Here Comes Some Christmas Logic
Are you ready for it? Oh well!
This comes from a poorly reasoned article [it’s a PDF. See “History’s Greatest Happening” on pg. 15.] in Changing Times, a newspaper I nearly worked for, which is published by the man about whom this song is written.
The article is about the virgin birth of Jesus, and why you should believe that it literally happened. This thing is so crammed with logical fallacies that Golden Grahams is trying to buy them out, but there is one part in particular that just really camps out with its tamp out:
“But you don’t have to understand it to believe it. If you doubt the virgin birth, you really have difficulty with …
- the character of the Word of God - The Word of God plainly teaches that Jesus was born of a virgin.
- the character of Mary — If Jesus were not born of a virgin, Mary was a harlot and conceived out of wedlock.
- the character of Jesus — If Jesus were not born of a virgin, He was a descendant of Adam, and “in Adam, all die” (see 1 Corinthians 15:22).”
Yeah, well, see, uh…the thing is, um…look. Matthew 1 calls Jesus a son of Abraham and provides a genealogy from Abraham to Jesus. Luke 3 provides a (different) genealogy for Jesus, but goes all the way back to Adam. True, the Luke passage does have a kind of disclaimer: “He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph…” Even so, Matthew identifies Jesus as a son of Abraham, and Luke identifies Abraham as a son of Adam. Do you see where this is going?
So that kinda pulls the rug out from underneath the next chunk of stupid:
“You see, if there were no virgin birth, there would be no sinless Christ. No sinless Christ … no atonement. No atonement … no forgiveness. No forgiveness … no hope of heaven. No hope of heaven… we would all die and go to hell.”
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. The whole article is one long Argument from Final Consequences, but here they’ve also thrown in some Unstated Major Premise for good measure. Why do they assume that people who reject a belief in the virgin birth still accept the existence of the Christian God? Is it because the author is purposefully dishonest, or honestly ignorant? Judging by the way the article is written, and the general theme of Changing Times, I’ve got to give this person the benefit of the doubt and go with the latter. It’s just ignorance perpetuating ignorance.
Stumble it!
November 20th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Look, the trap you are failing to see that it’s a trap is this:
If you doubt the virgin birth, you really have difficulty with …
- the character of the Word of God in “Death of a Salesman” - The Word of God plainly teaches that Willy Loman was born of a virgin (Act 1, Scene 4).
- the character of Mary in “The Day the Earth Stood Still” — If Jesus were not actually that dude from space who owned that robot, Mary was a harlot and conceived out of wedlock and would have died because Jesus couldn’t have said “Klaatu barada nikto”.
- the character of Jesus in “The Big Lebowski” — If Jesus were not born of a virgin, He was a pederass, and “in Adam, all die” (see 1 Corinthians 15:22).”
Duh.
November 21st, 2008 at 4:08 am
WIIO?