An interesting myth that is widely embraced by the Christian church today is the story of the impregnation of a young Jewish woman by YHWH 2000 years ago.  The Apostles Creed includes the lines:

Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
born of the virgin Mary

There are several issues with the story of the virgin birth.  The first, of course, is the parallel of this story with many other such conceptions of “gods” over the course of history.  I read one Christian’s rebuttal this argument which stated that this is in fact more of a declaration of its truth since the devil always tries to counterfeit truth.  Well, he had quite a head start on this one.

The second is the genesis of the virgin birth story itself.  The first person to write about an individual named Jesus was Paul, the Apostle.  In his letters, there is no mention of the virgin birth of Jesus.  One would think if this was such an important doctrine to be embraced as a core belief of Christianity, it would  be trumpeted by Christianity’s greatest evangelist.

Most scholars believe that Mark was the first gospel to be written.  Mark seem to take Paul’s theology of the Christ and create a biography of his life paralleling many of his stories after Old Testament tradition (see DagoodS’s most excellent commentary on the Gospel of Mark for more details).  The Gospel of Mark also does not contain any references to the virgin birth of Christ.  The only Gospels containing references to the virgin birth of Jesus are Matthew and Luke, which are generally believed to be based on the Gospel of Mark.

Lastly and probably the greatest issue of the virgin birth story is that it is based on what many scholars believe to be a mistranslation of Isaiah 7:14.  Matthew quotes the Septuagint (the Greek translation used at the time of the writing of the gospels) which states “virgin.”  However, if one was to go back to the original text, it actually reads “young woman.”  One rebuttal to this I read stated that in those days “young woman” and “virgin” were synonymous terms.  I’m not sure that is a valid argument.

In my opinion, religious writings claiming the miraculous generally fall into the category of myths.  The challenge we have is separating out the philosophical nuggets contained in many of these writings as they are so often wrapped in an unbelievable package.

- The de-Convert

In a classic case of irony, Christians tried to get the statement “No God, No Peace. Know God, Know Peace” to trend today on Twitter.

The result of this effort was the phrase “No God” became the #1 trending topic.

Please understand that atheists have been trying for months to get an atheist related topic to trend and this one was gifted to us.

“God” must be looking out for us   Of course, I should note that the phrase really should be “Know God.  No Peace.  No God.  Know Peace.”

- The de-Convert

Updates:

• The originator of the initial tweet is reported to be @RevRunWisdom.  Thanks Rev Run!!!!!

• We are officially declaring Oct 20th as “No God Day!” We’ll celebrate again next year.

• In an apparent attempt to slow the increase traffic to Twitter (lots of the “fail whale” page today). after trending all day as #1, the “No God” hashtag was removed from the trending topic list even though my tests show that it’s still the #1 trending topic.  Then as a part of the cover-up, Twitter listed “no god” as being synonymous with “Know God” and displayed it as “Know God.”  Of course, this is backfiring as there are now new cries of “CENSORSHIP!!!!”

• We were quoted in the Washington Post

This is my first crisis since de-conversion and I must say it was a good, solid test of my non-faith. In this blog, we have discussed the fact that dealing with crisis is one of the major reasons humanity has created gods and developed religious beliefs. I was faced with my first challenge of dealing with crisis without having my imaginary deity to run to for security, comfort and the general “it’s going to be alright.”

The other issue I faced was my response to my Christian family and friends. Even though it was difficult at times, I was respectful and said “amen” and “thank you” to the many prayers I received. I realized early on that they needed to say those prayers not to necessarily make me feel better but to allow them to feel secure about my surgery and that I’d be ok. Initially, their prayers were for my healing (I come from a Pentecostal/Charismatic background). I wanted to explain to them that God doesn’t perform these types of miracles (where degenerative discs are regenerated) but I did not. I wanted to explain to them that the only miracles God performs are the once that are scientifically possible (like cancer going into remission, etc.) but, of course, I kept those thoughts to myself. I wanted to challenge them to find ONE instance where an arm or a leg was grown back via a miracle knowing that there are no such cases.

After it was obvious, that the pain was not going to disappear via a miraculous healing and I would have to have surgery, the prayers shifted to “God guiding the doctor’s hands.” That prayer made me smile. I was hoping his training, skill, and experience would be his guide instead. Now, of course, it’s for a speedy recovery. If I am recovering quickly, it’s a credit to the pure genius of my doctor and his skills. Thanks doc!!!!

Overall, I passed the test. I never felt the urge to pray for security and comfort. I researched my doctor and hospital and there gained some security. I understood the risks, but also knew that the odds were in favor of a successful surgery. I’m happy to report that so far, everything is going well with my recovery. I will be on house arrest for 2 weeks, in a neck brace for 2 months and some additional recovery time, but I’m thrilled with the advances medical science has made that this surgery can be accomplished with the ease that it has.

I do have a renewed respect and tolerance for faith as I watched my family members struggle with this and realized that they could not go through this without leaning on their God, but I am thankful that I have made significant progress to not fear the unknown.

- The de-Convert

Our humble blog has seen over 1,000,000 hits in our first 2 years of existence and almost 30,000 hits in the past week alone.  We’ve had almost 25,000 comments since our inception.  Other similar sites such as Debunking Christianity and ExChristianDotNet continue to also be very popular sites.

Due to this phenomenon, we are in the process of relaunching our community site to be more of a social networking site where we can in essence build a community of apostates, de-converts, ex-Christians, or whatever label you wish to wear.

Here’s to this new trend!  Why do you think  this is becoming such a popular decision?

- The de-Convert

[Art by Jim Huger from Dead To Rights, a parody of Jack T. Chick's tract]

[Source: Ephemera]

[By: Don Addis]

[By: Don Addis]

By John Trever, Albuquerque Journal, 1998.

- The de-Convert

Well team, it looks like we’ll hit the million mark sometime this weekend ahead of our 2nd Anniversary in March.  This is being achieved without counting the page views of our many contributors since WordPress does not accumulate those views in their statistics.

Of course, we could not have accomplished this without our many visitors who came to d-C via StumbleUpon.

On our busiest day, we saw 13,834 views and it’s an honor to be ranked in Alexa.

Congrats!!!

- The de-Convert

Thoughts on the judgmental nature of Religion

1 Stop judging others and you will not be judged. For others will treat you as you treat them. Why worry about the speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying, “Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,” when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? First get rid of the log from your own eye; then perhaps you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.

Thoughts on the divisiveness of Religion

2 Beware of those who come to divide. You can detect them by the way that they act, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit. A healthy tree produces good fruit, and an unhealthy tree produces bad fruit. Yes, the way to identify a tree or a person is by the kind of fruit that is produced.

Thoughts on the greed of religious leaders

3 Why do the teachers of religion, by their traditions, violate their commandments? For instance, the commandments says, “Honor your father and mother.” But they say “You don’t need to honor your parents by caring for their needs if you give the money to God instead.” And so, by their own tradition, they nullify their commandments.

Thoughts on the many ritualistic laws within Religion

4 Listen to what I say and try to understand. You are not defiled by what you eat; you are defiled by what you say and do. Anything you eat passes through the stomach and then goes out of the body. But evil words come from and evil heart and defile the person who says them. For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, theft, lying, and slander. These are what defile you. Eating with unwashed hands could never defile you.

Thoughts on leadership in Religion

5 You know that in this world there are tyrants and officials lord it over the people beneath them. But among you it should be quite different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant. I came here not to be served but to serve others.

Thoughts on the legalistic nature of Religion

6 The religious teachers crush you with impossible religious demands and never lift a finger to help ease the burden. They enjoy the attention. But those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. 7 How terrible it is for the teachers of religion who are careful to tithe on even the tiniest part of their income but they ignore the important things- justice, mercy, and faith. They strain water so they won’t accidentally swallow a gnat; then swallow a camel.

Thoughts on the hypocrisy of Religion

8 How terrible it is for the teachers of religion who are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they are filthy – full of greed and self-indulgence! They try to look like upright people outwardly, but inside their hearts are filled with hypocrisy. (taken from Matthew)

- The de-Convert

The simple answer is that we haven’t had the desire to have kids …

And that is a great reason not to have children. However, she qualified her comment with this statement:

… we don’t want to have children unless we feel confident that that is a role that God has designed us for …

In other words, Jenni would go against her desire not to have children if she somehow felt that an invisible diety in heaven wanted her to have children.

I have to admit that the belief that there is god who has a plan for my life has quickly become a concept that I find alien. To add to this, how does one know this plan? I remember being convinced I could hear the “voice of God.” Looking back, I can’t find any evidence that I could. Was it the still small voice in my head? Well, that “still small voice” has told me some pretty wierd things. Was it the close my eye, open my Bible, and point to a verse methodology (don’t laugh, you know you’ve done this too)? Well, it worked about 20% of the time for me and the rest were just strange (especially if I opened to Judges). Was it just a knowing on the inside? As a teenager, I “knew” that every pretty girl who crossed my path was going to be the “one.” Was it listening to what Benny Hinn or some other “man or woman of God” told me was God’s word for me? Well, I’d be broke right now if I followed that principle. Was it simply that God would change my desire? Well, looking back, I can safely say that I desired some things that would have been very detrimental to my life.

Personally, I liked Gideon’s approach to this answer:

Judges 6:38-40 Gideon said to God, “If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised–look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” And that is what happened. Gideon rose early the next day; he squeezed the fleece and wrung out the dew–a bowlful of water. Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece. This time make the fleece dry and the ground covered with dew.” That night God did so. Only the fleece was dry; all the ground was covered with dew.

Hell, I think I’d believe the first time. However, the concept of “putting out a fleece” is no longer a valid way to hear from God. I wonder why? It would make life so much simpler for so many believers and would help them avoid so many tragic mistakes – like having children when they do not want any.

Also, there are so many stories about God giving audible and visual direction to individuals in the Bible. Why did he quit? If he’d continued this practice, this would be a clear cut case for so many. Of course, we would still have the challenge of distinguishing whether or not the voice or vision was as a result of a mental illness (like the character in the movie “A Beautiful Mind“) or some universal cosmic connection.

In light of all this uncertainity, my advise to Jenni is this. While I understand your point of view (because I held to it very strongly for decades), please simply stick with your desire. Do not have kids just because you feel that a supernatural being you’ve never seen wants you to have them. Unless of course, your desire changes.

- The de-Convert

Slapdash recently made this comment on one of our posts:

For me, the issue of (unanswered) prayer was the first, primary, and most important thing that unraveled my faith.

Christianity is completely schizophrenic when it comes to prayer. On the one hand you have loads of scriptures inviting us to pray – to pray about everything, to pray without ceasing, to pray boldly, to pray specifically, to pray with the faith of a mustard seed – and our prayers will be answered.

On the other hand, based as far as I can tell only on the Lord’s prayer, Christians insist that you add “not my will be done, but yours” to every prayer, thus effectively giving God an ‘out’ any and every time your original desire doesn’t come to pass.

Therefore Christians can always claim that God answered their prayer – just sometimes not in the way they wanted! heh heh, God’s so much wiser, he didn’t give me any of the jobs I prayed for, instead he had me on unemployment for five months so I could learn more reliance on him. Praise God for answering prayer!!!

The more sophisticated Christians I’ve known have started saying that prayer is primarily a discipline for our own edification/learning – prayer’s not for God, it’s for us, and the outcomes of our prayers are much less important than the fact that it brings us into communion with God.

That’s an elegant way to explain away the many scriptures in the new testament that command us to pray, and promise that we can move mountains if we do.

The chorus to Martina McBride’s hit single “Anyway” states:

God is great, but sometimes life ain’t good
And when I pray it doesn’t always turn out like I think it should
But I do it anyway

My question is why?

- The de-Convert