With any religion, women take it right in the teeth. This gutless bullying is one of the most despicable aspects of all religions. It is pathetic, cruel and to say the least, counterproductive. How any woman can voluntarily remain a member of a religion like Christianity baffles me. Having said that, I understand that there is peer pressure, family pressure, fear of spouse abuse and loss of support, and many other reasons to take the path of least resistance and capitulate. I understand, but this does not make it right. Whew...Long winded...And we ask a lot of our women....But UNTIL women break through from this intimidation and VIRTUALLY SLAVERY, nothing will change.

Again, having said this, I don't know if I would have the guts to be a woman with all the headwinds. It is a huge burden to bear and fight.

Religions are abusive with women and I think there is a very simple reason for that. They need to control their uteruses. They need them to give birth to as many baby followers as they can. It's way easier to get them in their cribs than when they're grown up.

i know a lady from india. she said women were (not sure if it still happens) kept out back with the cows

Yet "there are no male or female" as far as the Bible is concerned, hmm

and the talking donkey.

@Geoffrey51 Raising the dead, healing the blind and leper, Walking on water, turning water into wine, feeding a multitude with a few fish and a few pieces of bread.

@jlynn37 I believe in the whole raise the dead and heal the sick thing. I just don't believe a Jewish fellow did it for free.

Try getting blamed for BEING that talking snake... not fun.

All religions are fraudulent. They are into a spiritual protection racket. They make humans believe that they have a soul and they make promises and threats about what will happen to that soul after death in order to get obedience, power, money and sex.

The OT is a record of the failure of religion, after all yeh

Christianity, certainly, the Bible, not even a little, ok? test everything, and keep what is good

If God existed and demanded my worship I would do so- even out of fear and just accept the fact that I have to answer to a mysoginidtic, tribal, genocidle asshole. I reject religion because it is nonsense. Hitler, Trump, etc. They exist, they're nasty, they have/had power.

I am not here to accuse. Just merely point out that you may have rejected religion because it is nasty and the fradulent bit is based on that. Just something to consider.

@rovingamber, Good you are not here to accuse. You just sharing your point of view like me or everybody. Maybe I did not explain myself well. Ok first I don't know the meaning of the word that you are using "fradulent" forgive me for my ignorance. I'll change the fraudulent word for "dishonest, false, corrupt".

I suspect the OP is using the term "never happened" as colloquial shorthand for the proper null hypothesis, which would be more accurately be phrased as "there is insufficient evidence to support claims of virgin births / resurrections."

@palex -- I think the same, but I want to hear it from the source of the comment.

@palex Would it be out of order to say these things are impossible?

@brentan In a technical sense, yes, as such an absolute claim would carry a burden of proof. Science would always allow for the possibility of virgin births, for example, if they can be demonstrated to have occurred in a controlled environment.

@palex Would it be presumptious to say emphatically that that can never succeed. I've read antifred's comment and I don't know what to make of it.

@brentan -- asexual reproduction in humans is possible, but the offspring would necessarily be female. However, technically, a woman can be impregnated without intercourse, thereby producing a 'virgin' birth. In other words, to say that is impossible is wrong based in ordinary physical reality.

The resurrection is also possible, providing the subject did not actually die. Because of the primitive and limited knowledge at the time a person could easily be pronounced dead yet still be very much alive, this even considering the purported injuries suffered before and during crucifixion. Because this is a possibility, though the story assumes death, saying it is impossible is technically wrong.

This is what antifred was saying but i'm darned if I understand it. He, as best I understand, is saying the sex of the child was female by the blood, not the cell, because in the case he read the cell had divided and only half was fertilised.It seems as if the life of the child is the result of the cell that was fertilised and the sex of the child by the blood in the other cell. But I see no reason to believe that reproduction is taking place without sex. I just see a case of the egg splitting before fertilisation.

I guess the idea of resurrection is easier even if it should be vastly more difficult. We seem to be talking here about a death that didn't happen, or perhaps happened legally but not really.

@brentan -- Well, as far as I'm concerned, neither happened and that the entire story is a modified and reconstructed myth from prior times. However, to make the assertion in argument is a trap, a trap too often fallen into.

@evidentialist Well I'm a little bit annoyed. I thought we were trying to grapple with the idea of a virgin birth from a biological perspective. As for your conclusion that it never happened, along with the resurrection, most of us accept that as true but discusssing it can be very enjoyable.

There is absolutely NO evidence that the virgin birth and the resurrection happened in reality. Also, these two events are not unique to Jesus. They occured over and over again in prior myths.

@BestWithoutGods -- This is true, and I think I said that. However, argumentum ad ignorantiam is not valid. This is the trap I mentioned. Although the utter lack of evidence plus experiential observations are adequate for me to form an opinion that these things did not happen in reality, it is not sufficient to make the assertion. When the only evidence to support an argument is a lack of evidence we are doing the same thing as those who say something is true because the holy books says this and that and thus.

@evidentialist Hmmm.... It seems to me that the burden of proof is on those who make claims that their mythology is reality. Their inability to provide valid evidence indicates that they are accepting the stories only on blind faith. It would be unreasonable for anyone to take their stories as reality, when all indications point toward mythology. This is especially so when other Bible stories have been proved false by science.

I acknowledge a possibility that I may not have seen all the evidence yet. If anyone can show me evidence I have not yet seen, and it is convincing, I will change my opinion. But I have given believers years to convince me that their story is real, and they have been unable to find any evidence to demonstrate that it is. Until such evidence is forthcoming, I am convince that it is mythological.

@BestWithoutGods -- So am I, my friend. The Brothers Grimm wrote more engaging stories with better practical moral messages. The problem is this: One cannot make an assertion without evidence to support it, and it works both ways. Our arguments are certainly more valid than are theirs, but we too lack sufficient evidence to support the claim.

@evidentialist I have accumulated evidence that the major "prophets" of the Bible predicted things that failed to come true, making them false prophets; that there are many contradictions in the Bible; that science disproves some bible stories, such as a 6-day creation 6,000 years ago, and Noah's Ark; that virgin births, resurrections and other "miracles" are common in non-biblical mythology; etc. From such evidence, I conclude that the Bible is not a book about reality, but about mythology.

Given the evidence I have accumulated, and the inability of believers to disprove it, I believe I have sufficient evidence to make my case and "support the claim."

@BestWithoutGods -- Hard evidence that the Earth is more that 6k years old is not evidence against the resurrection or virgin birth. The majority of believers hold that part of the bible describing the creation as metaphorical anyway, so it makes no marks with them. Only the hard core evangelicals and creationists would be slightly impacted by that and they have quite clever ways to move the goal posts around. In your mind, yes. In my mind, yes. But in a setting of debate, emphatically, no.

I see exactly where you are going and Yes, according to the Buybull stories, he had an elder brother named James, therefore, either Joseph was previously married and then a widower OR Mary was a widow, OR she'd played around long before she had met Joseph.
Anyway you look at it, the whole myth is little more than absolute bullshit.

If you accept the "believer" interp, certainly. So i mean note the progression if you will; "believers are obviously deceived, and believers say ___ is in the Bible, ergo the Bible is deception." ? Ok