The Southern Baptist "Proof" of the Miricle Birth
Sometimes prominent people say things so funny you spit out your coffee. That happened to me today.
Richard Land is a retired President of a big Southern Baptist Seminary. He was always in the Christian news while holding this high position. Now he publishes his views wherever he can. Land is the perfect representative of the "Old White Men" version of Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic. He condemns any new approach to sexuality or critical commentary of the Bible.
Today he published an article to put down anyone who might have doubts about whether the story of Jesus' virgin birth in a manager ever happened. He points to the consensus that the first written material of the New Testament was written about 80 A.D. That is 50 years after the supposed Resurrection.
He writes 50 years is but a blink of the eye. He envisions lots of people must have been present at the events in the New Testament, the birth and death tales, and that is why we know they are true. His sentence that, "For those events not to be true, we need a person who was present at the time and claimed they never happened."
Let's see, where was the observer supposed to be to have a legitimate claim of NOT seeing the events. They were to have been in Mary and Joseph's bed and watched them not have sex?? As someone said on Face Book yesterday, "Mary is not the first pregnant teenager to have said she had no idea how she became pregnant." Then, to prove Jesus did not return from being dead did someone need to watch the cross for some months after he was hung there until authorities tossed his and other bones into the landfill? "Oh, wait. He might have come back to life and walked out of the landfill after you quit watching. Prove that that didn't happen. Got cha there, Lindgren!"
At the time, there were about 200 million people on planet earth. That is about 200 million who were "present" but did not see the birth or death. More than half the descendants of those 200 million, now several billion, today do not believe these things happened.
I went to a Christmas Eve service tonight at a Methodist church (our granddaughter was performing ballet). I heard again the Christmas story. I understand why most of the world does not believe the story.
Darn, every Christmas morning since I became an atheist I've gotten a lump of coal in my stocking. :)
ReplyDelete