The problems with the haploid notion are plentiful. A haploid child would be a female, possibly small, and probably sterile. Haploid offspring are incredibly rare, mostly a science fictional concept. Such a small female child would have been detected as female rapidly and certainly by the eighth day. Someone will likely suggest that Jesus was female and disguised as male (false beard), but that is a preposterous conspiracy idea.
If you want a male, you need a Y chromosome. (Oddly enough, a Y looks a lot like an incomplete X; start with XX and damage one of them?) (Or maybe someone got Mary drunk and raped her, and she didn't remember anything about it the next day? No, that has a bad taste.)
Look, I said it was speculative, and sourced out of science fiction, and done at 3 a.m., right? This is not me attempting to convince you of some theory that I'm eternally wedded to. This is me playfully speculating on a topic I thought we were all speculating on. Believe you me, I am not about to submit the double egg theory for my next doctoral dissertation. I thought it might amuse you...
The only value of this sort of sci-fi speculation is to open one's eyes to the vast realm of possibilities God could make use of if he chose. And, I suppose, to have a little fun. Some of you picked up on that and are playing along. Some, not.
If you want a male, you need a Y chromosome. (Oddly enough, a Y looks a lot like an incomplete X; start with XX and damage one of them?) (Or maybe someone got Mary drunk and raped her, and she didn't remember anything about it the next day? No, that has a bad taste.)
It may not be in great taste, but at least it's plausible. It's Occam's Razor. Unless we're willing to affirm any claimed virgin birth from history. I suppose there's really no way to say those didn't happen either.
Well, it would have been anti-Semitic if the quote had been:
"Which is more likely: that the whole Natural Order is suspended, or that a minx should tell a Jewish lie?"
Thankfully, that's not the case.
A distinction without a difference, it seems to me. The pretty clear implication of the quote as you gave it—and was there a reason you gave the quote without attribution?—is that it’s not surprising when
a “Jewish minx” lies.
What would save it from being anti-Semitic would be to omit “Jewish” altogether. The misogyny would still be there, though.
It may not be in great taste, but at least it's plausible. It's Occam's Razor.
Is it? Occam’s razor says that the explanation that requires the fewest elements or assumptions is likely the correct explanation. Arguably, that there actually was a virgin birth requires only two elements or assumptions—that there is a God and that God suspended the laws of nature. The “lie” explanation, at least as stated, similarly requires at least two elements assumptions—that Mary was a “minx” and that she lied. So maybe it’s a wash in that regard.
The quote as given also seems to assume that suspending the laws of nature or a lie told
by a Jewish minx
are the only two choices.
I guess it all depends on what one thinks the question is. To my mind, the question is perhaps no so much was there a virgin birth, but rather why did the early church believe there had been a virgin birth? A lie
told by a “Jewish minx”
seems an inadequate explanation for that phenomenon.
The_Riv has done that. It would be perfectly possible to say, 'I don't believe in the Virgin Birth' without being either misogynistic or antisemitic.
I took @Lamb Chopped's speculations as a thought-experiment. Yes, I did find them a bit 'angels dancing on the head of a pin' but it's easy to get into that kind of territory and I often do so myself.
Well, it would have been anti-Semitic if the quote had been:
"Which is more likely: that the whole Natural Order is suspended, or that a minx should tell a Jewish lie?"
Thankfully, that's not the case.
A distinction without a difference, it seems to me. The pretty clear implication of the quote as you gave it—and was there a reason you gave the quote without attribution?—is that it’s not surprising
when a “Jewish minx” lies.
What would save it from being anti-Semitic would be to omit “Jewish” altogether. The misogyny would still be there, though.
I'll simply repeat for this Hitchens quote what I said about @HarryCH's post: it may not be in great taste, but at least it's plausible. There's no particular reason I didn't offer an attribution.
It may not be in great taste, but at least it's plausible. It's Occam's Razor.
Is it? Occam’s razor says that the explanation that requires the fewest elements or assumptions is likely the correct explanation. Arguably, that there actually was a virgin birth requires only two elements or assumptions—that there is a God and that God suspended the laws of nature. The “lie” explanation, at least as stated, similarly requires at least two elements assumptions—that Mary was a “minx” and that she lied. So maybe it’s a wash in that regard.
The quote as given also seems to assume that suspending the laws of nature or a lie told by
a Jewish minx
are the only two choices.
I guess it all depends on what one thinks the question is. To my mind, the question is perhaps no so much was there a virgin birth, but rather why did the early church believe there had been a virgin birth? A lie told
by a “Jewish minx”
seems an inadequate explanation for that phenomenon.
Well, I'm not sure how easily you can balance the existence if God with the existence a young woman (of whatever character), which would seem to precede a balancing of God suspending the whole natural order and a young woman lying about a pregnancy. If you could establish the existence of God, any notion of a so-called natural order would be moot. These are hardly apples to apples issues. It's the natural to the supernatural. It seems to me that fundamental biology (an empirically-based science) should win the day where a pregnancy is concerned.
The_Riv has done that [ruined the mood?]. It would be perfectly possible to say, 'I don't believe in the Virgin Birth' without being either misogynistic or antisemitic.
I took @Lamb Chopped's speculations as a thought-experiment. Yes, I did find them a bit 'angels dancing on the head of a pin' but it's easy to get into that kind of territory and I often do so myself.
The mood? LOL. Those weren’t my words, @Gamma Gamaliel. They were Christopher Hitchens’.
@The_Riv your post above contains antisemitic and misogynistic language. In accordance with the forum guidelines I have placed it behind a cut.
It is apparently a specific quote from David Hume in the context of a debate with Christopher Hitchens. If slurs *need* to be referenced in the first place. - then there should be hidden text with a content warning.
Secondly - quotes should say where they come from.
Thirdly, if this wasn’t a quote - but direct comment - it would have been a c1 violation.
Well, I'm not sure how easily you can balance the existence if God with the existence a young woman (of whatever character), . . .
That’s not the choice offered by the quote, though. The choice offered by the quote is the existence of God vs. a specific woman having a wanton and dishonest character. While you may say there’s no evidence of the former, I’d say there’s no evidence of the latter, beyond the evidence that she was betrothed but not yet married when she became pregnant.
Those weren’t my words, @Gamma Gamaliel. They were Christopher Hitchens’.
Sorry, but when you offer them without attribution and without any comment or framing, it is quite reasonable to take them as expressing your opinion. They become your words, or at least there is high risk they’ll be read as your words.
If I may, this link discusses the origin, it isn't Hume. It's Hichens a la Hume, allegedly. That does Hume a great disservice. And makes Hichens disappoint.
The relevance? I was responding to your comments about the 'hypostases' within the Godhead. You seemed to be suggesting that they were 'masks' or 'layers' of some kind.
I’m talking about how the physical necessities were handled. We’ve got no idea whether God used two eggs (with suitable modifications), whether he created a single sperm equivalent and then let things carry on normally, or whether he said “Why bother?” And simply doubled the chromosomes at some point, again with suitable modifications (including the provision of a Y chromosome). And there would have to be modifications to avoid any lethal genes being doubled, as well as something to carry out the role of paternal imprinting, and so on and so forth. Obviously the Spirit would know better than us what needed doing. But as he hasn’t chosen to tell us the details, and all we know is that Jesus has no human father, several scenarios are possible. And the point at which the two natures joined would be different depending on the point at which the human nature came into being. You said simply “Mary’s egg,” which would be fine after the Spirit does whatever he chooses to do with it by way of fertilization; but couldn’t happen when the egg was simply an ordinary egg, because at that stage there is no individual human nature to be joined to—an ordinary egg is haploid and not yet a new individual human. That’s why I didn’t simply accept your phrase “Mary’s egg.” As it stood, it sounded like nothing more needed to happen physically.
This an amazing post. Just wow. Why bother with all of this, really? Why not just bypass developmental biology altogether & put a miniature, fully formed Jesus baby into Mary and just increase its size gradually over nine months? No need for a zygote if you really think about it.
One could argue that that would deprive Him of part of the experience of being human. Or maybe it’s just the way God wanted to do it.
I’m not quite sure what makes the post amazing. It’s just an exploration of various possibilities.
Lutheranism has a doctrine called “communication of attributes” which basically says that, while Christ’s two natures stay themselves and don’t intermingle to form some sort of weird compound, nevertheless the two natures can share the abilities only one nature has by rights—and so the whole Christ is able to die, rise, sleep, be tempted, be present everywhere, and so on. It’s more of a description than an explanation, though.
As far as I can tell, this is essentially a term in English for the Christological concept of communicatio idiomatum. Which (amongst other things) "explains" Christ's presence at the eucharist - it's what is meant by "presence" that seems to vary - in a more doctrinal way - between different denominations.
According to the wikipedia article (and other sources):
Reformed and Lutheran Christians are divided on the communicatio idiomatum. In Reformed doctrine, the divine nature and the human nature are united strictly in the person of Christ. According to his humanity, Jesus Christ remains in heaven as the bodily high priest, even while in his divine nature he is omnipresent. This coincides with the Calvinistic view of the Lord's Supper, the belief that Christ is truly present at the meal, though not substantially and particularly joined to the elements (pneumatic presence). Lutherans, on the other hand, describe a union in which the divine and the human natures share their predicates more fully. Lutheran scholastics of the 17th century called the Reformed doctrine that Christ's divine nature is outside or beyond his human nature the extra calvinisticum. They spoke of the genus maiestaticum, the view that Jesus Christ's human nature becomes "majestic", suffused with the qualities of the divine nature. Therefore, in the eucharist the human, bodily presence of Jesus Christ is "in, within, under" the elements (sacramental union).
Well, I'm not sure how easily you can balance the existence if God with the existence a young woman (of whatever character), . . .
That’s not the choice offered by the quote, though. The choice offered by the quote is the existence of God vs. a specific woman having a wanton and dishonest character. While you may say there’s no evidence of the former, I’d say there’s no evidence of the latter, beyond the evidence that she was betrothed but not yet married when she became pregnant.
Can we agree that the choice offered by the quote proposes an imbalance of likelihood or probability? Claims of virgin birth being fairly commonplace across the ancient worlds of religion and/or power, pre-church associates of Jesus' family may not have been as impressed with it as much as some among us to day undoubtedly are. I't not important to Paul. Same with Peter. Same with Jesus. We can't say that nobody back then cared, but on the surface, few seemed to. Even Herod never mentioned it. Yet, here we are, in full 21st century knowledge of the requirements for human reproduction, yet blissfully setting it aside for something so wildly obtuse -- something that everything in our biological arsenal tells us cannot happen. That's a detachment from reality I can't access. But back to probabilities:
Have Mary-aged girls from across history become pregnant? Yes.
Have Mary-aged girls of every race/nation/creed across history become pregnant? Yes.
Have Mary-aged girls of every moral category across history become pregnant? Yes.
Have Mary-aged girls in any/all of the above categories across history ever lied? Yes.
Have Mary-aged girls ever framed men for pregnancies? Yes.
Have Mary-aged girls ever trapped men into relationships via pregnancies? Yes.
Have Mary-aged girls ever been "put away" to fulfill their pregnancies? Yes.
And so on, and so on, but backtrack for a second:
Can we prove that the supernatural exists?
Can we prove that the supernatural includes gods?
Can we prove that the Natural Order has ever been suspended by any aspect of the supernatural?
Those weren’t my words, @Gamma Gamaliel. They were Christopher Hitchens’.
Sorry, but when you offer them without attribution and without any comment or framing, it is quite reasonable to take them as expressing your opinion. They become your words, or at least there is high risk they’ll be read as your words.
Clearly I should have attributed the quote. Even so, it was in quotations, which should have at least communicated on some level that I wasn't the original speaker. Regardless, I stand corrected, now.
I have heard of such reports before. If I recall correctly, one involved a teenage girl who had been in a swimming pool along with some teenage boys (who may have misbehaved privately) and was found to be pregnant, claiming to be a virgin. The joke is that someone awarded "Father of the Year" to the swimming pool.
All of this seems to me to be in questionable taste. Maybe we should return to the original topic. Did Jesus believe the world was flat? For a Christian, the answer is: wait a short while, die and then ask him. If you are impatient to know, ask yourself why it matters.
He was a natural genius across the board, EQ & therefore IQ. Obvious at the age of 12. Very well read in his culture, and he couldn't have not picked up on any cross current which would have washed through the upper reaches, on down, of that culture for the previous 400 years. Including the earth's sphericity.
According to the wikipedia article (and other sources):
Reformed and Lutheran Christians are divided on the communicatio idiomatum. In Reformed doctrine, the divine nature and the human nature are united strictly in the person of Christ. According to his humanity, Jesus Christ remains in heaven as the bodily high priest, even while in his divine nature he is omnipresent. This coincides with the Calvinistic view of the Lord's Supper, the belief that Christ is truly present at the meal, though not substantially and particularly joined to the elements (pneumatic presence). Lutherans, on the other hand, describe a union in which the divine and the human natures share their predicates more fully. Lutheran scholastics of the 17th century called the Reformed doctrine that Christ's divine nature is outside or beyond his human nature the extra calvinisticum. They spoke of the genus maiestaticum, the view that Jesus Christ's human nature becomes "majestic", suffused with the qualities of the divine nature. Therefore, in the eucharist the human, bodily presence of Jesus Christ is "in, within, under" the elements (sacramental union).
Well the post Resurrection appearances suggest that his body was transformed/glorified and not subject to the laws of nature as we know them at the moment. As ours will be according to Paul.
According to the wikipedia article (and other sources):
Reformed and Lutheran Christians are divided on the communicatio idiomatum. In Reformed doctrine, the divine nature and the human nature are united strictly in the person of Christ. According to his humanity, Jesus Christ remains in heaven as the bodily high priest, even while in his divine nature he is omnipresent. This coincides with the Calvinistic view of the Lord's Supper, the belief that Christ is truly present at the meal, though not substantially and particularly joined to the elements (pneumatic presence). Lutherans, on the other hand, describe a union in which the divine and the human natures share their predicates more fully. Lutheran scholastics of the 17th century called the Reformed doctrine that Christ's divine nature is outside or beyond his human nature the extra calvinisticum. They spoke of the genus maiestaticum, the view that Jesus Christ's human nature becomes "majestic", suffused with the qualities of the divine nature. Therefore, in the eucharist the human, bodily presence of Jesus Christ is "in, within, under" the elements (sacramental union).
Well the post Resurrection appearances suggest that his body was transformed/glorified and not subject to the laws of nature as we know them at the moment. As ours will be according to Paul.
To @The_Riv on "probabilities" re Mary and the Virgin Birth, this doctrine is predicated on the concept that Jesus was and is the Incarnate Son of God in the first place. (Apart from Muslims, who also believe it, though they believe He was only a prophet, but that's the one big exception, and they also believe in God and in the supernatural.)
I don't think anyone on this thread is arguing that Jesus was only a man, with no exceptional Divine attributes, and also was born of a virgin.
One could believe that Jesus was only a man, and that the stories of not only an actual Virgin Birth, but even the claim that Mary claimed it was a Virgin Birth, was part of some sort of early Christian mythologizing, without the accusation that Mary claimed God made her pregnant when He did not.
I myself believe in the Virgin Birth, but if I did not, I think I would say that the same documents which claim she said it was are also the ones with the miracles in the first place, so why impugn this person from millennia ago?
Well. Exhibiting the signs of crucifixion without apparently suffering from them, and passing through locked doors (John 20.19-20), and, apparently, an ability to disappear (Luke 24.31). There may or may not have been others not reported, or the ones enumerated may or may not have been repeated on more than one occasion.
Well. Exhibiting the signs of crucifixion without apparently suffering from them, and passing through locked doors (John 20.19-20), and, apparently, an ability to disappear (Luke 24.31). There may or may not have been others not reported, or the ones enumerated may or may not have been repeated on more than one occasion.
The first one is good. But supernatural? Heroin can buck you up.
It doesn't say he passed through locked doors, not even the one. It says he appeared. That doesn't require an unnatural body. Just something unnatural happening to it.
OK if you want to be that literal, he appears in the room even though the door was locked. IMO the ability to appear in that way is just as unnatural for a body as passing through locked doors.
(And yes heroin can buck you up but not, I think, for a week or longer following a day spent nailed to a cross.)
Well the post Resurrection appearances suggest that his body was transformed/glorified and not subject to the laws of nature as we know them at the moment. As ours will be according to Paul.
Well. Exhibiting the signs of crucifixion without apparently suffering from them, and passing through locked doors (John 20.19-20), and, apparently, an ability to disappear (Luke 24.31). There may or may not have been others not reported, or the ones enumerated may or may not have been repeated on more than one occasion.
Given the doctrinal significance of miracles, I suggest that His post-resurrection appearances, though somewhat miraculous, demonstrate the rather more profound and consequential miracle that having died, He was humanly alive.
Wow ! As a newcomer to SoF I had no idea a simple question would start so much conversation, much of which is way above my head.
I know Jesus as my personal saviour and have no problem accepting his omniscience in my life today. It's by no means central to my faith, but I admit I am curious how much of that knowledge he had for those 33 years in Galilee, and Purgatory seemed as good a place as any to see who shares that curiosity. Sadly all I've really learnt is that the spherical nature of the earth was at least partly known in biblical times !
I think that many churches hold that when God was incarnate as Jesus, he in some way set aside his omniscience so he could be fully human. But the language used to describe that gets very complex and philosophical.
Trying to define the trinity - God as father, son and spirit - exactly what that means, has been disputed since the birth of Christianity I believe; technically I think it was a dispute over the trinity that finally split the Roman Catholics from the Orthodox Church about 1000 years ago (though I suspect secular power politics had a lot to do with it).
Mind you, I’m a Quaker, and our RC and Orthodox shipmates would be better informed on that than me.
I think that many churches hold that when God was incarnate as Jesus, he in some way set aside his omniscience so he could be fully human. But the language used to describe that gets very complex and philosophical.
Trying to define the trinity - God as father, son and spirit - exactly what that means, has been disputed since the birth of Christianity I believe; technically I think it was a dispute over the trinity that finally split the Roman Catholics from the Orthodox Church about 1000 years ago (though I suspect secular power politics had a lot to do with it).
Mind you, I’m a Quaker, and our RC and Orthodox shipmates would be better informed on that than me.
Yes, it’s the filoque clause, whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone (EO), or from the Father and the Son (RC).
Q: Who delivers presents on the anniversary of the Great Schism?
A: Filioque Claus.
Cubby was also a Quaker, though since we went to my Episcopal church, sometimes he called himself a Quaker-palian.
Sure the Great Schism was as much, if not more, about power politics than about theology. The issues had been rumbling on for a good few centuries before the divorce took place.
The earlier Schism between those who accepted the Council of Chalcedon and those who didn't was equally entangled in politics.
Sadly.
Where there are people, there's politics.
What's scandalous isn't so much that these splits occurred but that they continue.
Claims of virgin birth being fairly commonplace across the ancient worlds of religion and/or power, pre-church associates of Jesus' family may not have been as impressed with it as much as some among us to day undoubtedly are.
Citation needed.
There are stories of gods having children with mortals, but offhand I can't think of virgin births where the god was involved non-carnally. Claims to have found such things usually stem from eccentrics looking for parallels to Christianity and finding what they were looking for; most of the even-halfway plausible examples postdate Christianity.
Have Mary-aged girls ever framed men for pregnancies? Yes.
Have Mary-aged girls ever trapped men into relationships via pregnancies? Yes.
I don't see the relevance of this point to the situation in the gospels (Mary is betrothed to Joseph; her pregnancy and presumed infidelity put that at risk - she's not trapping anyone); it is a situation far more common in the over-heated imagination of misogynists than in real life.
Word to the wise: if you've just tried to rebut the suspicion of misogyny repeating canards about young women framing or trapping men is not a good move.
Anyway, people lie. The real question is whether they lie and are believed. And I don't think that if a young woman explained that the reason she's pregnant is that an angel appeared to her and told her it would happen it would be widely believed at any time in history. People in the ancient world knew the facts of life.
If the only alternatives were supernatural or everyone believed it at the time I'd be reminded of Chesterton's remark along the lines that he'd find it considerably easier to believe that Gladstone saw a ghost than that Gladstone, on being introduced to Queen Victoria, did a couple of cartwheels and then called her Missus.
But then, those are not the only options. Believing biblical critics who don't want to make claims that presuppose belief, and secularists who don't want to parade their misogyny, would generally say that the story comes from the early church after Jesus's death, and is patterned as a one-up on the stories of Sarah and Hannah. Luke is alluding to Hannah in the way he tells the story.
The gospel tells us an angel told Mary she would become pregnant. It also says she did become pregnant. It does not tell us how that happened. We are free to draw our own conclusions.
But the implication is that it was not by the usual means. Otherwise why the question, 'How can this be when I know not a man?'
Besides, people who become pregnant in the usual way don't generally have an angel appear to them to let them know that's going to happen.
Whether we accept the story as 'Gospel' or as a story concocted by the early Christians, the whole tone of it - the echoes of the Old Testament stories of Sarah and Hannah etc - suggests something unusual and special.
To @The_Riv on "probabilities" re Mary and the Virgin Birth, this doctrine is predicated on the concept that Jesus was and is the Incarnate Son of God in the first place. (Apart from Muslims, who also believe it, though they believe He was only a prophet, but that's the one big exception, and they also believe in God and in the supernatural.)
I don't think anyone on this thread is arguing that Jesus was only a man, with no exceptional Divine attributes, and also was born of a virgin.
One could believe that Jesus was only a man, and that the stories of not only an actual Virgin Birth, but even the claim that Mary claimed it was a Virgin Birth, was part of some sort of early Christian mythologizing, without the accusation that Mary claimed God made her pregnant when He did not.
I myself believe in the Virgin Birth, but if I did not, I think I would say that the same documents which claim she said it was are also the ones with the miracles in the first place, so why impugn this person from millennia ago?
That's all I have to say here, really.
Well, a wayward mind like mine, albeit somewhat tortured, is free to consider other possibilities:
--Mary could have been a virgin, and Jesus was born both human and divine.
--Mary could have been a virgin, and Jesus was born merely human and deified during his upbringing or after his death.
--Mary could have been a virgin, and Jesus was born merely human and remained merely human, though a genius-level human with exemplary executive skills.
--Mary could not have been a virgin, and Jesus was born both human and divine.
--Mary could not have been a virgin, and Jesus was born merely human and deified during his upbringing or after his death.
--Mary could not have been a virgin, and Jesus was born merely human and remained merely human, though a genius-level human with exemplary executive skills.
I dunno. Sorry. I'm tired today. I suppose my basic position right now is that there are so many human-ly viable avenues that can arrive at a girl's pregnancy that the supernatural is an unreasonable(?) choice. It reminds me of the alleged conversation between Pierre Laplace and Napoleon when Laplace presented his work on Celestial Mechanics to the then Emperor. Napoleon commented curiously about the absence of God from Laplace's work. Laplace is said to have responded that he had no need for that hypothesis.
Comments
If you want a male, you need a Y chromosome. (Oddly enough, a Y looks a lot like an incomplete X; start with XX and damage one of them?) (Or maybe someone got Mary drunk and raped her, and she didn't remember anything about it the next day? No, that has a bad taste.)
Look, I said it was speculative, and sourced out of science fiction, and done at 3 a.m., right? This is not me attempting to convince you of some theory that I'm eternally wedded to. This is me playfully speculating on a topic I thought we were all speculating on. Believe you me, I am not about to submit the double egg theory for my next doctoral dissertation. I thought it might amuse you...
The only value of this sort of sci-fi speculation is to open one's eyes to the vast realm of possibilities God could make use of if he chose. And, I suppose, to have a little fun. Some of you picked up on that and are playing along. Some, not.
Well, it would have been anti-Semitic if the quote had been:
Thankfully, that's not the case. It may not be in great taste, but at least it's plausible. It's Occam's Razor. Unless we're willing to affirm any claimed virgin birth from history. I suppose there's really no way to say those didn't happen either.
(ETA hidden text, see host post below, DT Admin)
What would save it from being anti-Semitic would be to omit “Jewish” altogether. The misogyny would still be there, though.
(ETA hidden text, see host post below, DT Admin)
Is it? Occam’s razor says that the explanation that requires the fewest elements or assumptions is likely the correct explanation. Arguably, that there actually was a virgin birth requires only two elements or assumptions—that there is a God and that God suspended the laws of nature. The “lie” explanation, at least as stated, similarly requires at least two elements assumptions—that Mary was a “minx” and that she lied. So maybe it’s a wash in that regard.
The quote as given also seems to assume that suspending the laws of nature or a lie told
I guess it all depends on what one thinks the question is. To my mind, the question is perhaps no so much was there a virgin birth, but rather why did the early church believe there had been a virgin birth? A lie
(ETA hidden text, see host post below, DT Admin)
I took @Lamb Chopped's speculations as a thought-experiment. Yes, I did find them a bit 'angels dancing on the head of a pin' but it's easy to get into that kind of territory and I often do so myself.
Yeah, it wasn’t you I had in mind. Should have been clearer myself.
I'll simply repeat for this Hitchens quote what I said about @HarryCH's post: it may not be in great taste, but at least it's plausible. There's no particular reason I didn't offer an attribution.
Well, I'm not sure how easily you can balance the existence if God with the existence a young woman (of whatever character), which would seem to precede a balancing of God suspending the whole natural order and a young woman lying about a pregnancy. If you could establish the existence of God, any notion of a so-called natural order would be moot. These are hardly apples to apples issues. It's the natural to the supernatural. It seems to me that fundamental biology (an empirically-based science) should win the day where a pregnancy is concerned.
The mood? LOL. Those weren’t my words, @Gamma Gamaliel. They were Christopher Hitchens’.
(ETA hidden text, see host post below, DT Admin)
@The_Riv your post above contains antisemitic and misogynistic language. In accordance with the forum guidelines I have placed it behind a cut.
It is apparently a specific quote from David Hume in the context of a debate with Christopher Hitchens. If slurs *need* to be referenced in the first place. - then there should be hidden text with a content warning.
Secondly - quotes should say where they come from.
Thirdly, if this wasn’t a quote - but direct comment - it would have been a c1 violation.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
Sorry, but when you offer them without attribution and without any comment or framing, it is quite reasonable to take them as expressing your opinion. They become your words, or at least there is high risk they’ll be read as your words.
Or Son-ny side up?
I’ll get me coat…
One could argue that that would deprive Him of part of the experience of being human. Or maybe it’s just the way God wanted to do it.
I’m not quite sure what makes the post amazing. It’s just an exploration of various possibilities.
Ick. Seriously?
Could you expand?
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
@The_Riv please read and inwardly digest my Hostly interventions above. If you wish to dispute them, the Styx is the place.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
Have Mary-aged girls from across history become pregnant? Yes.
Have Mary-aged girls of every race/nation/creed across history become pregnant? Yes.
Have Mary-aged girls of every moral category across history become pregnant? Yes.
Have Mary-aged girls in any/all of the above categories across history ever lied? Yes.
Have Mary-aged girls ever framed men for pregnancies? Yes.
Have Mary-aged girls ever trapped men into relationships via pregnancies? Yes.
Have Mary-aged girls ever been "put away" to fulfill their pregnancies? Yes.
And so on, and so on, but backtrack for a second:
Can we prove that the supernatural exists?
Can we prove that the supernatural includes gods?
Can we prove that the Natural Order has ever been suspended by any aspect of the supernatural?
Clearly I should have attributed the quote. Even so, it was in quotations, which should have at least communicated on some level that I wasn't the original speaker. Regardless, I stand corrected, now.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/claims-virgin-births-u-near-1-percent-study-233303591.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall
I have heard of such reports before. If I recall correctly, one involved a teenage girl who had been in a swimming pool along with some teenage boys (who may have misbehaved privately) and was found to be pregnant, claiming to be a virgin. The joke is that someone awarded "Father of the Year" to the swimming pool.
All of this seems to me to be in questionable taste. Maybe we should return to the original topic. Did Jesus believe the world was flat? For a Christian, the answer is: wait a short while, die and then ask him. If you are impatient to know, ask yourself why it matters.
Well the post Resurrection appearances suggest that his body was transformed/glorified and not subject to the laws of nature as we know them at the moment. As ours will be according to Paul.
What was unnatural about his body per se?
I don't think anyone on this thread is arguing that Jesus was only a man, with no exceptional Divine attributes, and also was born of a virgin.
One could believe that Jesus was only a man, and that the stories of not only an actual Virgin Birth, but even the claim that Mary claimed it was a Virgin Birth, was part of some sort of early Christian mythologizing, without the accusation that Mary claimed God made her pregnant when He did not.
I myself believe in the Virgin Birth, but if I did not, I think I would say that the same documents which claim she said it was are also the ones with the miracles in the first place, so why impugn this person from millennia ago?
That's all I have to say here, really.
The first one is good. But supernatural? Heroin can buck you up.
It doesn't say he passed through locked doors, not even the one. It says he appeared. That doesn't require an unnatural body. Just something unnatural happening to it.
Like the ability to disappear.
I love it that he felt peckish.
(And yes heroin can buck you up but not, I think, for a week or longer following a day spent nailed to a cross.)
I know Jesus as my personal saviour and have no problem accepting his omniscience in my life today. It's by no means central to my faith, but I admit I am curious how much of that knowledge he had for those 33 years in Galilee, and Purgatory seemed as good a place as any to see who shares that curiosity. Sadly all I've really learnt is that the spherical nature of the earth was at least partly known in biblical times !
Trying to define the trinity - God as father, son and spirit - exactly what that means, has been disputed since the birth of Christianity I believe; technically I think it was a dispute over the trinity that finally split the Roman Catholics from the Orthodox Church about 1000 years ago (though I suspect secular power politics had a lot to do with it).
Mind you, I’m a Quaker, and our RC and Orthodox shipmates would be better informed on that than me.
Yes, it’s the filoque clause, whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone (EO), or from the Father and the Son (RC).
Q: Who delivers presents on the anniversary of the Great Schism?
A: Filioque Claus.
Cubby was also a Quaker, though since we went to my Episcopal church, sometimes he called himself a Quaker-palian.
The earlier Schism between those who accepted the Council of Chalcedon and those who didn't was equally entangled in politics.
Sadly.
Where there are people, there's politics.
What's scandalous isn't so much that these splits occurred but that they continue.
There are stories of gods having children with mortals, but offhand I can't think of virgin births where the god was involved non-carnally. Claims to have found such things usually stem from eccentrics looking for parallels to Christianity and finding what they were looking for; most of the even-halfway plausible examples postdate Christianity.
I don't see the relevance of this point to the situation in the gospels (Mary is betrothed to Joseph; her pregnancy and presumed infidelity put that at risk - she's not trapping anyone); it is a situation far more common in the over-heated imagination of misogynists than in real life.
Word to the wise: if you've just tried to rebut the suspicion of misogyny repeating canards about young women framing or trapping men is not a good move.
Anyway, people lie. The real question is whether they lie and are believed. And I don't think that if a young woman explained that the reason she's pregnant is that an angel appeared to her and told her it would happen it would be widely believed at any time in history. People in the ancient world knew the facts of life.
If the only alternatives were supernatural or everyone believed it at the time I'd be reminded of Chesterton's remark along the lines that he'd find it considerably easier to believe that Gladstone saw a ghost than that Gladstone, on being introduced to Queen Victoria, did a couple of cartwheels and then called her Missus.
But then, those are not the only options. Believing biblical critics who don't want to make claims that presuppose belief, and secularists who don't want to parade their misogyny, would generally say that the story comes from the early church after Jesus's death, and is patterned as a one-up on the stories of Sarah and Hannah. Luke is alluding to Hannah in the way he tells the story.
Besides, people who become pregnant in the usual way don't generally have an angel appear to them to let them know that's going to happen.
Whether we accept the story as 'Gospel' or as a story concocted by the early Christians, the whole tone of it - the echoes of the Old Testament stories of Sarah and Hannah etc - suggests something unusual and special.
Well, a wayward mind like mine, albeit somewhat tortured, is free to consider other possibilities:
--Mary could have been a virgin, and Jesus was born both human and divine.
--Mary could have been a virgin, and Jesus was born merely human and deified during his upbringing or after his death.
--Mary could have been a virgin, and Jesus was born merely human and remained merely human, though a genius-level human with exemplary executive skills.
--Mary could not have been a virgin, and Jesus was born both human and divine.
--Mary could not have been a virgin, and Jesus was born merely human and deified during his upbringing or after his death.
--Mary could not have been a virgin, and Jesus was born merely human and remained merely human, though a genius-level human with exemplary executive skills.
I dunno. Sorry. I'm tired today. I suppose my basic position right now is that there are so many human-ly viable avenues that can arrive at a girl's pregnancy that the supernatural is an unreasonable(?) choice. It reminds me of the alleged conversation between Pierre Laplace and Napoleon when Laplace presented his work on Celestial Mechanics to the then Emperor. Napoleon commented curiously about the absence of God from Laplace's work. Laplace is said to have responded that he had no need for that hypothesis.