The crazier a thing you believe as a result of trusting your community, the stronger a tie to your community that shows. So when we signal loyalty via beliefs, those beliefs can get pretty crazy.

ScentOfViolets: Yes, the Greeks mistranslated "young woman" to "virgin" in the Septuagint. Standard story.

LemmusLemmus: I was never a Christian, so I don't bear the same deep abiding grudge that I do against Judaism for alienating my family from me.

But why should I be more fond of religion than of any other massively self-destructive folly?

And if you're shocked by my blaspheming the Virgin Mary, you may have some traces of reverence left that you need to get rid of. I mean seriously, think about the storyline here. Alleged virgin. Pregnant. "God did it."

The way this post got started was that I was talking to a friend recently who had been exposed to an attempted conversion by Scientology, and he was shaking his head in wonder. And then he said, "I don't understand how Scientology converts anyone, it's so ridiculous. At least the Christian religion has a powerful story. You can see how people would be converted by that."

I said to him, "I don't see that one story is any less ridiculous than the other. You're an atheist now, but you were raised as a Christian, right? You grew up being told about Christian beliefs, but not Scientologist beliefs. You may not realize how the Christian story sounds if you're not raised thinking it's normal. I mean, consider the Virgin Mary -"

Eliezer: Hindsight bias? No crazier to believe at the time than many truths.

Hey Betty, your disease was given to you by countless little flying monsters, as many as the sands in the desert, but no one can see them. And they make babies by tearing themselves in half. Most of your ancestors were like that.

People not raised deeply in religion (like, say, the Orthodox Jewish community), and who didn't have to wait 'till they were in their 20s to 'come out' as atheist, probably don't appreciate the level of militancy folk like Eliezer display.

Correct. If you were raised in a family of gentle and convenient religion, and you don't like having militant adult atheists running around, then outlaw serious religious impositions on children under 18 (study of Torah for half of each school day, fasting without food or water for 25 hours while walking a couple of miles to synagogue). Maybe then you'll see less bitterness from the adults! D'you think?

Wouldn't support such a law? Neither would I. But bear in mind: Not everyone has a childhood that makes "religion" a cute little teddy bear.

Religion is this cute voluntary thing, with no harmful side effects, that only Scrooge would attack? How strange that anyone would hold a grudge? A bizarre public belief, which everyone repeats, but which is right up there with the Virgin Mary for inherent absurdity. If just one person came to you and said such a thing, you would laugh at them...

This post did start out as just for fun. Sometimes I can feel the world trying to strip me of my sense of humor.

Well, let's see. First, while a mere kick in the pants is not funny, there's a long and extremely respectable tradition of satire that happens to involve a kick in the pants. "The Virgin Mary is a slut, haha" wouldn't be funny.

If you're asking what the higher purpose of this post is, it's right up at the top: If you grow up believing something, or even if the people around you seem to think it's "normal", then you may not notice the inherent absurdities in it. How many people hear the story of the Virgin Mary? How many see the humor in it, even after they become atheists? This is a kind of sleep, and one of the ways you wake up is by noticing that the people around you, and even yourself, are selectively overlooking flaws that would be obvious if the beliefs were only believed by one person.

"Mere messiahs" is along the same line. The point of "Mere messiahs" is not to attack Christianity, because superhero comics have the same problem. If only a single person had walked right up to you and said, "Here's this Superman guy - I really admire him!" and no one else had ever heard of Superman before, then you might be more likely to scrutinize for flaws, and say, "Wait a minute, how does this Superman guy reveal more virtue than a police officer who isn't bulletproof?"

You have to get used to checking all these casually, socially accepted beliefs and moralities for these hidden little gotchas. The point is to wake up and start checking social beliefs for flaws, just as if you had only heard them from one person. To this end, any bit of absurdity you can find is helpful. It gets you into the habit.

Maybe it is "puerile", but it is also much more likely than the common belief.

Right. It's one thing to send up the inanity of the Jesus myth. But it's quite another to cast Mary as sexually liberated. Eliezer, how dare you!

An excellent little story!

Two nitpicks: The rabbi should say ‘AWESOME!’, not ‘NEAT!’. (It has appropriate religous tones, while the modern connotations fit the spirt of your text.) Also, Betty should be Mary's cousin, not just her friend. (That's the traditional Catholic position, although Luke 1:36 is not clear.)

It's interesting that everyone gets into a tizzy whenever someone looks at religion and just tells it like it is, but the same doesn't happen with any other subject. We have some strange reverence for religion that we just don't have when it comes to something like economic models. The fact that everyone is so incredibly offended by religious beliefs being criticized doesn't justify avoiding the topic; we don't need to keep our mouths shut just because someone might irrationally be offended by frank and honest commentary. I don't think that any economist is going to tell you to stop criticizing his favorite economic model just because it "offends" him, at worst he's going to tell you that you're an idiot, and maybe even explain why in detail. But for some reason we as a society afford a kind of sacred protection to religion and tell each other not to even consider criticizing religion because it might hurt someone's feelings.

On the other hand, there's an entirely practical set of reasons to not come right out with the criticism. I fully think that religions should be subject to the same level of frank discussion, analysis, and criticism as any other set of beliefs or opinions, but it may be more practical to soften the message in today's social climate. It doesn't matter whether or not what you're saying is actually offensive, what matters is avoiding the perception of vitriol if you want to get through to people who are easily offended. As it stands, posts like this just preach to the choir and piss off everyone else. Once the reader/listener has a negative emotional reaction you're not going to be able to communicate your message to them, they're just going to block it off and not even digest what you're saying.

Anyway, this post is meant to preach to the choir; the point is to show us choir members that we don't recognize the absurdity of religious myths even if we do recognize them as myths. It's supposed to show that we still treat absurd religious myths as reasonable things to believe in -- that we fall into the trap of protecting religion out of "respect" as I described above. The comments above show that it didn't work 100%. ;-)

Eh, coming from a modern orthodox background but with "gentle and convinient" modifications here and there, that's not all fun and games too.

"Okay... so you're saying that being overly fanatic, absolutely strict in absolute observance of the Torah is a bad thing? But you're saying you believe the Torah is the absolute one true word of God, who must always be obeyed... But, rejecting this other stuff here is fanatical and over the top? uh....."

"Okay, so you're saying times were different then... so you're saying you don't believe the notion that the Torah is eternal and unchanging? er.. the question isn't if you agree with me or not, the question is if you even agree with yourself?"

(Though at the same time, they'll laugh at the joke: "The difference between a fanatic and a goy? Anyone a drop more frum than me is a fanatic, and anyone a drop less is a goy.")

Suffice it to say that in many ways my brain still feels scrambled sometimes. :) (I took the scenic route to rationality, including such things as interest in the occult, and for a while having convinced myself that the biblical flood happened..... on mars. As I said, extremely scenic route...)

Hrm.. I wonder how tied this is to procrastination... I think I ended up procrastinating fully accepting the rational consequences of, well, accepting that rationality is a Good Idea(tm). :)

Sometimes puerile humor serves a purpose. Some people, apparently, still need to be shocked out of their deference for tradition.

Eliezer, The claim isn't that you should not hate religion. The claim is that sociologically, this post is a bit like giving the Hated Enemy a kick in the pants. The point in it is fairly obvious (though, as people point out with the chronology, possibly historically false). People who already want to laugh at religion get to go "har-har", and people who for whatever reason want to not laugh at religion get to feel alienated from whatever it is you're up to here.

It is one of those posts that makes me wonder more acutely what you are up to here. Some months ago I found your writings on the singularity, seriously considered giving the SIAI money, and instead spent a great chunk of time trying to launch a disaster-averting effort of my own. I am still devoting most of my divert-able time toward launching that project because I still think (partly on the basis of your arguments) that reducing existential risks is the most important thing most of us can accomplish. Do you? Is this blog a way to recharge so you can return to the work at hand? Are posts like this somehow part of the research you are doing on Friendliness? Is explaining to people how Christianity could look foolish (via posts like this, which aren't even especially well done or anything) a separate good as worthy of your time as whatever work it displaces? Am I missing a possibility here?

The books composing the New Testament were written many years after the events they describe, so the whole "virgin birth" story may have been made up long after Joseph and Mary were no longer around to contradict it.

"There's a lot of confusion here."

Yes, and I'd say the biggest confusion is construing Mary's promiscuity as an accidental, gratuitous part of the joke. The whole point of the joke is that such promiscuity would be the first, most natural inference to draw were a self-proclaimed virgin to tell us that she'd been made pregnant by God.

a god that can create an entire universe in seven days just to lavish attention and affection upon the peoples of a certain small globe certainly wouldn't cavil at revealing his existence to a heretical farmer through golden plates that require a magical gem to translate

Fixed that for you.

Surely, the repentant Xenu - who ordered the genocide of countless billions of intelligent beings - could, if he chose, decide to reveal the true nature of their sufferings to the denizens of the planet Earth through the writings of a science-fiction author of questionable talent. And clearly the unbelievable nature of his claims only lend them greater authority, because who would ever make up something so ridiculous in an effort to get people to believe?

Eliezer, I'd like to refer you to your post on awful political art. What purpose does the above sketch serve? Is this is a new argument why the orthodox religious christological position is invalid? Are you expressing a newly adopted belief? Do you believe that your readership hasn't considered the possibility that the virgin birth might have been a sham? Or are you just slugging The Enemy good and hard and laughing about it? How is this different than an atheist adaptation of a hymn? It introduces no new information and serves only to delineate the boundaries of your belief group (is it Blue, Eliezer, or Green?) and the scorn that you bear for those who do cheer for your side.

Check of proof: would this have any value AT ALL if "Joseph" and "Mary" were swapped out for "Mike" and "Helen" and "Rabbi" were changed to "Mayor Wilkins" and "God" to "Elvis"?

Go ahead, paste into Word and replace the names. If you so much as chuckle, you are easily amused indeed. Awful Political Art. For Shame, Eliezer.

Am I the first to laugh at Eliezer's scenario?

It's very simple: Mary was much more likely to be a liar than a virgin mother. This is true even if you assume that there are virgin mothers who are their own granny.

And the point is even simpler: don't ignore the outlandishness of a claim just because everyone believes it.

(But I would also not advise you to judge a claim according to an unbeliever's caricature. Make sure it's not a strawman.)

I want to expand on Robin's comment. Some have hypothesized that promoting crazy beliefs helps a ruling coalition keep hold of power because the coalition's repressive efforts can be concentrated on the fraction of the population that shows signs of not believing the crazy beliefs. In other words, they can stay in power by cracking down on those who won't get with the program.

Why not believe you'll go to heaven regardless, and trump mere FAI and mere cryonics combined, so long as you're believing things you want to believe?

Because then I won't get to go to Dresden Codak's Secular Heaven. It's a Catch-22.

Jey, I think the dichotomy between religious and other beliefs (in how much offence disagreement causes) isn't so stark as it's sometimes painted. Random example: US politics; how would a staunch Reaganite Republican react to the suggestion that Reagan's policies were all deliberately designed simply to funnel money to his big-business pals? For that matter, how do biologists generally react when creationists accuse them (in effect) of a gigantic conspiracy to suppress the truth? I think there's at least some offence taken in both cases, and those accusations (rather than mere disagreement) seem to me to be parallel to Eliezer's story.

Caledonian, we should respect people who have daft beliefs for the same reason(s) as we respect other people for. Someone who views people as mere repositories of beliefs, and doles out respect solely on that basis, should not respect people whose beliefs are, on balance, daft. I don't think that's how most people operate. And having some daft beliefs isn't the same as having daft-on-balance beliefs.

Eliezer, I think you improved the story when you softened the suggestion of extreme promiscuity on Mary's part. The bit about crucifixion is (to my taste) an unsuccessful flourish, not least because (apologies for literal-mindedness here) the Romans would not have crucified someone for having his mother claim he was conceived by direct divine intervention. But having the friend be called Betty is a nice touch. (Wasn't she supposed to be a relation, not just a friend?)

The post is not meant to educate, it is meant to offend.

Sometimes being offended is a necessary part of one's education.

I'm looking forward to part II, set in the year 28, in which the rabbi comes forward to the Nazareth Tablet claiming that he, not God, is actually the father of our Lord and Saviour, resulting in a prolonged war of words and claims in the media. Mary will finally win out by signing a 5m dinarii deal to write her memoirs (entitled 'Virgin: My Story').

Happy Bayesmas everyone! Have a rational, thoughtful, productive, faith-free nonspecific secular midwinter festival!