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@ Friday, Aug. 31, 2007 – 14:05:14
You may remember I had a debate with some Christians recently. I described it in this post.
Well, they deleted it. Can you imagine? To lose an argument, then to hide it afterwards. The cowards. It's like kicking over the chessboard when you get checkmated.
Fortunately, I'd already saved it on my hard disk. I've put it here. Ha!
Go read it, and decide for yourself who won. If you ask me, there's a clue in the question "Who deleted it?"
sallyontour
Pro 
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And what a po-faced bunch of clowns they were, as well.
gloating is extremely unattractive, you big gloaty gloater...
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Which is a shame, because otherwise I'm gorgeous. Look at me, like a young Wittgenstein.
Actually, the contradiction is even worse then the debate implies. At least according to the Roman Catholic and Anglican theologies, Joseph of Nazareth was not the biological father of Joshua of Nazareth. Therefore, the question of the antecedents of Joseph is irrelevant as Joshua is not descended from them.
Literalism is a fools position.
http://jonecc.koolhost.com/index.php?p=1_2_The-debateThe Righteous Response Squad, who derive their name from th...
Actually, I was partially convinced by their argument. Maybe that's just because they were so brazenly unapologetic. The first relaxation of their claim was that "begat" was not necessarily sequential. Because even in Chronicles the full transition is elaborated, someone must have been aware of it. This also ruins my argument necessitating a Young Earth (from the Adam genealogy). I'm sure there are other points though.
What really confuses me is why they bother putting in the lineage of Joseph at all. I thought Mary was impregnated by God through the ears and not by a human male at all -- Virgin and all that, right? So why does Joseph's lineage matter? He wasn't Jesus's dad, so it doesn't impact Jesus's bloodline at all. He just happens to be the guy who raised the young Lord. Which is important, I don't want to dis' all those adoptive dads out there, but begatting just doesn't enter into it.
Biblical contradiction and debate: If you can’t back it up, then butt out!
Via Pharyngula today comes the story of someone that tried to argue the issue of Biblical contradictions with the rather defensively named Righteous Response Squad. It’s a good read, but it ends as too many of these debates do: with the very peo...
Jeff Hebert said:
"What really confuses me is why they bother putting in the lineage of Joseph at all. I thought Mary was impregnated by God through the ears and not by a human male at all -- Virgin and all that, right?"
Check what what the Mormons have to say about the subject - it's a nice twist to an otherwise unremarkable virgin birth story. I know that the URL below is not from an official "mormon" source, but the Mormon church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - lds.org) makes a practice of downplaying controversial statements made by previous church authorities, especially if they are dead, and thus unable to defend themselves.
http://www.mrm.org/topics/jesus-christ/mormonisms-teaching-concerning-virgin-birth
What really confuses me is why they bother putting in the lineage of Joseph at all. I thought Mary was impregnated by God through the ears and not by a human male at all -- Virgin and all that, right? So why does Joseph's lineage matter?
Because the original Jewish Jesus followers were a Messiah cult (like other Jewish offshoots) - they believed Jesus to be a mortal Messiah, and thus had to demonstrate he was a direct male descendent of David. And did it twice, apparently.
Later, when the cult got turned into a pan-Roman church, they swiped the whole 'Son of (a) God" and "virgin birth" from competing religions. The contradiction represents teh competing agenda - one of demonstrating a Messiah under Jewish tradition, and the other of demonstrating a God under Hellenic/Roman tradition.
I love how the first half of their argument was almost entirely unrelated to their conclusion. It's like watching someone pretend to argue. They know what a logical argument sounds like, how it's structured, what transitional phrases are used, etc. But they don't actually have any idea how to construct one!
It's like watching a child sing random syllables to the tune of the ABC song and and then proclaim that he knows the alphabet.
My favorite Bible contradiction is not so much a direct contradiction, but strange enough to make you think: the fig tree story. In it, Jesus curses a fig tree for not bearing fruit. And yet, it says right in the text that it was not yet the season for fruit. Apologists have gone to elaborate lengths to try and explain why certain species of figs would be expected to bloom early and so on, but none of it really explains why Jesus kills this tree (in one story, it dies overnight, in another, right in front of the disciples).
The reality is that this story is almost certainly an allegory for Jesus basically cursing the temple Jews for failing God (the same sort of symbol as the cloth ripping during the crucifixion). Of course, the problem is that here is a strange little instructive vignette related as if it were an actual event in the Gospel, which is sort of troubling if you are committed to believing that it is just a straight history.
Plus, it makes Jesus look sort of nutty.
The blog owner changed this comment on Wednesday, Sep. 05, 2007 00:54:20
I think you're absolutely right that the cursing of the fig tree has allegorical meaning (although this could mean that it was a symbolic action, rather than that the story is made up).
The comment that it was not yet the season for fruit is there to make this clear; it forces readers taking the story at face value to think again about what Jesus was up to, to try to make sense of his actions.
Stuff about early fig trees completely misses the point. The author has gone out of his way to make Jesus' act look odd so that we think about it symbolically; bending over backwards to prevent Jesus' act from looking odd isn't defending the text, it's fighting against it.
Sean K directed me to your blog because he was fed up with my godless rantings and knew I needed some solid facts to bolster my hysterical outpourings. Oh how I wish I could carry you round with me so you could leap out and interject in my almost daily religious arguments with the fucking christians I'm supposed to be managing. Then we might all get some work done. Thanks, lovely stuff.
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Thank you, Keren. If ever you need a suitable riposte to some religious drivel, do please get in touch.
Assuming you're the Keren who's posted a few times on the Bristol Blogger, then you're clearly a dab hand with a carefully constructed polemic yourself. Also, we've met a couple of times. I did some stuff with Sean in Hartcliffe several years ago, and I'm the Jon that used to go out with Katy Staples.
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Oo-er I think you might have got their goat.
Well done.