Originally Posted by Linzyhop well technically if a male ejaculated near the vaginal opening of a female without actually having penetrated her, the sperm could travel up the uterus to an egg. highly improbable, -but- possible! ....and also unrelated to the original post....
05-30-2007, 06:10 PM
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| I doubt it  Pragmatist 
| Originally Posted by Linzyhop ....and also unrelated to the original post. 
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05-30-2007, 06:22 PM
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| no es mi culpa  Independent Beantown
| Originally Posted by redwards no. it's possible back then for this to have occurred without penetration, and her to have still gotten pregnant.
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05-30-2007, 06:46 PM
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| I doubt it Pragmatist
| Originally Posted by Linzyhop
Originally Posted by DosEquis Why not just go back and read the post? Yes, it's probably possible that Joseph jerked off into Mary's vagina without breaking her hymen. Would that satisfy the religious or mean anything significant to the nonreligious? No.
The thread was about asexual reproduction, not semen acrobatics. | ||||
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05-30-2007, 07:25 PM
| #24 | ||||
| Master Debator Election Moderator  Democrat Omaha, NE
| I took silver in the 88 olypics for semen acrobatics. | ||||
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05-30-2007, 08:03 PM
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| I doubt it Pragmatist
| Originally Posted by DosEquis Only event that the Chinese can't win.
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05-30-2007, 10:52 PM
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| laissez-faire  Capitalist
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05-31-2007, 02:08 AM
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| Left Wing Hack  Democrat Hastings, NE
| Originally Posted by redwards I had never thought of that. (Assuming that she somehow asexually reproduced) She has no Y chromosome so it would be impossible for her to have a son asexually. So I guess that leaves us where we started from.
A) God impregnated her B) The whole story is a myth C) She wasn't a virgin (I mean the bible's definition of a virgin... not Bill Clinton's definition where giving blow jobs and receiving foamy-love-loads doesn't count against your virginity.)
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05-31-2007, 02:19 AM
| #28 | ||||
| Left Wing Hack Democrat Hastings, NE
| I don't get why people try to use science to justify miracles in the bible. You hear it from time to time though. Jesus actually walked on a sheet of ice. Jesus just went into shock on the cross, he didn't die... that is how he rose after being buried. There is a natural land bridge that Moses crossed when fleeing Egypt. The list goes on. I just don't get the motivation for trying to change a miracle into something that could have actually happened without god's divine intervention. I mean, the whole point of a miracle is to show how powerful god is. By saying these things happened naturally you diminish the importance of god in the story. At the same time you don't make the event any more plausible because, well, they are still absurd events.... especially since god didn't do them. I suppose people start to feel uncomfortable when they realize the story they are telling is about as out there as the earth being formed from a pearl. So they try to justify it by saying "see it could have happened." The only problem with doing that is it makes the story pointless. Either believe in god and put away your logic caps that tell you it doesn't make any sense or discard it as a myth. You can't have it be both be logical and miraculous at the same time. Last edited by Simius; 05-31-2007 at 02:28 AM. | ||||
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05-31-2007, 03:11 AM
| #29 | ||||
| I doubt it Pragmatist
| You forgot the most prominent one: Evolution + Creation. Evolution was just God's way of making man, you know. | ||||
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05-31-2007, 10:12 AM
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| no es mi culpa Independent Beantown
| Originally Posted by Simius but what about people who don't believe in the miracles but believe in the history and science.... the explanations would be fine then I would think. unless you're just talking about christians and leaving out non-christian interpretation.
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05-31-2007, 01:34 PM
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| I doubt it Pragmatist
| Originally Posted by Linzyhop Occam suggests it's more likely that the story of the virgin birth is a lie than a position which defies kama sutra. Roughly the same can be said of the other stories - embellishments, or simply fabrications, are more likely than elaborately concocted explanations which simply serve to make the veracity of the book plausible.
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05-31-2007, 05:27 PM
| #32 | ||||
| Master Debator Election Moderator Democrat Omaha, NE
| Originally Posted by Simius It is attempted to attack the credibility of the belief system. People do it to try to convince people that what they have faith in could not possibly be true; that it is simply a story that can be told around camp fires and not a foundation for a moral compass. I have a feeling as time progresses that it will be accepted as just that. Our thinking evolves just like everything else on the planet. At one time Zeus was the man, and now that is told like fairy tales. There is just as much evidence to support Zeus as their is to support the beliefs of christianity or islam.
Like you said, you just have to remove logic and reason from the equation and simply just accept the belief system. As soon as you start questioning the system there are a lot of credibility holes. | ||||
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06-01-2007, 06:22 AM
| #33 | ||||
| minor irritant &/or non-entity News Moderator Contrarian Birmingham, UK
| I agree with Simius' post. I'm mystfied why the religious seek to engage with 'scientific' non-believers using scientific arguements. To do is to acknowledge in some way the 'triumph' of the enlightenment etc When I first read the thread title I thought it was about babies that were neither male nor female | ||||
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06-01-2007, 06:58 AM
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| tyop speicalist Religion Moderator  Capitalist California
| Originally Posted by DosEquis I didn't see this mentioned when I skimmed through the thread (edit: Nevermind. I just saw redwards's posts), but to give you answer to your question: It's 99.99999999999999% unlikely.
The most important thing to acknowledge is that a female does not carry the necessary Y chromosome that would be necessary to have a male offspring. Male activity is required for that to happen. There are a few ways to get around this, however. 1. Mary could have been an XYX female (that Y might explain why she was still a virgin  )2. Jesus could have been an XX male. 3. One of Jesus's X chromosomes mutated during a very early stage into a Y chromosome. Those are the only three possible ways around this issue. All three are highly unlikely, with the third option being more unlikely than asexual reproduction in the first place. The irony in the second would be hilarious, and the first one would be kinda funny too.
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06-01-2007, 12:35 PM
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| I doubt it Pragmatist
| Originally Posted by Dumpy Dooby You're missing a couple hundred 9s, there. Factor in asexual reproduction in a mammal of any kind, which has never been heard of and is thought to be impossible, and I think your chances drop dramatically.
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06-01-2007, 01:48 PM
| #36 | ||||
| Left Wing Hack Democrat Hastings, NE
| Originally Posted by redwards
 Lloyd: So you're telling me there's a chance? /dumb and dumber | ||||
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06-01-2007, 02:54 PM
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| I doubt it Pragmatist
| Originally Posted by Simius Actually, no, now that I think about it.
Dumpy: all of these chromosomal disorders occur as a result of meiosis, which does not happen during asexual reproduction. You can rule them out. | ||||
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06-01-2007, 05:03 PM
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| tyop speicalist Religion Moderator Capitalist California
| Originally Posted by redwards That would only apply to the third scenario. As far as I know, XYX females and XX males have existed in human history, so those would be two other possibilities.
The likelihood is practically non-existent, but my point is that it's possible. In the modest words of Dawkins, "It's just highly unlikely." | ||||
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06-01-2007, 05:15 PM
| #39 | ||||
| I doubt it Pragmatist
| Originally Posted by Dumpy Dooby They have, yes, but they cannot be produced by asexual reproduction (presuming any mammal can, which is already a huge leap), nor can an asexually reproduced offspring differ from its parent.
It's possible that Mary could have been an XXY female (although XXYs are almost exclusively sterile men, as far as I know), but whatever Mary was, Jesus would also have been, as the disorders cannot present except through meiosis. An asexually reproduced offspring has the exact same genetics as the parent. There is no recombination. Any differentiation has to be a mutation. The possibility that Jesus, by chance, mutated a penis are something on the order of insignificantly, ludicrously improbable (moreso than any of the other scenarios or all of them combined, by orders of magnitude). You may as well posit that he was birthed from a tree and adopted. | ||||
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10-04-2008, 02:30 PM
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| Jedi Census Wookie  Moderate Planet Earth
| Originally Posted by redwards Female worker bees are unable to mate, but can lay eggs that only hatch into male drones. Komodo dragons can produce males offspring asexually, even when other males are present, as a result, komodo dragon populations are typically 75% male. Female turkeys can sometimes produce fertile eggs asexually, producing offspring almost entirely male, however also usually sickly or deformed. Parthenogenesis, while never having been observed in mammals the wild, has been induced in rabbits and mice, and even monkeys. Due to the lack of paternally imprinted genes, though, these offspring tend to have genetic abnormalities. Human stem cells and embryos have also been produced in similar fashion in vitro.
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