Gregisms and Jesusisms

Way back in the mid to late 90's, I used to listen to the Bible Answer Man with Hank Hanegraaff.  After a while of listening to him, I noticed that he had certain catch phrases he would frequently use that were peculiar to him.  One of them was, "The resurrection is the capstone in the arch of Christianity."  And he would use the phrase "pale of orthodoxy" a lot.  It's been over 15 years since I regularly listened to him, and I still remember that. If I thought about it, I suppose I could remember more.

I also started listening to James White way back around the end of the 90's or the beginning of the 2000's.  I noticed that he, too, had certain catch phrases he would use frequently.  The one that sticks out most in my mind is, "in any way, shape, form, or fashion."

I haven't listened to Frank Turek as much, but one thing I noticed about him is that whenever he gives a talk, an interview, or anything, he never fails to say, "I'm from New Jersey."  That has always struck me as funny.  After I started noticing it, I would point it out to people.  Then the next time I'd hear something from Frank, he would again say, "I'm from New Jersey."  It still makes me laugh every time he says it because it's so predictable.

Greg Koukl has been my favourite Christian radio host for most of these years.  I've listened to him more anybody else.  I became so familiar with how he spoke that I started keeping a list of what I called "Gregisms."  Here are some of his catch phrases:

Lookit*
After a fashion
A sense in which
As it were
Such as it is

I've come to the conclusion that just about everybody has little peculiar ways of saying things or particular words they use regularly.  If you listen to them long enough, you start noticing them.  It's especially true of people who give public talks.

I don't give public talks, but I've noticed that I, too, form habits of using certain words and phrases in things I write.  It changes from time to time, though.  One friend pointed out to me a long time ago, that I said "presuppose" a lot.  I don't do that anymore.  Sometimes my speech habits get on my nerves, and I make a conscious effort to change them.  One thing that has gotten on my nerves more than anything and that I haven't been able to break out of is my habit of saying, "little."  Whenever I watch one of my own YouTube videos, and I catch myself saying, "little this," or "little that," it makes me cringe.  The most recent habit of mine that I've noticed is that I'll say something like, "Not only. . ., but also. . ." or, "It's not that. . ., but. . ." or "It's not because. . ., but because. . ." That one is starting to annoy me, so I'll probably try to change it.

Anyway, all of this got me to thinking about Jesus.  If Jesus is like most people, he probably has his own catch phrases, and I wondered if anybody had ever done a study on it or if there's enough in the gospels to pick up on patterns.  I have not gone through the gospels with a fine-toothed comb to look into this, but just off the top of my head, there are a couple of things I can think of.  One of them is that Jesus will often say, "Truly I say to you," or "Truly truly. . ."  But he will also say, "The kingdom of God is like. . ." because most of his parables are about the kingdom of God.

These must be Jesusisms because the authors of the gospels never use these phrases, and nobody else in the New Testament does. But Jesus is quoted as using them in all the gospels.  From an historical point of view, it seems like the best explanation is that Jesus really spoke that way.  His followers remembered it because they listened to him so much.  Anybody who wanted to write an account of things that Jesus said would probably include some of those phrases. They contain his voice.

I'm curious if there are any more Jesusisms one might notice if they went looking for them.  Maybe the next time I go through the gospels, I will.  If you know of any, leave a comment.



*I recently binged watched all nine seasons of Seinfeld and noticed that Elaine Benes also says, "Lookit."  I noticed that one because it's my favourite Gregism.

To be is to be percieved

I have run into a few idealists over the years.  An idealist is somebody who thinks mind and the things that make up minds are all that exist.  There is no mind-independent material world.  Everything is perception.

This idea has always struck me as being kind of crazy.  Well, no, I take that back.  There was a time when I was very young that I entertained the idea that everything was perception, especially my own. I guess I should say that for the last 20 to 25 years, this idea has struck me as being crazy.  I mean it's one thing to allow for the mere possibility and to entertain the idea just for the fun of having and exchanging philosophical thoughts. But it's another thing altogether to take the idea seriously or to actually believe that it's true.

But I've met some really smart people who at least claim to believe it.  Some of them have even been Christians.  I'm not going to go into all of my reasons for rejecting idealism in this post.  I just want to respond to one challenge that is always put to me whenever I run into an idealist.  They always want me to describe mind-independent reality.  The reason they appear to see this as a legitimate challenge is because it will be nearly impossible for me to describe anything in the "external" world without appealing to what's going on in my head.  If I start talking about shape, size, colour, etc., these are all just perceptions in my mind. Since I cannot describe reality apart from my mind, they seem to think that means there's no mind-independent reality.

Let me parody this argument. If there are any idealists out there who think I'm misrepresenting their point when they bring up this challenge, leave me a comment and straighten me out.  In the meantime, here's the parody.

Suppose I challenged you to describe a dinosaur without using language.  Well, obviously you couldn't do that.  Aha!  Therefore, there are no language-independent dinosaurs!  Dinosaurs cannot exist independently of language.  So dinosaurs could not have existed prior to the advent of language.

Surely there's a fly in the ointment.  The fact that I can't describe a dinosaur without the use of language doesn't mean dinosaurs can't exist independently of language.  And just because I can't describe a dinosaur without appealing to perception doesn't mean a dinosaur can't exist without being perceived.  It no more follows that dinosaurs are perception than it follows that dinosaurs are language just because I use language and perception to describe them.

Calvinism and evangelism

I had a discussion on debate.org on Calvinism, and one person questioned me on why Calvinists evangelize since God determines who will come to Christ and who won't.  He was under the impression that if God decrees that some guy will come to Christ, then it will happen whether we evangelize or not.  That makes evangelism superfluous under Calvinism.

I made two attempts to explain why evangelism is not superfluous under Calvinism because he didn't understand my explanation the first time.  I was just reading over the conversation, and I thought my second attempt was about as clear as it could possibly be. So I thought I'd share it with you.

Let's suppose God wants X to happen. And lets suppose that divine determinism is true. With that being the case, there is a deterministic causal chain beginning with God and ending with X. Now, let's suppose that one of the links in that causal chain is Y. In that case, Y has everything to do with why X happened since it was part of the causal chain.

To be supfluous is to have no hand in bringing about a result. But if God uses means to accomplish his ends, then those means have everything to do with those ends happening.

Now when you raise hypotheticals like, "What if Y didn't happen," then however I answer that is going to depend on what we stipulate in the scenario. If we stipulate that Y is one of the means God intended to bring about X, then if you remove Y, then X won't happen.

But if we stipulate that X will definitely happen, and if you remove Y from the causal chain leading to X, then X will happen by some other means, it will not have been the case that Y was the means through which God intended X to happen.

So it really just depends on your stipulations. In my view, God successfully saves everybody he intends to save, and he uses the means of evangelism to do it. So evangelism has everything to do with why some people come to Christ. That means it's not superfluous. It would only be superfluous if it were not part of the causal chain leading to salvation.

You can read the whole conversation here:  I'm a crazy Calvinist, AMA

If you're interested, I did one other "Ask me Anything" thread on Calvinism here: Ask a Calvinist

I also addressed this same subject on my blog once here: Does Calvinism render apologetics superfluous?

By hook or crook

I've noticed something when reading conversations on discussion forums between Christians and critics of Christianity. There are two arguments critics make that seems to be at odds with each other.

When talking, for example, about the historical Jesus, some critics will say that unless we have contemporary eye-witness accounts about Jesus, we can't know about him. Everything else is second hand or "hear say," which is unreliable. And since neither Paul nor the authors of the gospels were contemporary eye-witnesses of Jesus, we have no reliable way of knowing anything about the historical Jesus if he even existed.

But then I've seen other conversations where the Christian will try to make the case that the gospels contain information that comes from eye-witnesses to Jesus. The critics will then go on to explain that eye witness testimony is "notoriously unreliable." They'll cite court cases where eye-witnesses contradict each other, where they remember things incorrectly and get details wrong, etc.

I don't know if I've ever seen the same critic use both of these approaches, so I can't accusing any individual of inconsistency, but from the point of view of somebody defending historical information about Jesus, it does seem like they face inconsistent criticism.

One could avoid the inconsistency by throwing up their hands and saying history is unknowable. Since eye witness testimony is unreliable, and hear say or circumstantial evidence is also unreliable, then history just can't be known. I haven't met many people who are generally skeptical about history, though. I've run into lots of people who set the bar pretty high when it comes to evidence about Jesus, but not as high when it comes to other questions of historicity.

The Supernatural Exists

Here's a debate on whether anything supernatural exists where I argued the Pro case.  I attempted to defend the argument from reason and a version of Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism.  Fun times.

http://www.debate.org/debates/The-supernatural-exists./1/

Here's my opening statement:

Good evening, and thank you for coming to tonight's debate.

My opponent stipulates that I may defend any version of the supernatural I wish, so let me define the version of supernatural I intend to defend in this debate.

The supernatural refers to one of two things: (1) to anything that exists that is not describable by the laws of physics and chemistry, and (2) any event in the natural world whose cause is not also part of the natural world. By "the natural world," I mean the world of matter and energy, or that aspect of reality that is describable by the laws of physics and chemistry.

What I will argue is that rationality and justified true beliefs are not possible if all that exists is the natural. Naturalism (the view that only the natural exists) is self-refuting because it undermines the necessary preconditions for rational thought and justified belief, including whatever line of reasoning lead to belief in naturalism. If we are in fact rational and justified in at least some of our beliefs, then some version of supernaturalism must be true.

If naturalism is true, then all of our beliefs are determined by non-rational cause and effect. After all, the brain is just a physical object that obeys the laws of nature. For whatever belief one has, it doesn't matter whether there are good reasons for it. So long as the brain fizzes in the right way, that belief will emerge. A belief can only be rational or justified if it is the result of good grounds. But arriving at a belief through physical causes is quite different than arriving at a belief through a line of reasoning and "seeing" the logical relations between propositions. In fact, we frequently dismiss the validity of a belief by pointing to its causes. For example, people frequently say things like, "You only believe that because you were born in a western culture." A belief that is caused by an accident of birth is said to be unjustified on that basis. If the fact that a belief is caused is any reason to dismiss it as being justified or rational, then given naturalism, none of our beliefs are justified or rational, including the belief in naturalism because they are all caused by our brain chemistry. The perception we all have of thinking through a line of reasoning is just an illusion since each step in the process is directly caused by the underlying chemical activity in our brains which happens deterministically according to the laws of nature.

One might respond by saying the brain acquired the ability to produce mostly true belief through evolution since true beliefs are more advantageous than false beliefs. So even though our beliefs are caused by blind mechanistic events in the brain, as long as the brain is "programmed" through evolution to result in mostly true beliefs, the fact that our beliefs are caused by brain chemistry doesn't undermine the reliability of our belief-producing cognitive faculties. Our beliefs may not be "rational" in the sense of being arrived at through a process of sound reasoning, but they can nevertheless be reliable.

However, natural selection can only act on behavior. What determines whether you survive and reproduce in any situation is the movement of your body parts, not whatever belief or desire that might be going on in your head. The only way belief and desire could contribute to survival value is if belief and desire determined your behavior. Under naturalism, it isn't possible for your beliefs and desires to affect your behavior. Your behavior is determined by your brain chemistry. The brain fizzes in a certain way, and that fizzing produces electrical signals that are sent to your muscles via your nervous system. Since there is no soul under naturalism, all of your mental events are caused by the brain. The mental events themselves don't cause anything. Each brain state, from moment to moment, is caused by the previous brain state according to the laws of nature. There is no room from anything like a desire or a belief to have any causal influence over the brain. The desire and belief are, themselves, caused by the brain. They are passive and just ride on top of brain activity. The feeling we have of intending to act, then acting on that intention, is just an illusion created by the brain. One and the same brain state might simultaneously cause the sensation of desire and the movement of the arm, but the desire does not cause the arm to move. Since natural selection selects for adaptive behavior wholly apart from whatever belief/desire might be associated with that same brain state, natural selection cannot select for true beliefs or reliable belief-producing cognitive faculties. So if naturalism is true, we should not expect to have developed the capacity for arriving at true beliefs. That makes naturalism self-refuting.

But let's suppose that somehow or other beliefs and desires actually DO affect our behavior. Under naturalism, they can only do so by virtue of their underlying physical brain state. That is, it would not be the semantic content of our desires and beliefs that result in behavior; rather, it would be the syntatic content of the underlying brain state. So we'd be in exactly the same situation. If syntax determines our behavior, then it doesn't matter what the semantic content is. If a false belief has just the right syntax to get our bodies moving in such a way as to ensure our survival and reproduction, then false beliefs would be just as adaptive as true beliefs. If it happened that true beliefs resulted in adaptive behavior, that would just be dumb luck. It would be a remarkable coincidence if it happened that mostly true beliefs were associated with syntax that lead to adaptive behavior.

But let's suppose that somehow or other, even under naturalism, that even the semantic content of our desires and belief affect our behavior. It's hard to imagine how that could even be possible under naturalism, but let's suspend belief for a moment and pretend that it's not only possible, but actual. In this case, one might argue that since true beliefs are generally more advantageous that false beliefs, that evolution would tend to result in reliable belief-producing cognitive faculties. The problem, though, is that for any true belief one might think is adaptive, it's trivially easy to think of a false belief that would do the same thing. For example, one might think that if one has a true belief that snakes are poisonous and ought to be avoided, that will result in a person living longer than somebody who thought snakes were safe and frequently stuck their hands down in rattle snake nests. But it is just as easy to imagine a person who wrongly thinks rattle snake are safe and fun to play with and that the best way to play with them is to run away from them. Running away, rather than sticking their hand in the nest, would ensure the person's survival. Or, you can imagine a person has an innate desire to die by poisoning, and he wrongly and stubbornly believes that fresh fruit and vegetables are the best poinsons by which to commit suicide. That would result in a person eating healthy and living longer. Since it's just as easy for a false belief to result in adaptive behavior as a true belief, there is no reason to think that evolution would produce reliable belief-producing cognitive faculties given naturalism.

So naturalism is self-refuting. If naturalism were true, we should not expect that any of our beliefs would be true or that we'd have reliable belief-producing cognitive faculties. And with that being the case, belief in naturalism is irrational. However, if we are quite convinced that we are rational beings and that we do generally have true beliefs rather than false beliefs, then to be consistent, we must reject naturalism. Rejecting naturalism--that the natural world is all their is--entails embracing supernaturalism--that some things exist beyond the natural.

Therefore, supernaturlism is true.

All Morality is Relative

Here's a debate I had on debate.org over moral relativism vs. moral realism.

http://www.debate.org/debates/All-Morality-is-Relative/1/

I, of course, being a Christian apologist, defended moral realism. Here is my opening statement in the debate:

******************

Thanks to Pro for initiating the debate, and thanks to the reader for carefully considering our arguements.

Preliminaries

Pro did not stipulate the burden of proof in the first round, but I'm going to assume a shared burden of proof which means we each have to defend a point of view, and not merely refute each other's argument. Pro has to show that morals are relative, and I have to show that morals are objective.

Since we each have a point of view to argue for, and since Pro used this round to argue for his point of view, I'm going to use this round to defend my point of view. Then I'll use the next round to give a rebuttal to what Pro said in this round, and he can use the last round to rebut what I say in this round. That way we each have an equal amount of space to defend our views and offer rebuttals.

A note on epistemology

There are two kinds of knowledge: a priori and a posteriori. A posteriori knowledge is knowledge we infer from prior items of knowledge. A priori knowledge is knowledge that is not inferred from prior items of knowledge. Since for whatever items of knowledge we might have, it was either inferred from prior knowledge or it was not (by the law of excluded middle), these two types of knowledge exhaust the possibilities.

It is not possible for all of our knowledge to be a posteriori because if every item of knowledge is based on a prior item of knowledge, that leads to an infinite regress. It would be impossible to arrive at any item of knowledge since there would be no starting place.

So if knowledge is possible at all, then there must be a priori knowledge. Since there is knowledge that is not based on anything prior, the knowledge must be obtained immediately upon reflection. That is, rather than derive the knowledge by reasoning from prior items of knowledge, we have the knowledge immediately just by reflecting on it.

A priori knowledge

There are some items of knowledge we have that could not be based on anything prior since they are unprovable. Those items of knowledge must be a priori. Our a priori knowledge can be subdivided into three categories according to what they have in common and how they differ.

1. First person knowledge

These are items of knowledge about our own first person awareness. Some examples include the fact that we're thinking, perceiving, remembering, and feeling, and what we're thinking, perceiving, remembering, and feeling). This is where Descartes' famous cogito belongs. Merely by thinking, we can know that we exist.

2. Rationally grasped knowledge

These are things we can know about the world outside of our own minds, but they are still known immediately upon reflecting on them. Examples include the law of non-contradiction, that 2 + 2 = 4, and that when two straight lines intersect, the opposite angles are equal. Some of the items in this category require a little more careful reflection to see than other items; consequently, not everybody is able to see them as clearly. For example, one can carefully reflect on a triangle and discover that it's interior angels must equal 180º without having to measure them. But not everybody has the brain power to see that, and they have to either take the textbook's word for it, or measure the angles.

3. Synthetic a priori knowledge.

These are items of knowledge that are built into every healthy and normally functioning mind. Examples include the fact that our senses are giving us true information about the world (which is how we know the external world exists), that our memories are giving us true information about the past (which is how we know there's a past, and how it's possible to have a conversation), and that the observed can be extrapolated to the unobserved (which his how we're able to learn from experience, make predictions about the future, arrive at probabilities, and engage in the scientific enterprise).

What all of these categories have in common is that none of the items in them need to be proved before we can know them. in fact, in most cases, it's impossible to prove them. But without them, it would be impossible to prove anything else. The items in the first category are incorrigible because of our immediate access to our own mental states. The items in the second category can be known with certainty because they express necessary truths, and the necessity of them can be rationally grasped. Once the items in the first and second category are seen clearly with the mind, it is impossible to be mistaken about them.

The items in the third category differ from the first two in the fact that it's possible to be mistaken about them. They do not express necessary truths. It's at least possible that the external world is an illusion. It's possible that there was no past. It's possible that while past experiments have always indicated the world works in a certain way, it may work differently tomorrow. In fact, we sometimes make mistakes regarding the third category. We mistake hallucination with external reality. We remember things incorrectly. We make hasty generalizations. But the fact that we sometimes make mistakes regarding the third category doesn't shake our belief in the general principles.

The third category of knowledge has these things in common:

1. None of them can be proved.

2. It's possible to be mistaken about each of them.

3. We sometimes make mistakes when applying each of them.

4. All mentally healthy people apprehend them.

5. It seems prima face unreasonable to deny them.

6. Even people who do deny them continue to perceive them as if they were real; they merely deny their reality.

7. We all use them in our daily lives.

I would like to be able to give a longer list of items of knowledge for the third category and show how each of them fit all seven of those features, but space is limited.

Moral realism

My argument for morality is that morality fits in the third category because all seven of those traits apply to our moral awareness. We can get rid of morality by denying this particular way of knowing, but in doing so, we will undermined the justification we have for believing in every other item of knowledge in the third category since they are all known in the same way. Since morality has all these things in common with every other item in the third category, morality is on equal epistemological footing. That means it's just as rational to believe in morality as it is to believe in the past, the external world, the uniformity of nature, etc.

Now, let me show how morality fits all seven of the above features.

1. Pro probably already agrees with me that morality cannot be proved.

2. Pro probably also agrees with me that we can be mistaken about morality. In fact, he thinks we are.

3. We sometimes make mistakes in our moral reasoning. This is evident in the fact that people sometimes come to different moral conclusions even when reasoning from the same moral premises.

4. All mentally healthy people perceive a difference between right and wrong. This is evident in the fact that we consider sociopathy to be a mental illness. With the exception of sociopaths, the fact that we all perceive a difference between right and wrong is evident in the fact that (i) we all judge others, which entails applying standards of behavior we think actually apply to other people and not just ourselves, (ii) when accused of wrong-doing, our first instinct is not to deny the standard, but to make excuses for why we didn't violate the standard, (iii) moral decision-making is difficult because we think there are actually correct and incorrect answers to moral questions, (iv) moral relativists are rarely consistent, and (v) we all find moral relativism to be counter-intuitive when we think about specific instances of egregious moral wrongs.

5. It seems prima facie unreasonable to deny morality. The denial of morality leads to many counter-intuitive results. It would follow that no culture is better or worse than another. There's no such thing as moral improvement. There are no unjust laws. There is no objective basis upon which to criticize other people. Nobody deserves praise or blame. Debates on moral issues are just as meaningless as debates on whether salmon tastes good since morality would reduce to preference.

6. Even people who deny morality continue to perceive a difference between right and wrong. They just deny that the perception corresponds to anything outside of their heads. Instead of saying, "Rape is really and objectively wrong," they say, "Rape is wrong for me," or, "I personally oppose rape." But rape continues to be abhorrent to them, and they find it difficult to deny that it really is wrong since it appears wrong to them.

7. Every one of us thinks morally in our day to day interactions with people. Most of the time, we don't notice because the right thing to do is obvious and we do it without much thought. We know we shouldn't steal somebody's wallet, not just because we might get caught, but because it's wrong. We're polite to people, not just because we want them to be polite to us, but because we think that's the right thing to do. Whenever we face moral dilemmas, and it isn't obvious what we should do, then we're forced to think more carefully about morals. We do it continuously throughout the day, but especially when interacting with people.

Conclusion

Since morality fits the seven traits of the third category of a priori knowledge, it follows that morality is just as epistemologically warranted as the other items in that category. If we are justified in believing in the past, the external world, and the uniformity of nature, then we are equally justified in believing in morality. We can deny morality, but that would be just as unreasonable as denying the external world, the past, and the uniformity of nature. So the conclusion that any rational person ought to come to is that there really is a difference between right and wrong that is not merely just in our heads.

Was Dionysus born of a virgin?

I recently had a dialogue with a fellow on debate.org (hereinafter DDO) about some supposed similarities between Dionysus and Jesus. I just responded to one of the parallels, but I decided to do some digging around about the supposed virgin birth of Dionysus. Usually when these things come up, nobody ever cites a primary source, and it's hard to get to the bottom of anything. So I thought I'd see if I could get to the bottom of this one and settle it once and for all.

Through googling around, I discovered that the fellow on DDO had cut and paste from an an article by D.M. Murdock/Acharya S. I read the section on the virgin birth to see if she would cite any primary sources that I could look at. Unfortunately, she cited nothing but secondary sources. But she said, "In the common myth about the birth of Dionysus/Bacchus, Semele is mysteriously impregnated by one of Zeus's bolts of lightning--an obvi­ous miraculous/virgin conception." I decided to pursue this incident to see if I could get to the bottom of it.

To help me along, I posted a question about it in a closed group forum on facebook. One of the people there directed me to this article on pagan parallel saviors. The pagan parallel article cited an on line encyclopedia entry on the mother of Dionysus, Semele, that was written by James Hunter. It says:

Because Zeus slept with Semele secretly, Hera only found out about the affair after the girl was pregnant. Bent on revenge, Hera disguised herself and persuaded Semele to demand that Zeus come to her in all the splendor with which he visited Hera. As a result, Semele asked Zeus to grant an unspecified favor, and got him to swear by the river Styx that he would grant it. Unable to break his oath, Zeus came to her armed in his thunder and lightning, and Semele was destroyed. However, Zeus rescued the unborn child from the mother's ashes and sewed it in his thigh until it was ready to be born.

I still wanted to see it in the primary source, so I kept looking. The savior god article also cited Ovid's Metamorphoses, so I googled "ovid metamorphoses semele" and found a primary source for this story in Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book III. It appears under two subtitles: "Juno sets out to destroy Semele" and "Semele is consumed by Jupiter's fire." Apparently, this is a Roman version of an earlier Greek story, and I still haven't found the Greek version. Juno is the same person as Hera, and Jupiter is Zeus. Other than the change in names, everything James Hunter said in the encyclopedia entry is true.

Zeus had been having an affair with Semele. Hera/Juno "was grieved by the fact that Semele was pregnant, with the seed of mighty Jove," aka Zeus. Since Semele was pregnant, Hera decided to get revenge by destroying Semele. She disguised herself as an old woman and visited Semele. She manipulates Semele into getting Zeus to promise to "assume all his powers before he embraces you," just as he does with Hera. Zeus doesn't want to do it because he knows it will kill Semele, but he can't back out of his promise. Zeus tries to limit his powers as much as he can, but he gathers the storm clouds and the thunder and lightening, etc., and appears to Semele. Predictably, she gets burned up. Zeus then rescues Dionysus/Bacchus who was "still unfinished," and sews him into his thigh until he is ready to be born.

So basically, D.M. Murdock had the wrong idea. She thought Zeus somehow got Semele pregnant with the use of a lightening bolt when in reality, Semele was pregnant already from sleeping with Zeus while he was disguised as a mortal man. The lightening played no role in Semele getting pregnant. It seems pretty clear to me that Semele was no virgin.

It's nice to finally get to the bottom of something, huh?

[UPDATE July 31, 2017]
I found another primary source for the conception and birth of Dionysus.  It comes from The Library 3.4.3 by Apollodorus and dates to the second century AD.  It agrees with the other sources that "Zeus loved Semele and bedded with her unknown to Hera."  She became pregnant, and the rest of the story unfolds as in the other accounts with Hera tricking Semele, and Zeus accidentally killing her with lightening, then sewing Dionysus into his thigh.  So again, Semele was not a virgin. This account gives a footnote that lists other primary sources for Semele and the birth of Dionysus, but I haven't looked at them all yet.

[UPDATE: October 16, 2021]
Here are a few more sources I found on this subject (One from the The Bachhae by Euripides discussed in the comments below).:

Hesiod, Theogony, 940-942
8th to 7th century BC
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/theogony.htm
“And Semele, daughter of Cadmus was joined with him in love and bare him a splendid son, joyous Dionysus, -- a mortal woman an immortal son. And now they both are gods.”

Euripides, Bacchae,
5th century BC
“Dionysus:
I’ve arrived here in the land of Thebes,
I, Dionysus, son of Zeus, born to him
from Semele, Cadmus’ daughter, delivered
by a fiery midwife—Zeus’ lightning flash.”

“For my mother’s sisters have acted badly,
something they, of all people, should avoid.
They boasted aloud that I, Dionysus,
was no child of Zeus, claiming Semele,
once she was pregnant by some mortal man,
attributed her bad luck in bed to Zeus,
a story made up (they said) to trick Cadmus.   
Those sisters state that’s why Zeus killed her,
because she lied about the man she’d slept with.”

“Chorus: His mother dropped him early,
as her womb, in forceful birth pangs,
  was struck by Zeus’ flying lightning bolt,  
a blast which took her life.
Then Zeus, son of Cronos,
at once hid him away
in a secret birthing chamber,
buried in his thigh,
shut in with golden clasps,
concealed from Hera.”

“Pentheus:
This man claims 
that Dionysus is a god, alleging
that once upon a time he was sewn up,
stitched inside Zeus’ thigh—but Dionysus
was burned to death, along with Semele,
in that lightning strike, because she’d lied.
She maintained that she’d had sex with Zeus.
All this surely merits harsh punishment,
death by hanging. Whoever this stranger is,
his insolence is an insult to me.”

Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, 4.2.2-3
1st century BC
http://www.theoi.com/Text/DiodorusSiculus4A.html#3
“[4.2.2] Semelê was loved by Zeus because of her beauty, but since he had his intercourse with her secretly and without speech she thought that the god despised her; consequently she made the request of him that he come to her embraces in the same manner as in his approaches to Hera.

[4.2.3] Accordingly, Zeus visited her in a way befitting a god, accompanied by thundering and lightning, revealing himself to her as he embraced her; but Semelê, who was pregnant and unable to endure the majesty of the divine presence, brought forth the babe untimely and was herself slain by the fire. Thereupon Zeus, taking up the child, handed it over to the care of Hermes, and ordered him to take it to the cave in Nysa,4 which lay between Phoenicia and the Nile, where he should deliver it to the nymphs that they should rear it and with great solicitude bestow upon it the best of care.

Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3.253-272
c. 8 AD
http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Metamorph3.htm#476975709
“She [Hera/Juno] was grieved by the fact that Semele was pregnant, with the seed of mighty Jove. Swallowing words of reproach, she said ‘What, in truth, have I gained from frequent reproaches? I must attack her. If I am rightly to be called most powerful Juno, if it is right for me to hold the jewelled sceptre in my hand, if I am queen, and sister and wife of Jove, sister at least, then it is her I must destroy. Yet I think she is content with her secret, and the injury to my marriage will be brief. But she has conceived – and that damages me – and makes her crime visible in her swollen belly, and wants, what I have barely achieved, to be confirmed as the mother of Jupiter’s child, so great is her faith in her beauty. I will render that faith hollow. I am not Saturnia if she does not plunge into the Stygian waters, overwhelmed by Jove himself.’”

Philostratus of Lemnos (or his father-in-law, Lucius Flavius Philostratus, or Philostratus the Elder), Imagines, 1.14
3rd century AD
http://www.theoi.com/Text/PhilostratusElder1A.html#14
“A cloud of fire encompassing Thebes breaks into the dwelling of Cadmus as Zeus comes wooing Semele; and Semele apparently is destroyed, but Dionysus is born, by Zeus, so I believe, in the presence of the fire. And the form of Semele is dimly seen as she goes to the heavens, where the Muses will hymn her praises: but Dionysus leaps forth as his mother’s womb is rent apart and he makes the flame look dim, so brilliantly does he shine like a radiant star.”

Love and acceptance

One of the points that keeps getting raised by the LGBT… movement in response to Christians who oppose things like same sex marriage and sex changes is that Jesus was all about love and acceptance. They argue that Christians are inconsistent with Jesus' teachings when they oppose these things and are therefore not acting like real Christians.

But that strikes me as being an extremely unreflective argument. Do these people really think Jesus was loving and accepting of just any life style that any person might choose? Do they really think Jesus would approve of any lifestyle whatsoever just on the basis that he's "loving and accepting"? Well, I don't see how anybody who has read the new testament could get that impression. And even if they haven't read the new testament, I don't see how anybody could think that would be a good attitude to have anyway.

But if it was a good attitude to have, then why can't the LGBT… folks be more loving and accepting of the Christians that oppose them?

The idea that Jesus or anybody ought to be loving and accepting of anything is absurd on its face. Surely we shouldn't be loving and accepting of the criminal lifestyle, the rapist lifestyle, or the alcoholic lifestyle. What kind of person would Jesus be if he approved of these things and was accepting toward people who engaged in them?

If you think Jesus would be loving and accepting of anybody, regardless of how they choose to live their lives, you should check out Matthew 23. He certainly was not very loving and accepting to the Pharisees in that passage.

When Jesus was asked why he hung out with sinners and tax collectors, it wasn't because he was loving and accepting. Quite the contrary. He said, "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick" (Matthew 9:12). In other words, Jesus didn't accept their lifestyle at all. He hung out with them because he wanted to fix them. He wanted to free them from their slavery to sin. That is love, to be sure, but it is not acceptance.

That's another confusion of LGBT… people who make this argument. It is not loving to accept somebody's sin and treat it as if it weren't sin. If same sex marriage is a sin, then it would not be loving for a Christian to celebrate it. That would be the exact opposite of love because then you'd be enabling somebody and encouraging them to sin.