I myself have had the opportunity to look at both sides pretty thoroughly, though, since up until my early 30’s, I was a fairly devout Christian. I was never the type, though, to accept things without question, so I have a few shelves of books on the subject of theology. These days, however, I’ve decided Christianity is probably not factual, and I’m an agnostic with a definite leaning towards atheism.

But, I still don’t think theology is stupid. (Note that I’m not saying there aren’t lots of religious people with ideas that are just indescribably stupid. But then there are a lot of people who are convinced they’ve found a perpetual motion machine as well, and who use lots of sciency jargon, which doesn’t make science wrong.)

Anyway, my experience with theology is that when you sift the wheat from the chaff, there is actually some good thinking out there. There is even some good philosophy. I challenge anyone who thinks there is nothing to theology to read and really try to understand Martin Buber’s “I and Thou”. It really gets to the heart of the axioms behind Christianity. Well, not actually Christianity specifically since Buber was Jew if I recall correctly, but maybe Christianity too since they’re related.

And that’s what it boils down to in my opinion: axioms. Some people take it as axiomatic that God created the universe, that every event from start to finish has a purpose, and so on. These people are called theists. Other people take it as axiomatic that things just happen how they happen, that because the physical processes are the ultimate cause, observation of the physical universe is the only real way to gain knowledge, and so on. These people are called atheists.

Furthermore, in the context of atheism’s axioms, a virgin birth is nuts, or at least the absolute biggest fluke of probability ever. In the context of theism’s axioms, a virgin birth is nothing too weird, because physical laws aren’t absolute.

My conclusion is, if you’re going to criticize belief in a virgin birth, you have to take it all the way back to the start, and talk about why it is that you think theism’s axioms have problems. It’s not enough to say, “I have a different set of axioms, and based on my set, what you believe is crazy.” You are really arguing that your axioms are better, but you can’t establish that by talking about side issues; you need to talk about the axioms themselves.

It’s obviously something I’m passionate about, so instead of a lengthy comment, I’ve posted my thoughts at my blog.

What astounds me are not the masses swallowing religion, but those scattered intelligent (sometimes incredibly so) people with the hook on their lip.