Archbishop says Nativity Story fictional

Whoa! A Christian who has actually read the Bible and is honest about what it actually says. I wish he would hammer on that virgin birth story a bit more, but I guess you can't have everything.


Archbishop of Canterbury Dismisses Nativity Scene as Nothing but 'Legend'

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, dismissed the Christmas story of the Three Wise Men yesterday as nothing but "legend."

There was scant evidence for the Magi, and none at all that there were three of them, or that they were kings, he said. All the evidence that existed was in Matthew’s Gospel. The Archbishop said: "Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t tell us there were three of them, doesn’t tell us they were kings, doesn’t tell us where they came from. It says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that’s all we’re really told." Anything else was legend. "It works quite well as legend," the Archbishop said.

Further, there was no evidence that there were any oxen or asses in the stable. The chances of any snow falling around the stable in Bethlehem were "very unlikely." And as for the star rising and then standing still: the Archbishop pointed out that stars just don’t behave like that.

Although he believed in it himself, he advised that new Christians need not fear that they had to leap over the "hurdle" of belief in the Virgin Birth before they could be "signed up." For good measure, he added, Jesus was probably not born in December at all. “Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival.”

He said the Christmas cards that show the Virgin Mary cradling baby Jesus, with the shepherds on one side and the Three Wise Men on the other, were guilty of "conflation."

But in spite of his scepticism about aspects of the Christmas story, as told in infant nativity plays up and down the land, he denied that believing in God was equivalent to believing in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy.

"The thing is, belief in Santa does not generate a moral code, it does not generate art, it does not generate imagination. Belief in God is a bit bigger than that," the Archbishop said.

Williams was speaking live on BBC Radio Five to the presenter Simon Mayo when Ricky Gervais, star of The Office and a fellow guest, challenged him about the intellectual credibility of the Christian faith.

He said he was committed to belief in the Virgin Birth "as part of what I have inherited." But belief in the Virgin Birth should not be a "hurdle" over which new Christians had to jump before they were accepted.

He hinted that decades ago he was not "too fussed" with the literal truth of the doctrine of the Virgin Birth. But as time went on, he developed a "deeper sense" of what the Virgin Birth was all about. And he went on to do a literary-critical analysis of the traditional Christmas card that features, as often as not, a Virgin Mary cradling a baby Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes, with shepherds on one side, the Three Wise Men on the other and oxen and asses all around. Sometimes the stable is depicted with snow falling all around, and often with a bright star rising in the East.

Most of it, the Archbishop said, could not have happened like that.

One of the few things that almost everyone agreed on was that Jesus’s mother’s name was Mary. That is in all the four Gospels. It was also pretty clear that Jesus’s father was called Joseph.

Williams was not saying anything that is not taught as a matter of course in even the most conservative theological colleges. His supporters would argue that it is a sign of a true man of faith that he can hold on to an orthodox faith while permitting honest intellectual scrutiny of fundamental biblical texts.

The Archbishop admitted that the Church’s present difficulties, with the dispute over sexuality taking the Anglican Communion to the brink of schism, were off-putting to outsiders. "They don’t want to know about the inside politics of the Church, they want to know if God’s real, if they can be forgiven, what sort of lifestyles matter more and they want to know, I suppose, if their prayers are heard."

Williams’ views are strictly in line with orthodox Christian teaching. The Archbishop is sticking to what the Bible actually says.

 

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Even as a child i kind of got the impression it was symolic. The problem i see is the lack of creativity and literal thought processes exhibited by Atheists. That scares me more than any religion i am aware of.

 

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Such as???

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For example?

 

IMO, it provides no avenue for hope. Atheism is, to me, an act of deliberation (the trait of thoughtfulness in action or decision). Humans are born with a supposition of something more, possibly not always a higher in an actual being but certainly the implication of what is known as superNATURAL. The term supernatural in itself contains the word natural, not learned but occuring without human intervention.

Honestly, and i can be wrong but Atheism does not come about spontaneously, without being planted or tended by human hand. So to me we (humans) are not born Atheists and i swear i dont think anyone dies a true Atheist, whatever happens in between these events is relatively inconsequential.

Humans are not machines but highly emotional organic beings. But the question remains- Where is the real delusion?

I have read that even Charles Darwin did not die without belief in a higher power, aka Hope. You may not need it now but it sure comes in handy at the right moments. I dont think there is a right or wrong way of looking at this, just acceptance of human nature.

 

How many wars were started by atheists? How many people died because

of atheists? I'd think it would be the other way around, I'd trust those in

religions allot less than atheists. Common sense is a good thing to strive for

when teaching children and respect of what their parents tell them as well.

 

I am the only one in my family who is an atheist. I could never quite get the blind faith down. Even as a child. No matter how hard they tried, I just wasn't having it.

 

I sure the hell didn't!! And I don't think a lot of people think its symbolic just because you do. There were movies made about it, kids shows about it, church programs recreating it, fights in courthouses over it....how was any of it to be taken as symbolic??

 

Sorry cosmictraveler, that is a strawman argument. There is no abdication from crimes against humanity. You are talking about the elimination of cruelty and greed. How would you eliminate those things? I dont think it can be done.

 

In my experience as a rationalist and adeist -some would call an atheist- I find plenty of hope. Hope for my future, my daughter's future, the futures of my descendants; the future of mankind in general; the future of our planet; and so on.

My atheism/adeism** doesn't inform these hopes, however. My humanity and humanist/rationalist worldview does. As a scientific rationalist, I see the potential of our species and have hope for it.

So, I find it difficult to imagine what you mean by no hope. If there's an atheist, adeist or agnostic out there that has no hope, please post here so that we might understand your thoughts.

Again, I have a hard time understanding what you mean. My atheism is a consequence of my rationalist worldview as a scientific naturalist. I didn't begin with atheism and then attempted to fit the world/universe into that conclusion. Quite the opposite.

There may or may not be something to this, but there's no evidence to support it one way or the other. But, assuming that this hypothesis is true -that humans are predisposed to believe in the supernatural- it still doesn't imply that the supernatural exists.

"Super" in this context means "outside" of nature. Not natural. Beyond the natural. In other words, not of the universe of reality.

All people are born atheists. There is no concept of gods until the meme is transmitted culturally. This is a well-documented and indisputable fact, however, if you posit that it is wrong you have only to cite a case where someone was born with an innate concept of a god that they were never exposed to. This should be easy enough, since your claim is that your god is the correct one (I'm assuming) -therefore one should find your god being represented in remote African tribes of the Congo where missionaries have yet to arrive. Or within children born to Hindu parents in India and China.

But, as it turns out, no missionaries have ever arrived in the Congo, China, Polynesia, the Amazon, etc and found that God arrived first.

I can see why it would be beneficial for the survival of your religious meme if you believed such a thing, and I can respect that you actually do believe it. But that doesn't mean that your belief is grounded in any real evidence.

I don't disagree with that statement. Nor do I think that being atheistic/adeistic implies that one is mechanical. Indeed, I've always held that this thing that can be best described as "spirituality" can exist even among atheists. Richard Feynman, who was both born and died an atheist, wrote one of the most moving and inspirational poems I've ever read. I found it very spiritual.

I don't see how it's in the slightest bit relevant what a Victorian scientist thought with regard to what I think (or should think). The "deathbed recant" of his atheism has long been a myth, oft repeated and never validated by religious apologists -the goal, I assume, is that they wish to show how even their (not you, necessarily) "most hated enemy" (the evil Darwin himself, who dared suggest we descend from earlier primate species instead of being specially created by a god) accepted god at the last second.

I've never understood why this should matter to me and what I understand about the world. I didn't know Darwin and much of what I know about evolution is, itself, evolved from his theory -but I've arrived at none of my atheistic/adeistic conclusions based solely on his work.

I will, however, concede that there are those for whom belief in something more than this world is comforting, particularly at their deathbed or, more likely, at the deathbeds of their loved ones. I don't worry about death and I teach my daughter that death is nothing to be afraid of. She's heard me more than once explain to her that it'll be just like it was before she was born.

That single concept is a very difficult one to come to terms with if you've been raised all your life to believe and expect that there is something more after death than that -but my daughter marvels in the fact that her molecules may one day be a part of a tree, a rock, forest animals or even an as yet un-evolved species.

For that I agree. As long as your worldview doesn't impinge on progress or public policy. At that point, only the most rational and logical perspective should be applied.

** Adeism - a rational view based on all the evidence that points to the nonexistence of supernatural entities. I use this new term to differentiate from the disputed definition of "atheist" used by many religious apologists who claim that "atheism" is a denial and a hatred of god as well as other definitional claims that do not fit the rationalist perspective.

 

Atheist regimes have killed more people in the past century than all the religions of the world have managed to do since the beginning of time. Let’s not even count the lesser atheist dictators like Pol Pot or Castro or Ceausescu or Hoxha or Kim Jong-Il. Focusing just on the regimes of Mao, Stalin and Hitler, we have a body count that exceeds 100 million people. Atheism, not religion, is responsible for the mass murders of history.

 

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M*W: John, there is hope beyond the confines of religion... maybe you cannot conceive there could be, but there is. I'm a hopeful person, and I would guess that every atheist on this forum also has hope. Hope is not reserved for people who believe in fairy tales.

*************
M*W: Although I don't see atheism as an "act," I do believe we are deliberate in our thoughts. No one is forcing us to not believe.

*************
M*W: Perhaps. When we descend into this world, we have immediate needs... to breathe air, to suckle, to be nurtured. Beyond this, our needs when we first come into the world are quite minimal. As we begin to mature by just a few weeks, our first fear arises, and that is the fear of abandonment. We fear that we will lose our life support and be left for dead. We need human contact to reassure us that we can survive. The fear of abandonment never leaves us, so we can either learn to survive on our own accord, or we can look to supernatural beings to make sure we won't ever be abandoned. Faith and hope in religion provides this need for some.

*************
M*W: You are right about this when you're talking about mature adults becoming atheist. It can take years of study and research to assume this position. It's not an overnight sensation. In fact, now that I'm pondering your statement, I believe atheism takes us back to our innate fear of abandonment and gives us the hope and strength to believe in ourselves instead of supernatural and superhuman deities.

*************
M*W: John, we are born atheists. Like I said, human babies are not able to provide their own immediate needs for survival, and they won't be able to for years to come, so they depend on other humans for their survival. The fear of losing their survival leads to the fear of abandonment. People who turn to religion for their "survival" are just acting out their innermost fear -- abandonment.

*************
M*W: No, we're not machines in the sense of well-oiled steel. We're physically, mentally, emotionally, and intellectually complex beings. The delusion, as I see it, is our fear of survival under our own "steam" by putting hope and faith in something other than ourselves and in supernatural non-entities. This is where reality ends.

 

That the leaders of these nations may or may not have been (or are) atheists does not imply that the "regimes" are inspired by or informed by atheism.

They share with religion a common trait, which is likely the cause of the atrocities attributable to each: dogmatism.

The continued fallacious arguments by religious apologists that "atheism" is the cause of their atrocities is intellectually dishonest and reveals the ignorance of the proponents of such arguments. Not to mention that the hypothesis that atheism is the root cause of the atrocities committed these dogmatic regimes is belied by the fact that there are millions of atheists that have not resorted to atrocity, genocide and homicide -indeed the incidence of crime among atheists is lower than among theists.

 

Stalin was a God-like figure to his people. This was identical to the previous regimes which saw the king as devinely ordained. If Stalin's people were allowed to exhibit any degree of skepticism, if they showed the slightest lack of faith, they were tortured and killed. He was atheist only in the sense that having a leader higher than him was a threat. Stalin wasn't even a true communist, he was a dictator.

 

tHANK GOD!

 

You might want to translate that for him, [Insult Deleted]

 

John99 are you happy to promote Islam? Polytheism? Hinduism? Greek Pantheon? Shinto? Buddhism? Or only Xistianity? All of these beleif systems have some sort of moral code?

Secondly, I know lots of Japanese and Europeans that have moral codes similar to most Xians I know and these guys are mostly atheist.

 

Say it ain't so!

:splat: