Gaz,
Methodists are NOT evangelicals anymore. They are more accurately characterized as "liberal Protestants". For the record.
William,
William Schryver wrote:Come on, Chris! You don't even really think there is a God, let alone one with a bona fide body replete with all the tools.
I allow that there may be a God, and in fact pray and attend services not infrequently. However, the strongest reasons to believe in God, in my opinion, derive from natural theology, conscience, mystical experience, and the need for a first cause. The Mormon concept of God renders many if not all of these obsolete. I suspect that if there is in fact a God, he is more like the somewhat ambivalent, incorporeal God of Plato/Calvin/Xenophanes than the personal God of Joseph Smith. In fact, I consider belief in a corporeal God so arbitrary that it's hardly worth being agnostic about it.
But, just for the sake of argument, since we know Jesus of Nazareth did in fact have a physical body, and that that body emerged into the world via the womb of Mary, whose sperm swam up the fallopian tube nine months earlier and fertilized the ovum inside her? Or are you suggesting that we should understand something different about the phrases "only begotten" and "Son of God?"
If I were to revive my belief in miraculous conception, I would probably guess that the fetus was formed instantaneously by a flick of God's magic wand, rather than requiring any sperm/egg interaction. The idea that God used his celestial prerogative to convince a young, betrothed virgin to have sex with him before ever having been with her husband is sufficiently atrocious that I think I'd have kicked him in his celestial balls.
-Chris