Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 126 posts

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#111

Post by olavk »

lotharbot wrote: post #99
olavk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, John is the latest gospel where he is presented as much more "divine". Compare to Mark, which is the earliest gospel.

John is the "in your face" gospel -- it leads with the conclusions. The other three are more like "come along for the journey" -- they walk you through the process of the disciples coming to understand Jesus. There are divinity claims all over those gospels, but they're more subtle. For example, early in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus quotes the Old Testament saying "You are to worship the Lord your God and serve only…

Only if you already have decided that this is the conclusion you want to reach. Which is totally fair as a kind of religious meditation over the biblical texts, but it not likely to convince anybody not yet convinced. For example Jesus states that he hands Peter the keys to heaven, which following this logic then turns Peter into God. And in the Lords Prayer, Jesus instructs his followers to forgive sins, which according to your logic turns them all into God.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#112

Post by lol123456 »

lvs wrote: post #109
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.…

If this article is meant to have some seasonal relevance, then we can only conclude from genetics that Jesus was a woman.

This article was meant to have seasonal relevance. It might have been published for maximum eye balls. It could also be fake or an article published earlier in 2002. Bribed to publish ?

Of course the reality of the matter is, journalists pretend to be surprised when scientists don't know anything, which is true. The all-knowing wise people of HN assert that both journalists and scientists don't know anything.

The actual reality is that neither HN nor journalists nor scientists nor anyone knows anything about reality.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#113

Post by functional_test »

baddox wrote: post #97
functional_test wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not say that it was the only way, please don't put words in my mouth. I said it was the standard way (which it is). What other methods would you suggest?

I was referring to your first sentence. > Because if you don't require evidence proportional to the claim, your world view can end up including any and all beliefs, which is neither interesting nor useful. That is only true if you assume that no other belief filter is being used.

I'll ask again, what else do you suggest?

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#114

Post by lotharbot »

olavk wrote: post #111
lotharbot wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John is the "in your face" gospel -- it leads with the conclusions. The other three are more like "come along for the journey" -- they walk you through the process of the disciples coming to understand Jesus. There are divinity claims all over those gospels, but they're more subtle. For example, early in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus quotes the Old Testament saying "You are to worship the Lord your God and serve only…

Only if you already have decided that this is the conclusion you want to reach. Which is totally fair as a kind of religious meditation over the biblical texts, but it not likely to convince anybody not yet convinced. For example Jesus states that he hands Peter the keys to heaven, which following this logic then turns Peter into God. And in the Lords Prayer, Jesus instructs his followers to forgive sins, which accor…

> "Only if you already have decided that this is the conclusion you want to reach"

That is not a very charitable interpretation of my comment.

I don't draw the conclusion because I want to. I draw the conclusion because I've studied the texts in great detail.

> "Jesus states that he hands Peter the keys to heaven, which following this logic then turns Peter into God."

Only if you haven't studied the texts in great detail. If you have, you'll recognize the parallel to Isaiah 22 -- Eliakim taking over Shebna's role, not as king, but as palace administrator. That's very different from the role Jesus claims in Matthew 7.

> "Jesus instructs his followers to forgive sins, which according to your logic turns them all into God."

Again, you're missing some nuance. The Lord's Prayer mentions forgiving sins "against us". I can forgive sins against me and you can forgive sins against you. In Mark 2, Jesus claims to forgive sins against God, which is why the crowd considers it blasphemous.

Again, these sorts of claims permeate all four gospels. They're things that, if you have a thorough grasp of the Old Testament, jump out of the text. But if you're not that interested in the details, you might totally miss it (and, to reverse your uncharitable take on my position: if you have already decided Jesus makes no divinity claims, you can surely rationalize it all away.)

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#115

Post by lotharbot »

olavk wrote: post #88
joshuahedlund wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "A cult leader that didn't really claim the be the Lord, but his followers came to believe that he was" I'm curious, what are this position's ideas on how his followers came to believe this? One common response to the general argument is that most of Jesus' disciples were martyred and would have had no motivation to die for a lie.

This is a really interesting question! There is a development through the gospels, where the oldest focus on the actions, saying and prophecies of Jesus, while the newest (John) is much more focused on the divinity of the person Jesus. Paul seem quite uninterested in the words of Jesus and totally focused on the importance of the resurrection. So the transformation from teacher or prophet (a normal human speaking the…

> "the full transformation into "God" was only finalized with the Nicene Creed in 325."

The Nicene Creed is one of the clearest statements of the "Jesus is God" hypothesis, but (as I said elsewhere in this thread) there are plenty of strong claims made in the gospels themselves. There are also similar claims made in many of the earlier writings of the church (if you're honestly interested, there are 10 pre-Nicene volumes at http://www.ccel.org/fathers.html .)

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#116

Post by nocman »

olavk wrote: post #73
nocman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe there is a very good reason that they did not recognize Jesus. I believe what the text says.

The scripture in question is Luke 24:13-35. The two disciples did not recognize Jesus because Jesus hid his identity from them supernaturally:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2024:13-35...

The text says (in verse 16) "their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know Him."

Jesus hides his identity, then asks them what they are talking about (they were talking about Him, including the fact that He had been crucified). Then he goes on to explain to them how all that happened (including his crucifixion) fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament (verse 27):

"And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself."

If you don't believe in the supernatural, then it is extremely improbable that you will believe in Jesus. His miracles are all evidence of His deity. He was not limited to things a normal person could do. That being true, obviously He could hide His identity from His disciples (for whatever reason He chose to do that). Personally I think He did so to increase the impact on the disciples of the things He expained to them while His identity was hidden -- but that is speculation on my part, the text doesn't say.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#117

Post by olavk »

lotharbot wrote: post #114
olavk wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you already have decided that this is the conclusion you want to reach. Which is totally fair as a kind of religious meditation over the biblical texts, but it not likely to convince anybody not yet convinced. For example Jesus states that he hands Peter the keys to heaven, which following this logic then turns Peter into God. And in the Lords Prayer, Jesus instructs his followers to forgive sins, which accor…

> "Only if you already have decided that this is the conclusion you want to reach" That is not a very charitable interpretation of my comment. I don't draw the conclusion because I want to. I draw the conclusion because I've studied the texts in great detail. > "Jesus states that he hands Peter the keys to heaven, which following this logic then turns Peter into God." Only if you haven't studied the texts in great de…

I'm not convinced that Jesus didn't make any divinity claims. We have unreliable and contradictory accounts of what Jesus said, so I consider it an unsolved mystery if Jesus actually believed or claimed he was the Messiah and/or the Son of Man as prophesied in Daniel.

The ambiguity might very well be intentional on the part of Jesus, since outright claiming to be the Messiah would be extremely dangerous - this would be equivalent to announcing a rebellion against the Romans.

But I'm totally convinced that he didn't claim he was Yahweh himself, that would have been ridiculous!

The passages you refer to are also pretty ambiguous, for example saying "Son, your sins are forgiven" does not necessarily mean that Jesus is the one forgiving the sins, it could also mean he informs the person that his sins have been forgiven by God.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#118

Post by olavk »

baddox wrote: post #101
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…

I don't know, he seems pretty obviously divine in all the gospels. As for him claiming to be divine, I don't really understand the argument, because if we would assume that a report that he claimed to be divine is accurate, why wouldn't we assume that a report of clearly divine actions and attributes is accurate?

I wouldn't say "obviously divine". He certainly performs healings, exorcisms and miracles - but his disciples are also granted these powers, and they are not considered part of the trinity. So more like blessed with some supernatural powers, which is quite different from being God himself. In Acts there is even a guy walking around healing people which is not related to the disciples. So it seems in the universe where the Gospels takes place, you dont have to be a God to perform miracles.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#119

Post by olavk »

nocman wrote: post #116
olavk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe there is a very good reason that they did not recognize Jesus. I believe what the text says. The scripture in question is Luke 24:13-35. The two disciples did not recognize Jesus because Jesus hid his identity from them supernaturally: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2024:13-35... The text says (in verse 16) "their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know Him." Jesus hides his ident…

I guess that makes sense in-story, but if you want to take it seriously as an eye-witness account, it is somewhat problematic that deception-magic is used. They might just as well be under deception magic when they believe they recognize him, right?

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#120

Post by [deleted] »

lotharbot wrote: post #108
jobposter1234 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those wondering about sources, Wikipedia has a solid article on the dates in the bible, and seem to settle on about 50 CE as the original authorship dates. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_the_Bible ] Totally ignorant question, but what year is accepted as the official death for Jesus?

> "what year is accepted as the official death for Jesus?" There's some disagreement, but in the research I was doing this morning the most commonly accepted date I found was April 7, 30 AD. (Other common dates are March 25 or April 25, 31 AD.) Interestingly enough, this provides the source for the date of Christmas. There's an old tradition that says Jewish prophets always live a whole number of years, so their deat…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN