Virgin Birth Myths

[seeds]

Well I think both you and I know full well that this cannot be seen by the mind which attempts to intellectualise it.

Yes, it’s kind of like trying to zero-in on something that appears in your peripheral vision, yet every time you turn to see what it is, it always remains in your peripheral vision and never directly observable and obvious.
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[seeds]

If I understand you, and whatever you yourself name your "usual fare" , this is pantheism. Me, I am a pantheist.
The objection to pantheism is that reason is enthroned where I imagine that you place goodness and benevolence, so you are not quite a solid pantheist.

I am not a solid pantheist because I am not a pantheist to begin with.

I am a “Panentheist.”

However if you place goodness and benevolence where I place reason you have the problem of evil. How do you get round the problem of evil?

I get around the problem of evil because to me there is no such thing as “evil” as if it were something you step in and can’t get off your shoe, or some dark and malevolent (otherworldly) virus that can infect a person’s soul.

No, I view evil as the consequence of “low consciousness” (i.e., the varying levels and degrees of the purposely designed somnambulistic state of humanity) and the actions resulting from it.
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[seeds]

I disagree because I refuse to acquiesce to the idea that the manifestation of a unique individualization of personal consciousness (such as yours or mine) is simply a mundane feature of the universe to be taken for granted when it is indeed a “miracle” in and of itself:

I agree, it's a ''miracle''

Commonly a miracle is something extraordinary for man and woman. The wonder of life reveals how easily the limits of the mind are taken for real, because extraordinary means that it is not expected by the conditioned logic and reason of the mind. A miracle is not the extraordinary alone but also the ordinary, that which the ego takes for granted. That nature is a miracle in every speck of the universe, be it a plant, an animal or a human being, a planet or the sun, leaves us astonished, if we look deeply into the miracle of life.

Well said, Dam.

And what is even more “miraculous” about this whole situation is that it (the creation and order of the universe) is so complete and so remarkably well done that it deceives some of the most intelligent humans on earth into thinking that its workings and design are a product of serendipitous processes...

...which brings us back to that “somnambulism” issue that I brought up with Belinda.
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[seeds]

...it can only be concluded that no matter what anyone says to Nick, he will still insist that no one here is capable of providing a logical explanation for the issue he brought up.

It isn’t that people are incapable but rather they are closed to what I call the necessary reconciliation between science and religion.

Again, Nick, you made the claim that no one here is able to provide even an “intellectual” explanation for the process beginning with the immaculate conception and concluding with the virgin birth.

I therefore provided you with a perfectly reasonable intellectual explanation (from a philosophical perspective) and you simply didn’t accept it due to your own biased take on reality.

Furthermore, I am not only open to the “necessary reconciliation between science and religion,” I vigorously promote it in my own writings.

The point is, stop painting everyone on the forum with your wide brush.

Science is true and the essence of religion is true. Truth cannot be in opposition. People who understand this try to find out the cause of the conflict. Could the virgin birth be acceptable to science? Yes, but we are far from any collective appreciation....

When it comes to virgin births and science, the only thing that would be acceptable to science is something that could explain an immaculate conception in purely materialistic terms.

For example, you could have a hermaphroditic female that is not only born with ovaries, but perhaps due to a strange misfiring of her own DNA is also equipped with an internal deformity in the form of a testicle that is capable of introducing sperm into her uterus.

Now that (albeit extremely unlikely) would be a form of immaculate conception that science could live with.

An understanding of God that doesn’t insult the scientific mind already exists...

As Arising_uk has already requested of you, what exactly is the “already existing” understanding of God that doesn’t insult science?

Please layout the details of this “understanding” in a way that doesn’t come across as some vague and highly questionable personal theory.

Seriously, Nick, do you actually think that you are free to make bold statements such as the one quoted above and not be expected to back it up with a logical explanation of what you are talking about?

...Consider why there are no posters on this site willing to express a non-secular scientific explanation for the virgin birth. They are driven away.

The phrase - “non-secular scientific explanation” is going to seem a bit oxymoronic to the average reader.

Nevertheless, I gave you a non-secular (i.e., a theistically based) scientific explanation.

The problem is that human science simply doesn’t accept the possibility of divine agency.

I was hoping to meet someone on this thread more open to what would enable the virgin birth and its relationship to the Immaculate Conception. An all powerful being having a need to juggle around a woman’s inside just is not scientifically satisfying.

How about this:

The real need for the idea of an “Immaculate Conception” has always been tied to the effort to square reality with human mythologies, and that there has never actually been an instance where it occurred through divine intervention...

...(or if it has, it will have occurred in a way that will seem logical and explainable by science).
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[Nick_A]

Seeds

Again, Nick, you made the claim that no one here is able to provide even an “intellectual” explanation for the process beginning with the immaculate conception and concluding with the virgin birth.

I therefore provided you with a perfectly reasonable intellectual explanation (from a philosophical perspective) and you simply didn’t accept it due to your own biased take on reality.

So what is the purpose of our universe and the purpose of humanity within it? This is a beginning. How could anything else provide a reasonable foundation for the virgin birth?

When it comes to virgin births and science, the only thing that would be acceptable to science is something that could explain an immaculate conception in purely materialistic terms.

But more scientists are becoming open minded to a quality of materiality that is not measured by science. For example, can science measure alchemy or qualities of materiality comprising the Great Chain of Being? No. Science needs to advance in its conception of reality and strive to verify it.

As Arising_uk has already requested of you, what exactly is the “already existing” understanding of God that doesn’t insult science?

Please layout the details of this “understanding” in a way that doesn’t come across as some vague and highly questionable personal theory.

I have already tried to do it on several threads including the Einstein and Panentheism threads. It bombed. Now I’m waiting for someone else to supply a reasonable explanation of the virgin birth that I can add to. There simply is no reason to discuss these ideas where they are unwanted and denial is preferred over contemplation.

Nevertheless, I gave you a non-secular (i.e., a theistically based) scientific explanation.

The problem is that human science simply doesn’t accept the possibility of divine agency.

Tell that to Spinoza. Is he offering a contradiction?

"... Love towards a thing eternal and infinite feeds the mind wholly with joy, and is itself unmingled with any sadness, wherefore it is greatly to be desired and sought for with all our strength." - Spinoza (TEI)

“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”
― Baruch Spinoza

Such ideas are annoying. Socrates proved that.

“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.”
― Baruch Spinoza

I want someone else to disturb the peace with the virgin birth question by proposing a reasonable explanation. I will support them but since I’m alone with these ideas, why fight city hall?

[surreptitious57]

I want someone else to disturb the peace with the virgin birth question by proposing a reasonable explanation

The simplest most reasonable explanation is that at the time the Hebrew translation of virgin was young woman

[Nick_A]

I want someone else to disturb the peace with the virgin birth question by proposing a reasonable explanation

The simplest most reasonable explanation is that at the time the Hebrew translation of virgin was young woman

But the only people who find it reasonable are secularists. People who "feel" the essence of religion intuitively know there is more to it and scientists sensing a reality behind their conceptions are drawn to opening to a contemplative intuitive experience. So what is reasonable for the secularist becomes insufficient for those open to the potential for conscious life beyond the limitations of plato's cave.

[Greta]

The simplest most reasonable explanation is that at the time the Hebrew translation of virgin was young woman

Either that or she may have became pregnant from someone other than Joseph and feared stoning.

Or the couple may not have existed at all, since there were pre-existing virgin birth stories such as Horus in Egyptian mythology.

[surreptitious57]

I want someone else to disturb the peace with the virgin birth question by proposing a reasonable explanation

The simplest most reasonable explanation is that at the time the Hebrew translation of virgin was young woman

But the only people who find it reasonable are secularists. People who feel the essence of religion intuitively know there is more to it and
scientists sensing a reality behind their conceptions are drawn to opening to a contemplative intuitive experience. So what is reasonable
for the secularist becomes insufficient for those open to the potential for conscious life beyond the limitations of platos cave

You asked for a reasonable explanation and I gave you the most reasonable one. Your moving of the goal posts by claiming that such
an explanation is not acceptable to you does not invalidate what I said as feelings and intuitions are rather poor antidotes to actual
facts. If you are only interested in answers that satisfy specific criteria there is no point in asking the question in the first place. As
you can construct an answer that is ontologically pleasing to you regardless of how true it might be without input from anyone else

[surreptitious57]

And also as Greta has mentioned the idea of virgin birth is not exclusive to Christianity. And it was actually a borrowed
concept passed down through the cultures. Since such ideas did not exist in isolation to each other. But science trumps
mythology. And if Jesus existed he definitely had a biological father. This is a statement of fact not a matter of opinion

[surreptitious57]

Science says it is physically and biologically impossible for a human being to only have twenty three chromosomes

[Dontaskme]

It's not even a mistranslation. ...

No it really is.

These are all conceptual ideas that can only arise where there is the sense of separate self...as conceived...in this conception...totally illusory, the Self is beyond all human ideas about it....and all human ideas arise in that Empty unborn ONE

To talk about it is to birth it, only the mind is born not the SELF

What are you waffling about?

YOU are, I AM the I AM.

Life can only come from LIFE

There is no ''other'' living life.

There are not two life's, there is only LIFE

Life is a verb.

It's neither dead nor alive....these are just energetically produced concepts arising in no ''thing'' that have no reality in and of them selves independent of LIFE

The I AM has no concept of itself, no facts, or images of itself, AND none are required. I AM IS without doubt or error. It's THIS right here now one without a second.

Images, concepts, etc...all arise in I AM ...as images of the imageless, concepts of the non-conceptual.

.

For more information...study the only real knowledge worth having...Nonduality, aka Advaita Vendanta...the irrefutable truth...or live forever in ignorance, sweet dreams.

.

[Belinda]

I get around the problem of evil because to me there is no such thing as “evil” as if it were something you step in and can’t get off your shoe, or some dark and malevolent (otherworldly) virus that can infect a person’s soul.

No, I view evil as the consequence of “low consciousness” (i.e., the varying levels and degrees of the purposely designed somnambulistic state of humanity) and the actions resulting from it.

All right, Seeds, let me put the question "How do you as a panentheist get around the problem of the enormous number of events that include suffering ?"

If evil is what you say in the quotation , how come the god implicit in panentheism doesn't fill up consciousnesses with good, instead of permitting consciousnesses to be "low" consciousnesses?
I understand from your description of consciousness that it can be emptyish, or alternatively filled up with good. I also have been told from several sources that this idea is Augustinian theology.

I like the theology as you state it but I'd relate it to pantheism by shifting the responsible agency from the encircling and immanent deity to humans.

What makes the Christian Virgin Birth myth redundant of explanatory power is that the Holy Virgin is so meek and quiescent towards the masculine God (his"handmaiden"). And also that She, as with all mythical virgin births, produces a son not a daughter; that in itself should raise alarm bells about all virgin birth myths as sources for wisdom. Seeds, even if you are modern enough to view the encircling deity of panentheism as a female or as genderless, that proposed deity has to be active not passive. The very fact that the encircling deity is an active and superior force that intervenes in nature is theism no matter that you dress him/her/it up in panentheist imagery.

[Londoner]

I don't think the idea of a virgin birth was so outlandish for an age when people had no idea about life at the level of cells. If you look very closely at sperm you will not see a tiny human, so the human cannot grow from the sperm. So the baby must originate in the mother, but need some sort of invisible force that is within the sperm to start it off. So even ordinary conception is mysterious; it requires some force, some sort of spirit, which sparks off life. In that case, why shouldn't this spirit come from some other source?

It isn't just Mary. There are lots of examples in the Bible of people who are way beyond fertile ages being given children by God. They also live to ridiculous ages for the same reason, that life is a gift of the spirit, so that if God preserves your spirit in your body you will not die.

It isn't just life in humans. The way a seed becomes a plant is equally magical, so all cultures think it is prudent to conduct ceremonies that encourages that magic to flow.

So, given this understanding of the nature of life, I do not think people would have had many problems with the idea of a virgin birth.

[Belinda]

Londoner, I am surprised at your literalist attitude. I had thought that you were aware of the power and function of myth as significant identifiers of cultures.