Lasto beth Lammen - Is your religion nuts?

[vison]

Scientifically, it is IMPOSSIBLE for a woman to have a male child without that "Y" chromosome from the male. As impossible as it would be for the entire universe to be created in 6 24-hour days.

But it's all "impossible" if you're going to bring science into the argument.

There is no proving the existence of a god. There is no proving whether Jesus was conceived by divine means. There is no proving whether he was a god or just a man. It has nothing to do with science - it's a matter of faith.

If a religious person starts arguing about whether something is "possible" or not, that person has begun a futile endeavor. There is no way to prove any of it, and why would anyone even try?

There are those who believe in the "supernatural" and there are those who don't.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

So I'm just going to go ahead and get myself in trouble...

I don't see any reason why your comments would you get you into trouble. And I'm super-sensitive about these types of discussions. All you did was honestly express how you see things. If anyone has a problem with that, it is their problem, not yours.

[SirDennis]

As River notes, the Gospels were written some decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus. As none of the disciples were present at Jesus' birth, nor as far as we know had they met His parents until sometime after He began His ministry, there is a theory that Mary told the story of her pregnancy and His birth to the Gospel writers... most likely, since Jesus is silent on the matter Himself, after His ascension.

Therefore, it is entirely possible that she borrowed from traditional stories or story telling norms of the day herself in the telling. But then, as someone alluded to, it makes sense that being God, He would ensure the story He wanted told is the one that ended up in the Bible. If not then the odds of anyone ever "getting it" are more stacked against us than they appear to be already.

Someone also pointed to the challenges of telling a story in such a way that it would be relevant and useful through the ages. Perhaps the story of the virgin conception is simply to illustrate the nature of faith (ie faith in God's free gift of salvation through Jesus). Faith is not accessed as through a light switch. Faith is a conscious decision; though it does not appear so at times, it takes some effort to maintain -- especially when confronted with information that seems to contradict it. And super mega especially when rationality is the standard by which all beliefs are judged today. Of course what is or is not considered rational is a condition that has changed over time and likely will continue to change.

A popular illustration of faith is the saying of the mustard seed and the mountain. But a more practical observation is the experience of the disciples: they were there, wrapped up in the events, yet they still had a hard time believing what Jesus was saying about himself. Before ever having Him crucified the authorities of the day tried to arrest and persecute Him for performing miracles. There was no question that he performed the miracles (it was easier to believe in such things back then apparently), just a question of by whose authority He performed them and for what purpose. Or so the stories go.

Regarding parthenogenesis, I'm taking your word for it that the off-spring would have to be female. I'm guessing though that that is conditional on all other things that lead to the conception being "natural." Also we are talking physically female. This does not rule out someone of the male gender being born under such conditions. My sense is looking for a rational explanation behind Jesus' conception, gestation and birth is an exercise in making things more complicated than they need to be.

But it is an interesting discussion, and far more pleasant and informative having here than out in the real world.

ETA: Vision's latest post is quite good... I recognize a hint of Gould there, from a wiki article you enticed me to read.

Also, yeah V, I saw nothing wrong with River's post whatsoever.

[River]

Also we are talking physically female. This does not rule out someone of the male gender being born under such conditions.

Oh my...now that never crossed my mind.

Um...so, then, we all sure Jesus was biologically male?

My sense is looking for a rational explanation behind Jesus' conception, gestation and birth is an exercise in making things more complicated than they need to be.

Actually, the most parsimonious and rational explanation is Jesus was conceived in the usual way and the virgin birth business is an embellishment. Alternatively, she and Joseph (or maybe some other man but I'm going to give both of them some self-respect credits here) engaged in everything but and um...fill in the blank. I can only imagine the consternation that followed when Mary realized she was late.

[SirDennis]

Also we are talking physically female. This does not rule out someone of the male gender being born under such conditions.

Oh my...now that never crossed my mind.

Um...so, then, we all sure Jesus was biologically male?

Well that's the thing. There are all the third person pronouns and He is called "son" and "fully man." But do these refer to gender or biology? I'm not even sure we can rule out the possibility that he was a hermaphrodite. Apart from the questions "does it matter" or "is it relevant" or "does it change anything" is the really big question "why would we want to go there?"

Faith and skepticism are two sides of the same coin. We could say that they sharpen each other: a healthy faith relies on a healthy skepticism. If nothing ever need be questioned, faith is become meaningless. Ideally, imho, a person of faith is also given to critical thought and skepticism. Faith is nothing like burying your head in the sand... beyond that also being a choice one might make.

I'm with you in so far as it makes more sense to choose one of the three possibilities Lewis presented (liar, lunatic, or Lord) than to chase some detailed scientific explanation that from this side of history would be impossible to determine anyway.

[Túrin Turambar]

Forgive me, but isn't the whole point of Jesus in all forms of Christianity based on the Nicene Creed is that he was without sin and thus able to take the sins of humanity upon himself? And that he couldn't be without sin if he was an ordinary man? In my experience, modern Christianity places far more importance on his sacrifice and resurrection than his teachings.

[SirDennis]

And that he couldn't be without sin if he was an ordinary man? In my experience, modern Christianity places far more importance on his sacrifice and resurrection than his teachings.

Forgive me as well LM... I'm not following you here. The creeds I am aware of say that Christ, while God, was [also] human (paraphrasing of course). Are you saying: because Jesus was [a] God, his sacrifice and resurrection were not that big a deal? Are you also saying Christians are missing the point of his other teachings by focusing too much on those events? This is what I got from what you wrote. If I am wrong, please accept my apologies.

I can agree with the assertion that some Christians can't see the forest for the trees. I have heard quite a few assertions that to me appear to be motivated by hate, thinly disguised as a righteous desire to adhere to "the whole Bible." When I say the hypocrisy of some Christians drove me to read the Bible for myself, it is the sort of experience above that I am describing.

If evangelism is a/the goal, preaching hatred or intolerance seems very counter productive. Tolerance is not the same as adopting another's practices. But I completely missed the part where Christians are called to make people feel really bad about themselves; or where we are supposed to try to gain converts by scaring or beating the bejebus out of people. To the extent that some have adopted such practices, and called it Love, I can agree with the idea that sometimes people calling themselves Christians are nuts.

But sometimes it isn't so much hypocrisy as it is missing the point entirely.

[MithLuin]

Jesus is the Son of God. Or, to go along with this conversation, that is certainly something he claimed frequently and got himself accused of blasphemy over according to the gospels.

According to the Nicene Creed:

For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate
of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.

The angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God."
Luke 1:35

The language of 'overshadow you' is meant to call to mind bridal/engagement language, I am told.


People have always known it would take a miracle for a Virgin birth to happen; knowing the details of what, precisely, about the biology makes it miraculous adds a novel modern lens to the situation, but the situation remains that Christians claim that Christ's birth should not have been physically possible, but happened anyway because of divine intervention. Presumably, God knows how to make Y chromosomes from scratch.


As for Jesus being biologically male...yes, he was. There is no indication that he had a woman's body, and the image on the Shroud of Túrin is decidedly male:



(Oh, and if we consider Eucharistic miracles, he was type AB blood, too, if anyone was curious....)



I do think it is important that Jesus be the Son of God (for realz, not symbolically), because it would call into question the other important stuff he was teaching about if he got that mixed up. Meaning, it's all well and good for Him to tell us to call God 'father' because we're adopted sons and daughters, but that breaks down if he's not the Son of God in the first place.

The mystery of the Incarnation is central to Christianity. If you erode it away, I'm not sure what you have left, but it would not be Christianity. That's why it's a focal point of the creed.

[Alatar]

I thought the shroud of Túrin had been debunked years ago as a hoax?

Heard an interesting interview in the car yesterday with a Fr Jack Mahoney about his book "Christianity in Evolution". His approach is to attempt to use science to inform the bible, rather than to treat them as opposing forces. Nothing new there, I suppose, but his conclusions were interesting. I'll try to summarise.

Basically, Fr Jack (sorry Fr Ted fans for the mental image) suggests that if we accept Genesis as a parable, then we need to rethink not just that aspect of our faith but all the knock on effects also. If Adam and Eve were a parable, then we have to drop the notion of Original Sin. Which of course raises questions about the Immaculate Conception, the need for Baptism, and ultimately, if not for our sins, what did Christ die for?


A quick google turned up this lecture he gave on the subject:

http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-e ... xploration

[JewelSong]

I thought the shroud of Túrin had been debunked years ago as a hoax?

I thought so too, but many people still believe in it, apparently.

People like to believe in the supernatural and they like to find "proof" of their particular faith. Fragments of Noah's ark, pieces of the actual cross, a remnant of fabric supposedly worn by Jesus, an old fishing boat, a piece of bread turning into actual human flesh and so on.

It's odd (to me) because "faith" means that you believe something without proof and yet, many folks cling to these items as strongly as they cling to their faith.

Anyway...this thread has been interesting to me and got me thinking about my own personal convictions about God and Jesus and the Divine.

And I feel very strongly that the specifics really do not matter. At least, they don't matter to me. It doesn't matter to me whether or not Mary was a virgin, or Joseph was the actual father. I don't care if the Shroud of Túrin is a fake or if people believe that a wafer and a bit of wine actually turn into flesh and blood. I don't really care if the resurrection was physical or metaphorical.

What matters to me is the message. The basic, simple message. Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God. Love God. Love your neighbor. God IS Love.

Everything else is commentary.

[MithLuin]

The Shroud of Túrin was carbon-dated to the Middle Ages, which certainly counts as debunking. Certainly, there was nothing fishy about the carbon-dating procedure - it was done by multiple labs along with other samples of linen, and the researchers were not told which sample was from the Shroud. Some of the linen samples tested were of known age, and those came out correctly.


However...there are some questions that remain. First, was the sample contaminated with anything prior to the testing being done? There was a fire in 1532 that damaged it, and it was patched with new linen 2 years later. If any of the 'patch' material (including the backing) contaminated the samples, the date would be skewed. To a lesser extent with something growing on the shroud (bacteria or mold contamination, etc.) This is not really enough to call the carbon dating into question, but rather would leave open a door for retesting at a later time (if permitted). After all, to carbon date, you have to burn up the linen, and no one's in a big hurry to cut up the Shroud and do that.

Secondly, how was the image made? After all, if this was a hoax/fake from the 1200's, the method used should be somewhat straightforward to identify. It's not like there were a lot of options available beyond...wrapping up a dead guy and leaving some stains, or 'enhancing' the effect with paint/pigment of some sort. But in both cases, there are some issues.

One - the image on the Shroud is rather...interesting...when it comes to photography. The photographic negatives of the shroud reveal all sorts of detail not visible to someone just looking at it. If it is assumed to be a fabrication from the 13th century....that does raise some questions as to how they even knew to bother with that! 1999 article And then just a few days ago, a study of how to discolor linen (as seen in the Shroud), was reported with the conclusion that, yes, high energy light does this, but no, we can't actually replicate it and it would be difficult to see how a 13th century (or 1st century, for that matter) forger could have done so without seriously anachronistic technology. (Articles: NY Daily News, Huffington Post)

Two - the details of the man crucified in the shroud match accurate details of Roman crucifixion. The nail marks are in the wrists, etc. Popular artwork from the Middle Ages seldom portrays the crucifixion in this way, so it would be...unusual...to choose to portray a crucified man this way at a time removed from both the 'current' practice of crucifixion and modern research into ancient times.

Three - the pollen found on the cloth places it in the Middle East, not Europe. Of course, someone could have taken a forgery to the Middle East, or it could have been made there and brought to Europe later. So, it's not like that proves anything. But it is...interesting...that Danin was able to identify pollen from plants that would have been found near Jerusalem in the spring from the Shroud.



All that being said, for all I know some medieval knight crucified some guy out in the Middle East, used some sort of pigment to enhance the image, and then wrapped up the guy in the cloth. I'm not saying that the Shroud of Túrin is definitely authentic, merely that it is not definitely a fraud, either. I've never heard of anyone making their own, for instance, so it's not exactly easy to fake.



I only brought up the Shroud in the first place because it's the first thing that came to mind as a 'portrait' of Jesus. I suppose I could have referenced iconography as well, but of course, those weren't painted from life

[Lalaith]

There's a fascinating "Secrets of the Dead" episode on this, and it certainly left room for the possibility of the Shroud being real.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/previou ... index.html

[JewelSong]

It's cool to think about it being authentic and all.

But even without any fancy testing, it seems obvious to me that it is a fake. The image of the face is three-dimensional as if a picture had been taken. If the image was from a wrapped shroud, the face would be at least somewhat distorted.

...try this experiment…wrap your face in something like a dishtowel, pillowcase, etc. Mark the position of your nose, cheekbones and back of your ears where they occur under the material. Now, remove the material and lay it out flat (as is the shroud) and notice the distortion of the positions of the ears. The ears will be several inches farther apart on the (now two dimensional) image. So, if the shroud had been wrapped around the face, we would see tremendous facial distortion once the shroud had been laid out flat. (Taken from here: http://atheistsforhumanrights.com/sanity/?p=26)


Here is a website with links to a number of articles attesting to the fact that the shroud itself was made sometime during the Middle Ages.
http://www.shroud.com/bar.htm

And from a 1988 article in TIME Magazine:

Since the Middle Ages multitudes have believed that a piece of linen enshrined in Túrin, Italy, is the burial shroud that Jesus Christ left in the tomb when he rose from the grave. But last week Túrin's Anastasio Cardinal Ballestrero calmly announced that scientific testing proves the yellowing 14- ft.-long fabric is only six or seven centuries old and could not have dated from the time of Jesus. Thus ended the most intense scientific study ever conducted on a Christian relic.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... z1hNRgAnJj

It is most definitely a fraud, as much as many people would like to believe otherwise.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This discussion has been really wonderful, and has gone a long way to assauge my doubts about the possibility of successfully discussing issues of faith among people with radically different views. That having been said, let me remind people to stick to express their own views, rather than emphatically condemning the views of others. That won't be tolerated.

[JewelSong]

Just a clarification (because I am assuming the above was directed at me....if not, well, let me clarify anyway.)

I was most emphatically NOT "condemning" anyone's views. In fact, I said in the very beginning of my post that it was cool to be able to think that the shroud was authentic.

It has also been proved to be a clever fake. However, in spite of this, people continue to study it and many continue to believe it is authentic.

I do think it is interesting to speculate on how it was made. It certainly has captured the imagination of a large number of people.

Being Quaker in the depths of my soul, I am not big on holy relics and artifacts. So perhaps it is difficult for me to grasp the fascination many people have about this (and other similar icons.)

[Lalaith]

Well, see, the thing is, Jewel, is that it has not been definitively proven to be a fake. Certainly, many people think so, and you are free, obviously, to agree with their conclusions. Really, if you're that interested, you should watch the Secrets of the Dead documentary. It addresses many of the issues you bring up. You may very well still come to the same conclusion as you have now, but you would also see where the places are for belief in its authenticity.

For me, it really makes no difference. I think there's a possibility that it's genuine, and I think that's cool. It won't destroy my faith in any way if it's not genuine, though. (Incidentally, it's tied into another relic by blood type--the sudarium of Oviedo, Spain.)

[JewelSong]

Thanks, Lali, I may check that out. That same program also apparently did a documentary called the "Tomb of Christ."

[JewelSong]

The discussion about the shroud got me thinking - especially when Lali said:

For me, it really makes no difference. I think there's a possibility that it's genuine, and I think that's cool. It won't destroy my faith in any way if it's not genuine, though.

Here's a question for - well, for everyone, I guess. What, if anything, WOULD "destroy your faith?" Or change it in a radical way? Some of you have said that discovering that Mary was not a virgin would alter your perception of who Jesus was, and thus change the core of your belief.

What about the resurrection? If you discovered that Jesus did not physically rise from the dead, would that change how/what you believe?

In both cases (which I admit would be pretty extreme discoveries for a typical Christian) do you think you would adjust your faith accordingly - in other words, would you continue to believe in God/Jesus and the message? Or do you think you would become a non-believer?

(I could turn this around and ask current non-believers what discovery might cause them to change, but I'd like to get these answers first.)

[axordil]

The ultimate problem with the Shroud is that proving/disproving it is a cottage industry, so when one side comes up with a clear demonstration of it being a fraud or possibly being real, the other side is obliged to respond in kind. Scientists can be bought, especially ones with axes to grind on both sides. One scientist reproduces it with medieval techniques? Hire others to "prove" it required intense UV radiation (implied: miraculous) to make.

So long as there is money to be extracted from people with a dog in the hunt, the question will remain "up for debate."

[nerdanel]

(I could turn this around and ask current non-believers what discovery might cause them to change, but I'd like to get these answers first.)

For me, this is straightforward: I would want proof of the religion-in-question's claims that is rationally perceptible and measurable. For instance, with respect to the claim of the Christian resurrection, I would have been satisfied with the proof that is said to have satisfied Thomas (if I had known Jesus, was able to recognize and touch the resurrected person as the one I had known prior to death, etc.) More generally, with respect to claims about God as a being who exists separate from human beings, I would want God to communicate with me in rationally perceptible ways - i.e., not as a "voice in my head" (which I believe is my own conscience), but as a separate, detached being whom I can perceive and interact with - and whom other humans can perceive and interact with in the same way - so, not an apparition only perceptible by me.

I do not think that there is anything that could be said by a human being - or in any book written by human beings - that would persuade me that supernatural being(s) exist or that there is a supernatural component to our current or future existence (like a life after death (heaven/hell), reincarnation, etc).