During The Rain Delay

A cleaned up comment

Note: I really, really wish the new atheists would get a few new hobby horses to bring up because this has been done to death.

Steven Sullivan, the question, which some new atheists, including Lawrence Krauss brought up and not me, was The Virgin Birth of Jesus. It wasn't any other one, it was that one. Remember that, I didn't choose the proposition for discussion the new atheists did.

In logic, when you are dealing with a proposition, you deal with THE PROPOSITION AS IT IS PROPOSED, that proposition chosen by these new atheists is the Christian belief in The Virgin Birth of Jesus.

That the new atheists, once they have proposed that topic, find that they have been unwise enough to choose a belief that was defined by the writers of two gospels and those who believe those two accounts, in a way that puts it beyond the reach of science, have only shown their own lack of insight and foresight. I'll deal with that below.

This inevitably leads them to find they are unhappy with their choice if they find their opponent is logical enough to be able to point that out to them and insist that they stick to their own, chosen proposition in the argument.

The continually manifested habit of trying to change the proposition mid-argument, which I've never not found to be the recourse of the new atheist who finds themselves unable to press their point using science, doesn't do anything but show that they want to twist the requirements of logic to suit their own ends, which is what they are continually accusing religious believers of doing.

Then the new atheist begins asserting that the person they are arguing with is a Christian who is probably some species of biblical fundamentalist who is, no doubt, a creationist-snake handler who deprives children of medical care, thus causing their early deaths. When you point out that you are not and fully accept evolution as deeply established and that you, yourself, don't happen to believe in The Virgin Birth but do happen to believe in the rules of both logic and the requirements necessary to practice science, they really lose it.

I will say that, this month, having to think through this and the other favorite proposition of new atheists, The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, I'm pretty impressed that the writers of the gospels and the early Christians, who are generally considered as superstitious idiots by new atheists , for some reason came to a far better understanding of the difference between believing in something and knowing something in a scientific sense, than many contemporary scientists and mathematicians. Some of whom are, actually, otherwise quite sensible.

Considering scientific methods hadn't been formally developed and would have almost certainly been unknown to those simple folk, their insight is rather more impressive than that held by many well known scientists today.