[SEQ RERUN] The Amazing Virgin Pregnancy

MinibearRex

Today's post, The Amazing Virgin Pregnancy was originally published on 24 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

A story in which Mary tells Joseph that God made her pregnant so Joseph won't realize she's been cheating on him with the village rabbi.

Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).

This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Zen and the Art of Rationality, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.

Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.

Today's post, The Amazing Virgin Pregnancy was originally published on 24 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):

A story in which Mary tells Joseph that God made her pregnant so Joseph won't realize she's been cheating on him with the village rabbi.

This is trivially true, but why don't they?

I think a more useful phrasing of that question might be "what is it about that comment that LW (net) doesn't want more of?" I hadn't previously downvoted it, but in the interests of getting to answer you in the definitive first person rather than the hypothetical third, I just went back and did so.

I read AlexMennen's comment and ask myself: are they attempting to suggest that Luke 1:26-38 was originally intended as a mundane story about a local king taking one of his subjects as a mate, and is being misunderstood as a supernatural story due to ... (read more)