What’s more likely? Be honest

"It is important to recognize that, in maintaining that irreducibly random processes exist, contemporary physics does not propose that those processes are lawless or unordered. Instead, it is claimed that the fundamental laws of physics are probabilistic. A probabilistic law is a statement asserting that, in a particular type of situation, a particular type of outcome will occur with a particular probability."

 Philip Kitcher, Abusing Science (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982), p. 87.

Now, lets apply this law of probabilities to the claims that a child ended up pregnant 2000 years ago and who was likely to blame for it. Mary was only 13 when she ended up pregnant with Jesus. And there’s only three ways that could’ve happened. 

The first is that she had consensual sex with someone and wound up pregnant. 

The second is that her pregnancy was the result of rape. 

And the third is that God did it. 

Given the capital punishment that could result as a consequence of admitting to being responsible for one of the first two options, what's the probability that the  third option is simply the result of someone trying to save themselves from being stoned to death? 

To answer this question, just consider the story of Mary's virginity, for example.  

The Protoevangelium records that when Mary’s birth was prophesied, her mother, St. Anne, vowed that she would devote the child to the service of the Lord, as Samuel had been by his mother (1 Sam. 1:11). (This is like agreeing to marry off your child even before she's born. So much for Mary's "free will") Mary would thus serve the Lord at the Temple, as women had for centuries (1 Sam. 2:22), and as Anna the prophetess did at the time of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:36–37). A life of continual, devoted service to the Lord at the Temple meant that Mary would not be able to live the ordinary life of a child-rearing mother. Rather, she was vowed to a life of perpetual virginity. 

Notice that she was  vowed, not that she had vowed. Her parents had determined this, before she was born or shortly thereafter, not Mary herself.  

However, due to considerations of ceremonial cleanliness, it was eventually necessary for Mary, a consecrated “virgin of the Lord,” to have a guardian or protector who would respect her vow (her vow?) of virginity. Thus, according to the Protoevangelium, Joseph, an elderly widower who already had children, was chosen to be her spouse. (This would also explain why Joseph was apparently dead by the time of Jesus’ adult ministry, since he does not appear during it in the gospels, and since Mary is entrusted to John, rather than to her husband Joseph, at the crucifixion).

According to the Protoevangelium, Joseph was required to regard Mary’s vow of virginity with the utmost respect. The gravity of his responsibility as the guardian of a virgin was indicated by the fact that, when she was discovered to be with child, he had to answer to the Temple authorities, who thought him guilty of defiling a virgin of the Lord. Mary was also accused of having forsaken the Lord by breaking her vow. Keeping this in mind, it is an incredible insult to the Blessed Virgin to say that she broke her vow by bearing children other than her Lord and God, who was conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit. 

In other words, when Mary ended up pregnant, the father who had sold his daughter into marriage at 13, and the husband who had been given the girl as a trophy, both said "God must'a done it."

Part of the problem is that Mary was never supposed to be considered a "virgin" who gave birth to Jesus in the first place. In the original Hebrew text the word “ha-almah” was used, a word similar to the English “young” or “maid”. The mistranslation occurred when this text was translated into Greek, where the word “parthenos” meaning virgin is used. The Hebrew word for virgin is “bethulah” and cannot be found anywhere in the original Hebrew text, meaning that the original writer did not intend for it to be read as “virgin” but as “young” girl.

This error in the text begs the question, was it really a mistake? Or was it purposeful? Taking into account that the word “virgin” is not in the original text it is quite a leap from young to virgin, especially in the context of religion. Moreover if this was only a mistake imagine a world where Mary was just an average, young girl. How much would this change things? On the other hand there are others that argue that it was not an error but that the word virgin was strategically chosen instead of the word young, the end result being that Mary was held above other women and led a holier existence.

In his book Orpheus, the Hebrew scholar Salomon Reinach wrote that, “As early as the second century B.C. the Jews perceived the error and pointed it out to the Greeks; but the Church knowingly persisted in the false reading, and for over fifteen centuries she has clung to her error. The mystery and questions over the choice “virgin” remain unsolved to this day.

But maybe this choice is not such a mystery at all. After all, what is more likely, that Mary was impregnated by a God, or that such a story was merely an attempt to cover up a rape, like the story of both Lot impregnating his own daughters, and Suanna and the Elders? 

Recall that in Sodom, Lot was ready to force his daughters, against their will, to engage in sexual relations with the townspeople.  After the upheaval of Sodom, so the Bible tells us, Lot's daughters end up pregnant after engaging in relations with their unwitting father. 

It's important to remember that in those times, most girls were married off by the time they were 12 years old.So when Lot tried to throw his daughters out to be raped by the crowd, they would have been 10-12 years old. When they tried to "save the world" by getting pregnant by him, they were 10-12 years old

Given all of this, and the fact that the story was written by men who had the same view of women as those who blamed Eve for all the sins of mankind, and the fact that Lot clearly saw the rape of his two daughters as at least justifiable, and he is now in a cave alone with those same two daughters in which only his word will be believed, what's more likely: that Lot's daughters ended up pregnant because they seduced Lot, as Lot claimed, or because Lot had raped them?

 After all, isn't the whole point of the story of Susanna and the elders to distrust what the "elders" say when they accuse women of having tried to have sex with them? 

Susanna was a fair Hebrew wife who was falsely accused by lecherous voyeurs who also happened to be temple priests. As she bathes privately (having sent her attendants away) in her locked and walled garden (of Eden?), two elders, having previously said goodbye to each other, bump into each other again when they spy on her bathing. The two men realize they both lust for Susanna. When she makes her way back to her house, they accost her, demanding she have sexual intercourse with them. When she refuses, they have her arrested, claiming that the reason she sent her maids away was to be alone as she was having intercourse with a young man under a tree.

She refuses to be blackmailed and is arrested and about to be put to death for adultery when the young Daniel interrupts the proceedings, shouting that the elders should be interrogated to prevent the death of an innocent.

After being separated, the two men are cross-examined about details of what they saw but contradict each other about the tree under which Susanna supposedly met her lover. In the Greek text, the names of the trees cited by the elders form puns with the sentences given by Daniel. The first says they were under a mastic tree, while the second says they were under an evergreen oak tree.

The great difference in size between a mastic and an oak makes the elders' lie plain to all the observers. The false accusers are put to death, and virtue triumphs. 

So, like the Elders accusing Susanna, was Lot really raped by his own two daughters, or was Lot just telling a story to cover up his own rape of his two daughter, like the Elders accusing Susanna of an adultery that never happened? And like Susanna and Lot's daughters, is Joseph claiming God raped Mary to hide the fact that he was no different from Lot in his sexual lusts, much as David had for Bathsheba, and as willing to lie about it as the Elders were in their attempts to use blackmail to rape Susanna? 

 Seriously - if you were the jury, what's more likely? Be honest. 

Reason clearly and unequivocally requires us to see the story of Mary's virgin birth as a coverup of a rape by men as lecherous as those who tried to rape Susanna. 

Religion requires us to accept as "infallible" the claim that Mary was impregnated by a God, simply because men have believed this was true, some quite adamantly, even if it seems so far fetched that only a child would believe it - which is what Mary was when this excuse was given to her for how she wound up pregnant. 

Now imagine serving on the jury where you had to decide this case, given the evidence, where half of the jury relies on common sense, and the other half is willing to show you how committed they are to their "belief" that they will literally burn you alive as a heretic for failing to accept those "beliefs" - that Mary was impregnated by a God that cannot be demonstrated to actually exist - as anything less than infallible. 

And here you have the whole history of the war between reason and religion.