My attack on the Virgin Birth in reply to Nick Peters

Nick Peters debated John Richards about the Virgin Birth.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1oPJWCsCWQ

In the comments section, I posted 11 justifications for skepticism toward the Virgin Birth:

Barry Jones

1 second ago

Let's see, the intent of the apologist is never to merely show that belief in the VB can be reasonable. There is ALWAYS a chip on their shoulder, they are ALWAYS trying to prove that skepticism toward the VB could not be reasonable. I advance 11 arguments to show that skepticism toward the VB is reasonable: 1 - Mark's failure to mention the virgin birth is significant. you will say he didn't think it necessary to mention because it was already known, but you don't know how well known the virgin birth doctrine was before the end of the first century. And regardless, Mark mentions lots of stuff that appears in Matthew and Luke, showing Mark's intent to repeat, thus refuting those who pretend Mark didn't wish to repeat things already known. And patristic sources are pretty clear that Mark "omitted nothing" from his account. Therefore what he left out, was not a case of 'omission', but matter that he either didn't know about, or which he regarded as false. Bible inerrancy is a false doctrine, so I have no sympathy for the fools who demand that any theory to explain the virgin birth missing from Mark reconciles Mark with other biblical authors. 2 - Matthew and Luke are the only NT authors to mention the virgin birth, when in fact one hermeneutic used by conservatives is to emphasize a doctrine only in proportion to how often it is taught in the bible. That's why most conservatives can't stop talking about Paul, and why ost conservatives don't have much to say about the VB until somebody presses a skeptical objection to it. 3 - today's fundies would never believe a similar story about some 14 year old girl today. But beacuse the VB is mired in ancient history, fundies seem to think this gives it an aura of verisimilitude, even though they refuse to draw such a conclusion about most other ancient theological statements outside the bible. 4 - Jesus never mentioned his conception or birth, indicating he didn't think such things doctrinally important. In fact, when presented with the perfect opportunity to do so, he rebuked the person who praised his mother: 27 While Jesus was saying these things, one of the women in the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, "Blessed is the womb that bore You and the breasts at which You nursed." 28 But He said, "On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it." (Lk. 11:27-28 NAU) 5 - Mark 3:21 says Jesus' family thought him insane and sought to arrest him and put a stop to his public ministry. The mother of Jesus in Mark 3:21 does not likely think her son was YHWH manifest in human flesh. If that means Mark is contradicting Matthew and Luke, all the more reason to say the VB is fiction. 6 - John 7:5 says Jesus brothers mocked him and did not believe in him. In the chronology of the ministry, John 7 would be after Jesus completed the first third of his earthly ministry. That is, even after about 1 or 2 years of Jesus running around doing miracles, not only do his brothers persist in unbelief toward him (v. 5), they MOCK the whole idea that he is capable of doing miracles (vv. 1-4). It is very reasonable to infer from John 7:5 that Jesus' brothers did not believe he was anything more special than a con artist. 7 - Supposing Jesus to be god for the sake of argument, we have to wonder to what extent this was or wasn't manifest during his infancy and childhood, in order to account for why his family view him as a loon. Did the child Jesus ever make mistakes? If not, wouldn't that have tipped off the family that he was very special and work against their forming the opinion that he was crazy? Did the child Jesus ever sin? If not, wouldn't that have tipped off the family that he was very special, and work against their forming the opinion that he was crazy? If you and your brother are in your 30s, and your brother never sinned once in his life, wouldn't we be reasonable to assume you'd probably have a very high view of him? And if you told us your brother is crazy and deserves to be arrested and his public ministry halted, meaning YOU don't believe in his claims, wouldn't we be reasonable to assume that you never observed anything about your brother that you thought made him any better than anybody else? If these skeptical contentions are reasonable, then we can be reasonable to use Mark 3:21 and John 7:5 to justify concluding that Jesus' family never had any reason to think Jesus was anything supernatural. Apologist trifles otherwise could never have the power to render such skepticism unreasonable. 8 - Jesus defines essential doctrine as his own teachings to the disciples (Matthew 28:20), so since Jesus never taught anything about his conception or birth, not only are those subjects doctrinally irrelevant, Matthew must have thought they were irrelevant. Thus his inclusion of such stories likely only means he agreed with the intertestamental authors, and thought it morally permissible to mix true history with fiction for the sake of edification. 9 - The biggest hurdle, and the one apologists will always stumble at, is how they figure the VB "applies to" believers today. There is no reasonable way to demonstrate that the NT "applies to" today. 10 - Stories of gods impregnating virgins existed before the 1st century, so that it become irresistable to conclude that Matthew and Luke merely took a popular religious motif and gave it a new spin. See Pindar's Pythian Ode # 12, securely dated more than 200 years before Jesus, where Danae is still called "virgin" during and after giving birth to Perseus, the son of Zeus. “And if we even affirm that He was born of a virgin, accept this in common with what you accept of Perseus.: (Justin, Justin Martyr, First Apology, ch. 22, Schaff, P. (2000). 11 - Perhaps most embarrassing to today's apologists, the early church fathers had to resort to a contrived theory of the devil imitating Christ's virtues before Christ existed, in order to "explain" why certain aspects of Christianity and Jesus were found in pre-Christian paganism. If the answer was as simple as "the pagan version didn't exist until after Jesus was born", then the church fathers would not have employed this silly apologetic to 'explain' the parallels. See Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ch. LXIX. Justin is most explicit in this, in his First Apology:

Chapter LIV.—Origin of Heathen Mythology. But those who hand down the myths which the poets have made, adduce no proof to the youths who learn them; and we proceed to demonstrate that they have been uttered by the influence of the wicked demons, to deceive and lead astray the human race. For having heard it proclaimed through the prophets that the Christ was to come, and that the ungodly among men were to be punished by fire, they put forward many to be called sons of Jupiter, under the impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that the things which were said with regard to Christ were mere marvellous tales, like the things which were said by the poets. And these things were said both among the Greeks and among all nations where they [the demons] heard the prophets foretelling that Christ would specially be believed in; but that in hearing what was said by the prophets they did not accurately understand it, but imitated what was said of our Christ, like men who are in error, we will make plain. The prophet Moses, then, was, as we have already said, older than all writers; and by him, as we have also said before, it was thus predicted: “There shall not fail a prince from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until He come for whom it is reserved; and He shall be the desire of the Gentiles, binding His foal to the vine, washing His robe in the blood of the grape.”115 The devils, accordingly, when they heard these prophetic words, said that Bacchus was the son of Jupiter, and gave out that he was the discoverer of the vine, and they number wine116 [or, the ass] among his mysteries; and they taught that, having been torn in pieces, he ascended into heaven. And because in the prophecy of Moses it had not been expressly intimated whether He who was to come was the Son of God, and whether He would, riding on the foal, remain on earth or ascend into heaven, and because the name of “foal” could mean either the foal of an ass or the foal of a horse, they, not knowing whether He who was foretold would bring the foal of an ass or of a horse as the sign of His coming, nor whether He was the Son of God, as we said above, or of man, gave out that Bellerophon, a man born of man, himself ascended to heaven on his horse Pegasus. And when they heard it said by the other prophet Isaiah, that He should be born of a virgin, and by His own means ascend into heaven, they pretended that Perseus was spoken of. And when they knew what was said, as has been cited above, in the prophecies written aforetime, “Strong as a giant to run his course,”117 they said that Hercules was strong, and had journeyed over the whole earth. And when, again, they learned that it had been foretold that He should heal every sickness, and raise the dead, they produced Aesculapius.

------------- For all these reasons, every apologist who classifies VB skepticism as unreasonable, is high on crack.