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Well, I suppose those groups wouldn't have made that polemic because the virgin birth or transubstantiation aren't particularly inconceivable to any of them? Judaism and Islam shared enough Aristotelian metaphysics to make transubstantiation comprehensible, even if false - and of course, virgin births are quite comprehensible. Islam even expressly affirms the virgin birth. The issue with Judaism and Islam isn't so much to do with what's obvious or not as with those traditions' strong convictions regarding the unity of God.
I guess my question is whether there's any sort of "calling a deer a horse" effect here at all? Atheists today have a worldview that makes some of these beliefs seem ridiculous on their face, so it would be difficult for them to affirm them.
However, the people who made these claims historically, and who argued against them polemically, would not have found them implausible in that way. You note a Japanese author whose criticism of the virgin birth isn't that such a thing is impossible, but rather that its moral implications are questionable. Or if we take the Islamic criticism of Christianity - as I understand it, the central Islamic critique is not that the Trinity is obviously ridiculous, but rather that the Trinity is unsuitable to the dignity of God. It's not that the Trinity is absurd, but that it's insulting.
Take this:
I am not sure this ever happened?
Christians certainly compelled people to confess belief in the Trinity - that's not in question. But I question that this was ever something plainly false, with the effect (even if unintended) of revealing intellectual dissidents? Confessions of faith like that are frequently tests to try to discover heretics or dissidents; I just doubt that the logic was ever to get someone to confess something against their own reason. Trinitarians believe that the Trinity is fully in accordance with reason; and non-Trinitarians generally had their own, substantive reasons for rejecting it.
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