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Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

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Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#71

Post by fsloth »

nocman wrote: post #43
xerophyte12932 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not share his Faith, but I understand his views to be a Leap of Faith. While science is nice and all but as humans taking such leaps and trusting other people despite evidence to the contrary, is every day business, is it not? Of course it is rather hard to believe that such a vast majority of people take such Leaps on not just ONE person, but a whole chain of people spanning over 2000 years!! But he must have h…

No. My views are not based on any "leap of faith". A "leap of faith" implies that a person is believing in the absence of any evidence -- and that is by no means true of me. Eyewitness testimony is used every day in courts of law. It is one of the most common forms of evidence used to determine the truth about things that happened in the past. I am convinced that the New Testament contains multiple eyewitness account…

This is moving quite far from the main topic, but:

Eye witnesses are actually really fallible even in fairly recent cases. You can easily manipulate how people remember scenes and how to interpret what they saw or heard.

Google "eye witness fallibility".

I think you need to go to the original texts to truly grok their meaning in their original context. I believe the King James bible is considered a literary masterpiece - and great literature, spiritual or not usually evokes feelings. The priesthood probably had the brightest literary minds of their time.

Personally I just find it cool ancient literacy can evoke feelings through a span of thousands of years.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#72

Post by olavk »

baddox wrote: post #38
mgkimsal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 4th alliterative option is 'Legend'. Lord, Liar, Lunatic, Legend Lunatic and Legend are far far far more likely options, which require no appeal to supernatural claims.

The three L argument is aimed only at people who believe in the historicity of Jesus, as well as that he was a great spiritual leader, but who belief that there are also other paths to spiritual enlightenment or salvation. It obviously carries no weight to people who don't believe Jesus was a historical figure, or who believe he was a liar or a lunatic.

Among historians it is generally believed that there was a preacher called (something like) Jesus which was crucified by the Romans. But looking at the only available sources (the Gospels) it is not even clear that he claimed to be the Messiah. The gospels are clearly written by people who believed him to be the Messiah, but the quotations directly attributed to Jesus are quite ambiguous regarding the "divinity" of Jesus himself. Notably be appears much more "divine" in the latest gospel than in the earliest, so the divinity seem have been a development over time among his followers. Even if he did himself claim to be the Messiah, it is very different from claiming to be the Lord, since the Jewish concept of Messiah is a (blessed) human king, not a divine being. The concept of the trinity where Jesus IS God is a later concept, not even present in the Bible. And the "Son of God" thing is basically a cultural misunderstanding, because it means something different among Jews (where basically everybody are Gods children) and Greeks (where Gods like Zeus literally had half-human children with superpowers).

So apart from the Liar/Lunatic/Lord trilemma, there is the option "A cult leader that didn't really claim the be the Lord, but his followers came to believe that he was".

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#73

Post by olavk »

nocman wrote: post #43
xerophyte12932 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not share his Faith, but I understand his views to be a Leap of Faith. While science is nice and all but as humans taking such leaps and trusting other people despite evidence to the contrary, is every day business, is it not? Of course it is rather hard to believe that such a vast majority of people take such Leaps on not just ONE person, but a whole chain of people spanning over 2000 years!! But he must have h…

No. My views are not based on any "leap of faith". A "leap of faith" implies that a person is believing in the absence of any evidence -- and that is by no means true of me. Eyewitness testimony is used every day in courts of law. It is one of the most common forms of evidence used to determine the truth about things that happened in the past. I am convinced that the New Testament contains multiple eyewitness account…

Even taking the eyewitness accounts in the Gospels at face value, they are highly dubious. Note that the disciples don't even recognize him when they meet the resurrected Jesus (or they guy claiming to be the resurrected Jesus), and have to see and feel physical proof like the wounds before they even accept that the guy is indeed the resurrected Jesus. An then the guy suddenly vanishes again, without any explanation.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#74

Post by philh »

vorg wrote: post #59
philh wrote: post #6

I think what surprises me most about this is that the Boa produced only female offspring. Per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZW_sex-determination_system - humans have XY chromosomes, with XX female and XY male. Boas have ZW chromosomes, with ZZ male and ZW female. I'd expect parthogenesis to produce unviable WW offspring, and viable ZZ ones. But WW turns out to be viable, and ZZ either doesn't happen, or isn't viable.…

> Boas have ZW chromosomes, with ZZ male and ZW female. I'd expect parthogenesis to produce unviable WW offspring, and viable ZZ ones. If the female is ZW, then I'd expect three possible choices -- unviable WW, female ZW, and male ZZ -- because both Z and W are present in the female.

If I'm reading correctly, the offspring's chromosome pairs are identical, so they'd never get ZW.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#75

Post by olavk »

maaku wrote: post #54
duaneb wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be pretty fantastic to generate an Y chromosome. It think it's more likely she was cheating on Joseph.

It's actually more likely that Jesus as an out of wedlock child that pre-dates Joseph. Jesus was referred to as "Jesus son of Mary" not Joseph, which was the custom at the time for illegitimate children. It particularly contrasts with how his brothers were referred to (yes, he had brothers, and probably sisters). Speaking of which, it's striking that James "the Just", brother-of-Jesus, first-patriarch-of-the-Jerusale…

It is even more likely that he was just an ordinary legitimate child of Mary and Joseph, and the whole virgin-birth story developed later (after the death of Jesus) among Greek-speaking early Christians, in order to tie in to the Isiah-prophecy.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#76

Post by olavk »

zkhalique wrote: post #21
danabramov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very common argument, indeed. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_birth_of_Jesus >The word "virgin" in Christian translations is disputed. The Hebrew word is "עלמה" (almah), which scholars agree means a young woman of child-bearing age, "but has nothing to do with whether she is a virgin", and the context of the passage makes it clear that Isaiah has in mind events in his and Ahaz's near future. Th…

I am actually not sure that the author of Matthew wrote in Greek. While we may not know the original language in which the gospel of Matthew is written, it is written for a Jewish audience and seems to be one of the most colorful, with e.g. many dead saints coming back to life, begging the question of why no one else bothered to write about this stuff. In any event, if this did indeed happen then it's another example…

There are no evidence that Matthew was originally written in anything other than Greek. But Jesus probably spoke in Aramaic (not Hebrew), so the sayings in the text would be a translation, but probably translated while still an oral tradition.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#77

Post by _nedR »

GuiA wrote: post #55
_nedR wrote: post #37

As a non-bio person, I wonder what's the evolutionary reason for this not happening in more species. Sure, sexual reproduction is the way to go if you have the option, but wouldn't a wouldn't a mother capable of both asexual and sexual reproduction have higher chances of propagating her genes than a mother who is only capable of sexual reproduction. (I know I shouldn't be playing these mind games with zero knowledge…

> I wonder what's the evolutionary reason for this not happening in more species. There's rarely an "evolutionary reason" for a trait not developing. Wings would certainly be a net benefit to mice survival-wise; but unless there's a strong evolutionary pressure for such a trait to develop, it's unlikely to appear. It's the same for asexual reproduction: unless there's a strong advantage for a species to reproduce ase…

>>unless there's a strong advantage for a species to reproduce asexually, it's likely not going to appear.

I was under the (perhaps wrong) impression that asexual reproduction predated sexual reproduction in the history of life (prokaryotes predating eukaryote?) so I always thought that organisms "lost" the trait of asexual reproduction somewhere down the line. Probably an assumption without basis.

>>perhaps in reality the lack of diversity in the resulting offspring would be negative to the species' survival.

Yes. I imagine the answer would be something like that, but the question of what is the exact reason still stands.

Like i said I haven't the foggiest idea of the subject matter but always liked to think and speculate about it. Origin and Nature of Life, Physical nature of consciousness and Neuroscience in general are all topics I find fascinating. If anybody know any popular science books they can recommend on any of these topics, it would be great.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#78

Post by mgkimsal »

olavk wrote: post #72
baddox wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The three L argument is aimed only at people who believe in the historicity of Jesus, as well as that he was a great spiritual leader, but who belief that there are also other paths to spiritual enlightenment or salvation. It obviously carries no weight to people who don't believe Jesus was a historical figure, or who believe he was a liar or a lunatic.

Among historians it is generally believed that there was a preacher called (something like) Jesus which was crucified by the Romans. But looking at the only available sources (the Gospels) it is not even clear that he claimed to be the Messiah. The gospels are clearly written by people who believed him to be the Messiah, but the quotations directly attributed to Jesus are quite ambiguous regarding the "divinity" of J…

> there is the option "A cult leader that didn't really claim the be the Lord, but his followers came to believe that he was".

That's what I'd class as 'legend'.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#79

Post by dynofuz »

This is nothing new. Lizards reproduce asexually in deserts often when the conditions become extremely stable--no new genetic info is needed. One day the whole world, once we've learned how to control it, will become female, or at least ones that can change into male if they wish. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/asexual-lizards/

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#80

Post by olavk »

mgkimsal wrote: post #78
olavk wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among historians it is generally believed that there was a preacher called (something like) Jesus which was crucified by the Romans. But looking at the only available sources (the Gospels) it is not even clear that he claimed to be the Messiah. The gospels are clearly written by people who believed him to be the Messiah, but the quotations directly attributed to Jesus are quite ambiguous regarding the "divinity" of J…

> there is the option "A cult leader that didn't really claim the be the Lord, but his followers came to believe that he was". That's what I'd class as 'legend'.

Yeah, agreed. I just wanted to make clear that you could believe in the historicity of Jesus without having to accept the Liar/Lunatic/Lord dilemma, since Jesus never claimed to be "Lord" in the first place.
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