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Virgin Birth Quotes

“At present, the successful office-seeker is a good deal like the center of the earth; he weighs nothing himself, but draws everything else to him. There are so many societies, so many churches, so many isms, that it is almost impossible for an independent man to succeed in a political career. Candidates are forced to pretend that they are catholics with protestant proclivities, or christians with liberal tendencies, or temperance men who now and then take a glass of wine, or, that although not members of any church their wives are, and that they subscribe liberally to all. The result of all this is that we reward hypocrisy and elect men entirely destitute of real principle; and this will never change until the people become grand enough to allow each other to do their own thinking. Our government should be entirely and purely secular. The religious views of a candidate should be kept entirely out of sight. He should not be compelled to give his opinion as to the inspiration of the bible, the propriety of infant baptism, or the immaculate conception. All these things are private and personal. The people ought to be wise enough to select as their officers men who know something of political affairs, who comprehend the present greatness, and clearly perceive the future grandeur of our country. If we were in a storm at sea, with deck wave-washed and masts strained and bent with storm, and it was necessary to reef the top sail, we certainly would not ask the brave sailor who volunteered to go aloft, what his opinion was on the five points of Calvinism. Our government has nothing to do with religion. It is neither christian nor pagan; it is secular. But as long as the people persist in voting for or against men on account of their religious views, just so long will hypocrisy hold place and power. Just so long will the candidates crawl in the dust—hide their opinions, flatter those with whom they differ, pretend to agree with those whom they despise; and just so long will honest men be trampled under foot.”

ThinkingCountryWisdomInspirationGovernmentEarthPoliticsViewsOpinionSuccessfulWiseWifeSeaSocietyHonestyGreatnessFutureLiesWeightWineStormHypocrisyVotingDespiseGravitySecularCareerGrandeurPaganBaptismPersonalPrincipleLiberalCalvinismAnalogyPrivateVirgin BirthGrandImmaculate ConceptionFlatter
Book:Some Mistakes of Moses
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“And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away all this artificial scaffolding... {Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823}”

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Book:Letters of Thomas Jefferson
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“Zechariah asks for proof... Mary, on the other hand, points out the obstacles of the angel's plan - she is a virgin - but she asks nothing else... Mary simply says: 'Here I am, the servant of the Lord', ' yes, I will do this.' Later generations of Christians went on to justify God's choice of Mary by investing her with a miraculous childhood and holy parents, making her worthy in ways that we can understand. But that seems to undermine the point that Luke helps us to see: Zechariah was 'worthy,' in all outward forms, but he muffed it. Mary is simply willing. The Magnificat is Mary's theology: what God sees in her is precisely her 'lowliness', which gives her insight into the character of God, whose mercy 'scatters the proud', 'brings down the powerful', so that the hungry can be filled. God's mercy makes space for those who are thought to be of no account, and Mary knows herself to be one of them.”

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Book:The Merciful Humility of God: The 2019 Lent Book
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“The primary leaders of the so-called founding fathers of our nation were not Bible-believing Christians; they were deists. Deism was a philosophical belief that was widely accepted by the colonial intelligentsia at the time of the American Revolution. Its major tenets included belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems and belief in a supreme deity who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws. The supreme God of the Deists removed himself entirely from the universe after creating it. They believed that he assumed no control over it, exerted no influence on natural phenomena, and gave no supernatural revelation to man. A necessary consequence of these beliefs was a rejection of many doctrines central to the Christian religion. Deists did not believe in the virgin birth, divinity, or resurrection of Jesus, the efficacy of prayer, the miracles of the Bible, or even the divine inspiration of the Bible. These beliefs were forcefully articulated by Thomas Paine in Age of Reason, a book that so outraged his contemporaries that he died rejected and despised by the nation that had once revered him as 'the father of the American Revolution.'... Other important founding fathers who espoused Deism were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Ethan Allen, James Madison, and James Monroe. [The Christian Nation Myth, 1999]”

AmericaMiraclesFranklinAmerican RevolutionDeismAge Of ReasonFounding FathersPaineWashingtonVirgin BirthThomas JeffersonGeorge WashingtonJeffersonThomas PaineResurrection Of JesusMonroeBenjamin FranklinDivinity Of JesusJames MonroeAllenBible MiraclesEthan AllenInspiration Of The Bible
Author:Farrell Till
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“1. Mother Universe The world generating spirit of the father passes into the manifold of earthly experience through a transforming medium - the mother of the world. She is a personification of the primal elements named in the second verse of Genesis - "the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." In the Hindu myth, she is the female figure whom the self begot all creatures through: more abstractly understood, she is the world-bounding frame: time, space, and causality. the shell of the cosmic egg. More abstractly still, she is the lure that moved the self-brooding absolute to the act of creation. In mythologies emphasizing the maternal rather than the paternal aspect of creation, this original female fills the wolrd stages in the beginning, playing the roles that are elsewhere assigned to males. And she is a virgin, because her spouse is the Invisible Unknown.”

MotherVirgin Birth
Author:Joseph Campbell
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“[the virgin birth account] occurs everywhere. When the Herod figure ( the extreme figure of misgovernment) has brought man to the nadir of spirit, the occult forces of the cycle begin to move. In an inconspicuous village, Mary is born who will maintain herself undefiled by fashionable errors of her generation. Her womb, remaining fallw as the primordial abyss, summons itself by its very readiness the original power that fertilzed the void. Mary's virgin birth story is recounted everywhere. and with such striking unity of the main contours, that early christian missionaries had to think the devil must be creating mockeries of Mary's birth wherever they testified. One missionary reports that after work was begun among Tunja and Sogamozzo South American Indians, "the demon began giving contrary doctrines. The demon sought to discredit Mary's account, declaring it had not yet come to pass; but presently, the sun would bring it to pass by taking flesh in the womb of a virgin in a small village, causing her to conceive by rays of the sun while she yet remained virgin." Hindu mythology tells of the maiden parvati who retreated to the high hills to practice austerities. Taraka had usurped mastery of the world, a tyrant. Prophecy said only a son of the high god Shiva could overthrow him. Shive however was the pattern god of yoga-alone, aloof, meditating. It was impossible Shiva could be moved to beget. Parvati tried changing the world situation by metching Shiva in meditation. Aloof, indrawn in her soul meditating, she fasted naked beneath the blazing sun, even adding to the heat by building four great fires. One day a Brahmin youth arrived and asked why anyone so beautiful should be destroying herself with such torture. "My desire," she said "is Shiva, the Highest. He is the god of solitude and concentration. I therefore imitate his meditation to move him from his balance and bring him to me in love." Shiva, the youth announced, is a god of destruction, shiva is World Annhilator. Snakes are his garlands. The virgin said: He is beyond the mind of such as you. He is terrifying but the source of grace. snake garlands or jewel garlands he can assume or put off at will. Shiva is my love. The youth thereupon put away his disguise-he was Shiva. The Buddha descended from heaven to his mother's womb in the shape of a milk white elephant. The Aztec Coatlicue was approached by a god in the form of a ball of feathers. The chapters of Ovid's Metamorphoses swarm with nymphs beset by gods in sundry masquerades: jove as a bull, a swan, a shower of gold. Any leaf, any nut, or even the breath of a breeze, may be enough to fertilize the ready virgin womb. The procreating power is everywhere. And according to whim or destiny of the hour, either a hero savior or a world--annihilating demon may be conceived-one can never know.”

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Author:Joseph Campbell
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“Do we have any independent evidence that there were early Christians who did not believe in the miraculous conception of Jesus? [...] Eusebius tells us that in the early-to-mid second century there were certain Jewish Christians who did not believe in the virgin birth. The Jewish Christian sect of the Ebionites ("the Poor"-see Gal. 2:10) [...] Here we must remember one of our fundamental axioms: if we possess two versions of a story, one more and one less spectacular, if either is closer to the truth, it must be the latter. [...] The existence of the belief in the natural conception of Jesus must be understood as the stubborn persistence of an earlier belief in the face of the popular growth of a subsequent belief, perhaps influenced by pagan myth: the virgin conception of Jesus. It is easy to imagine how a natural origin such as everyone else has should eventually be thought unimpressive, especially since rival savior deities could boast of supernatural origins. On the other hand, imagine a scenario in which Jesus was widely known to have had a miraculous birth and someone has it occur to him: "Hey, wouldn't it be great if Jesus was no different from anyone else? That's it! He had a ... a natural birth!" Not likely.”

JesusChristianityJudaismVirgin BirthEarly ChristianityBiblical CriticismChristology
Book:The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable is the Gospel Tradition?
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“With God, all things are possible.”

InspirationalGodJesusChristReligiousSelf HelpPossibilityBibleJesus ChristAll ThingsScriptureSpeakersNot Giving UpConfidence In GodAlmighty GodInfinite PossibilitiesOmnipotentGood GodMighty GodOmnipotenceImpossible ThingsNothing Is ImpossibleGod PrayerBible VerseNever Give Up HopeWorld AffairsAbundance And ProsperityGod Is FaithfulVirgin BirthImpossible SituationsJesus GodJesus WordsBlind SideGrace ChristianMiracles Of God
Book:Wishes Fulfilled: Mastering the Art of Manifesting
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“When I read of the vain discussions of the present day about the Virgin Birth and other old dogmas which belong to the past, I feel how great the need is still of a real interest in the religion which builds up character, teaches brotherly love, and opens up to the seeker such a world of usefulness and the beauty of holiness.”

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Author:Olympia Brown
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“What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry's tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live?”

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Author:Rob Bell
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“The Bible represents a fundamental guidepost for millions of people on the planet, in much the same way the Koran, Torah, and Pali Canon offer guidance to people of other religions. If you and I could dig up documentation that contradicted the holy stories of Islamic belief, Judaic belief, Buddhist belief, pagan belief, should we do that? Should we wave a flag and tell the Buddhists that the Buddha did not come from a lotus blossom? Or that Jesus was not born of a literal virgin birth? Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical.”

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Author:Dan Brown
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“Missionaries in the developing world waste a lot of time and money (not to mention the goodwill of non-Christians) proselytizing to the needy. . . . While missionaries do many noble things at great risk to themselves, their dogmatism still spreads ignorance and death. By contrast, volunteers for secular organizations . . . do not waste . . . time telling people about the virgin birth of Jesus. Nor do they tell people in sub-Saharan Africa - where nearly four million people die from AIDS every year - that condom use is sinful.”

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Author:Sam Harris
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“The dogmatism of science has become a new orthodoxy, disseminated by the Media and a State educational system with a thoroughness and subtlety far exceeding anything of the kind achieved by the Inquisition; to the point that to believe today in a miraculous happening like the Virgin Birth is to appear a kind of imbecile.”

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Book:Vintage Muggeridge: religion and society
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“And speaking of sex, the Immaculate Conception does not mean Jesus was conceived in the absence of sex. It means Mary was conceived without Original Sin. That's all it has ever meant. And according to the tabloids, Mary is apparently the only one who can make such a claim. The Jesus thing is called virgin birth.”

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Book:The Best of Brain Droppings
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“I would argue that the truth of Easter does not depend on whether there was an empty tomb, or whether anything happened to the body of Jesus. ... I do not see the Christian tradition as exclusively true, or the Bible as the unique and infallible revelation of God. ... It makes no historical sense to say, 'Jesus was killed for the sins of the world.' ... I am one of those Christians who does not believe in the virgin birth, nor in the star of Bethlehem, nor in the journeys of the wisemen, nor in the shepherds coming to the manger, as facts of history.”

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Author:Marcus Borg
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“That's why the virgin birth never gets rid of the human mother. The story only gets rid of the human father. So Jesus' life was the life of God nurtured through the Virgin Mary. That's because the virgin birth died as a literal story as soon as we discovered that women had an egg cell. It's interesting to watch what the Roman church did about that.”

HumansStoriesMotherFatherJesusChurchInterestingWatchesBirthDiedCellsEggsMaryVirginsLiteralVirgin MaryVirgin Birth
Author:John Shelby Spong
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“Among mammals, a virgin birth (parthenogenesis) can only produce female offspring, for chromosomal reasons. Messiahs are mammals. Therefore, Jesus was... On the other hand, among turkeys, the chromosomal situation is such that all products of virgin birth are males. So if Jesus was a male, he might also have been.”

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Author:Frank Zindler
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“The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”

ReligionFatherJesusReligiousBrainLibertyChristianityHistoryGenerationsAtheismJesus ChristAtheistSeparationSupremeUnited States Of AmericaMysticalVirginsFoundingWombChurch And StateSeparation Of Church And StateFreedom Of ThoughtIntriguingFablesOur Founding FathersReligious FreedomReligious BeliefFounding Fathers ChristianOrganized ReligionUs Founding FathersFounding Fathers ReligionSeparation Between Church And StateFounding Fathers ReligiousFreedom Of ReligionInfidelReligion GodReligious LibertyJupiterFounding Fathers Anti ReligionFounding Fathers Of AmericaFounding AmericaTheistAmerican Founding FathersFounding Fathers AtheistSupreme BeingDeismChristianity From Founding FathersChristian AtheistReligion ChristianChristian FatherAnti ChristianChristian RightAgainst ReligionFaith ReligionChristian TheologyChristian GodDeistGreatest AtheistVirgin BirthMinervaChristian Freedom
Book:Jefferson: Writings
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“In my understanding of God I start with certain firm beliefs. One is that the laws of nature are not broken. We do not, of course, know all these laws yet, but I believe that such laws exist. I do not, therefore, believe in the literal truth of some miracles which are featured in the Christian Scriptures, such as the Virgin Birth or water into wine. ... God works, I believe, within natural laws, and, according to natural laws, these things happen.”

KnowsBelieveHappensChristianLawScienceCertainCoursesBeliefI BelieveUnderstandingWaterNaturalHard WorkBrokenBirthMiracleWineScriptureThings HappenFirmVirginsLaws Of NatureLiteralNatural LawFirm BeliefsVirgin Birth
Author:Nevill Francis Mott
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“And Christ was born into the world as the literal Son of this Holy Being; he was born in the same personal, real, and literal sense that any mortal son is born to a mortal father. There is nothing figurative about his paternity; he was begotten, conceived and born in the normal and natural course of events, for he is the Son of God, and that designation means what it says.”

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Author:Bruce R. McConkie
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“What I have against religion is that they start you when you are so defenseless. I mean, I was three when they started pumping this bullshit into my head. I believed in Santa Claus and the Fairy Godmother, of course I believed in a virgin birth, and a guy lived in a whale, and a woman came from a rib. But then something happened that made me doubt all of it: I graduated sixth grade!”

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Author:Bill Maher
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