OpenStars

he wouldn’t get this concept

Emphasis on the would not, as distinguished from can not, it is refuses to.

Some people listen, others exclusively talk. Thank you for being part of the former:-).

iirc, we did legislate it. Surprise: Trump un-legislated it, and even before that Congress de-funded it.

bUt ThE eCoNoMy ThO

In Babylon Five at least, the "demons" are not always what they may at first appear...

• It does blow my mind that the interpretation of who God is doesn't seem to hinge upon the virgin birth, and in fact may be all the stronger if not.
• What was that vision though - that "she would have a child, and that God was in charge of the situation"? Or that "as a virgin she will have a child, by God"?

After this, you switched contexts btw, talking about Christianity as a whole, rather than the singular point of whether Jesus was born from a "virgin" vs. "maiden". However, Christianity is not all one unified things - we know that it is good & pure & true when it does things like take care of widows & orphans, feeds the homeless, visits the sick & in prison, etc.; but we also know that "Christianity" is false if it includes things like priests having the right to sexually abuse little children. Also in the USA, many people are equating "being Christian" with "voting Republican, no matter who the nominee is (and what crimes they may have already committed)". These behaviors persist despite verses such as Deuteronomy 4:2 and Revelation 22:18-19 that say explicitly never to add anything.

Rather, the Bible literally commands us to "Test everything against what we know to be true" (1 Thessalonians 5:21), and Matt. 24 gives explicit warnings against people trying to add all manner of falsehoods, etc.

So, not knowing any of Greek, Aramaic, the Jewish language and especially that of the ancient Semites, I cannot really "test" whether the Bible says that Jesus was a virgin. And seeing all the other ways that others are misusing the scriptures to mean whatever they want it to, I am skeptical. God is pure power incarnate and would not be diminished in the least if He chose to be born to a non-virgin, imho, but I could see how others who place more value on human superstitions than whatever may have actually happened could see things differently. Which, aside from my laziness to dig deeper into finding the real truth of the matter, is what keeps me stuck in my doubt. And anyway, as we both said, it doesn't really seem to matter either way:-).

There's a lot to that - e.g. transgressions passed down - but also there seems a lot that could be said against that as well, e.g. looking at David's lineage including an actual prostitute, so not only is God not "above" using sinful people, but He in fact often uses the weak things of the world to show how foolish the "wise" are.

I am no biblical scholar, so I cannot weigh in on what the various likelihoods are - e.g. are the odds for vs. against 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, etc.? But the point I was making here is that the odds, to me, seem to not be infinity to zero. Even if they were very very high like 9:1, that's still a good enough chance at being wrong that if someone saw that on a weather forecast they might legit bring along an umbrella, if they had something important to protect like a laptop or even a brand-new hairdo that they don't want to ruin the day before the special event it was meant for. And this is so crucial that I do not want to miss it even at the risk of stating the obvious: people's lives, especially for eternity, are far more important than a chance of rain.

So what are the chances that this INTERPRETATION is incorrect? It's not like "the Church" has never been shown to be incorrect before...

So yeah, I do wonder.

It's bc it said two, isn't it? If it had been more believable and just said one...

Don't forget: you can become one yourself, by running your own community.

This alone is enough to answer why people need to vote for Biden next term!!!

What's this "until" crap? Now back to work you lazy fuck! :-P

Well, you are holding it right now, and possession is 9/10ths of the law so...

Yup, sounds about wrong :-P

Boss makes a (million) dollar, I make a ~~dime~~ tenth of a penny, that's why I let crows eat my entrails on company time. :-P