Ninjahound, thanks for your post here.  It is always good to find someone more extreme than yourself to help you feel closer to the center and you have done that for me.

I think that you would very much like to have everyone in this discussion be a very fundamental biblical literalist that needs the virgin birth and other stories in the bible to be literal in order for thier faith to have merit.  But you are not going to find that to be the case.  I agree that there are fundamental literalists in the world and I’ll gladly join with you in shooting holes in that belief system.  It is goofy to me also, and it is easy to find holes in their theories as you have done here.  But you really are not going to find that here on in this site.  There are people that come close to that view and there are people that are nearly opposites and there are many in various places between the two extremes.  Not everyone that calls themselves "Christian" will fit into a neat little 700 club type of package that is competely brain dead and has "blind faith" based on stupid logic and bad politics. 

I’m here because I am looking to find good qualities in people that I disagree with and create some unity.  I don’t really expect to change people into something that looks like me.  Maybe if you explain how your views on religion have helped shape your life then I can learn from you and add a few of your good qualities to my own life.