward proving the concept of immaculate conception...

I get what you're saying, but I think that's an unfortunate conception rather than an immaculate conception.

It's kind of one of those edge hypotheticals, like a happily married, sexually-active lesbian who has never had penetrative sex with a man gets IVF to have a child. Is that an "immaculate conception" or more specifically a "virgin birth" if a penis was never in the same zip code as her uterus?

I might hypothesize that seminal (including male DNA) penetration would carry the same credentials as penile penetration in canceling out virginity - I'd venture for the Biblical "immaculate conception" a paternity test would have to come up "null" - no human sperm involved.

I'd say this might also fall into the category of placing too much mythical importance on the concept of "physically penetrative virginity" as a measure of a person's worth or a sign of their character as well.

I remember our health teacher once gave us the somewhat cryptic advice: "It doesn't matter so much if an employee makes it to work with everyone on the express train or has to climb up the outside of the building to get into the office; if the employee gets to work he gets to do his job...and you might have a baby."