I've long loved Salman Rushdie's expression "the god shaped hole" to describe those who have had, but have now lost, their faith. If you've never had faith in religion inculcated at an early age it must be much harder to feel it's lack. Friends who grew up in atheist families - especially those actively hostile to religion - say they simply cannot emotionally or intellectually understand the nature of belief. For those, like me, who were Catholics in early years, a scintilla of doubt remains.
The 'Virgin birth' is critical: not only does it mark the relationship between man and God as direct and in the case of Jesus, unique: it also separates the story of Christianity from Judaism other than the doctrinal differences pronounced by the mature Jesus. The 'Virgin birth' I assume is disputed by Jewish scholars. Thomas Aquinas, unsurprisingly opened and shut the debate when he stated: 'To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible',Quote:
Originally Posted by talldudeil
The idea of a woman conceiving through a spirit can be found in Ancient Egyptian religion, as well as Australian and possibly other South Pacific aboriginal beliefs where 'spirits' are everyone's origins.
Politically/anthropologically the 'Virgin birth' proves that women are to be the subject of male domination -it is not as if, when the Angel comes to Mary to tell her she is 'blessed' that Mary asks if she can have an abortion as she doesn't want a child at that moment in her life. She has not option but to give birth to that which her god has subjected her to.
My own view, which I am surprised is not more widely discussed, is that a 'virgin birth' is a convenient way of covering up the loss of virginity in societies in which it is highly valued, and where stigma is attached to families whose daughters have 'lost control' -or rather, where fathers have lost control of their daughters.
In royal families virginity was (and in the UK remains) essential to prevent any illegitimate children claiming the crown; but if a society has a stigma against sex before marriage, but it happens anyway, the pregnancy can be claimed to be miraculous and in the process this separates the woman (and her family) from the rest, but does mean that the mother and child are expected to be in some way special. I base this on a different narrative but one that has been dealt with by Michael Gilsenan in his essays Recognizing Islam. In one account, two brothers who had been studying in Beirut returned to their village (in northern Lebanon) where people noticed the elder did not speak to his younger brother or even have eye contact with him. It transpired, although the details were never given, that the younger brother had 'gone wild' in Beirut and as a consequence disgraced the family. The only way the younger brother could be re-admitted to society was for him to adopt an observable, pious way of life: attending mosque every day, wearing traditional clothes, behaving with humility. I suspect that 'Virgin births' are attributed to 'divine intervention' as a means of covering up shame, but that the women and the child are expected to observe a more religious/pious form of behaviour as a result: perhaps many monks of the past were the product of 'shame'. They were committed to a life serving God and the community as penance for the sins of lust. Just a theory.
I disagree;Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
1. You don't know whether Mary would've said no, given it was a call from the Divine (I'm going by the Islamic narrative here).
2. An All knowing God, would not send a Prophet to be conceived by a woman who initially would say no or have doubts to giving birth to the child.
Thing is, this can be applied to the male as well. If a child is attributed to him outside of marriage, then it's the same "shame", so I wouldn't say this at all proves the virgin story as male domination.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
In the Islamic narrative, that's why when the people ask Mary, where did that child come from, baby Jesus is said to have miraculously spoke to defend her mother, as "no one would believe Mary, if she had just told them that an angel visited her", not only did he defend her, but also saved her from corporal punishment (as prescribed in Jewish law).
It was the Fifth Grade. I know it was the Fifth Grade because that's the year we study World History, and there was a plaster of paris bas-relief map of the Mediterranean on a table, ...we'd paint all the different civilizations in different colored tempera paint on it as we studied them: Alexander, Phoenecia, Rome, etc. So I'm standing there by myself looking down on this table when I have a vision of God.
I say vision, I could say trance, there was no noise, everything was black and white and maybe a tad silvery, and time was kind of frozen, a little time-out.
There was a line, not an imaginary line, but an actual fine line super-straight that went super forward toward God. While I wasn't actually seeing it with my eyes, it was like I was seeing it with my eyes, and it was coming out of my chest to a point just below my eye-line. I had been drawing since before first grade, I was the class artist, and to me this wasn't Christianity, this was the future I was drawing toward. At the end of the line was God, and in my vision, He had a little picture in front of Him, or wrapped around Him, and it looked like the pictures you see in books of the ancient city of Rome, a hill with buildings and columns and trees, and it was drawn of like holy light and shadow, and I remember I thought this was funny. Below the line, there was a big mass of cloudy stuff, kind of like looking at the top of a big orb (??) and it had movement, the only movement in the vision, like the way the air looks from a floor freezer when you open the door and it hits room temperature.
Yes, it had an eternal feel, and it was like a memory, but I knew it was fleeting and I remember making two mental notes-
1) The RULE was...stay on the line and nothing would come between me and the future of all mankind. DON'T look down.
2) don't forget, don't forget.
The God in his Heaven met the hype, it was quizzical as well as powerful. And I can't imagine anything that could be better, it really was like a dream come true. But the cloudy mass was life itself, the loves, the fun, all your friends, family.....also all the pain and loss and heartache. So when they say you have to die to go to Heaven, that's one of those little poetic twists of words that confuses everything. Once I saw God I had no doubt, when the Eye of God looks at you, It's not love at first sight, it's first sight.
But this was pre-puberty, I didn't see that coming, and life is crazy, and God wraps Himself in a Dream to keep the Squares out.
To be a Man of God is way too hard for me, my wet dream would be to become a fairly good artist, and I can't even do that. So I know God exists, and that's what I'm saying here, but I'm not giving you my name and address. This pathetic attempt to explain God is a joke, but I'm not lying. If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't believe it, but I think I would have thought it is more rational that Jesus had made it all the way down the line...than a two thousand year old book was based on a joke that fooled all the great critics all this time. God doesn't have any magic power except salvation, maybe if I can quit wasting my time on HA I'll see God one more time before I kick.
I'm no Authority on God, but I can tell you the Bible is written backwards, and I absolutely agree religion ain't for everybody, and a moron with a Bible is still a moron. So cut me some slack and don't make me regret posting this.
Thank you for sharing that.Quote:
Originally Posted by buttslinger
I get it...some of us have those moments. I did.... - a spiritual epiphany.
I mean, I've definitely had some times in my life when it seemed like God had to exist: a quiet snowfall in solitude, watching the mist rise from an early morning forest floor,...getting a bird in the wilderness to eat seed out of your hand....
I get it.
Thing is...your previous posting history also shows you to be a little nuts.
So there is that.
J/K...lol.
If I wasn't crazy then my story might come off as bragging.Quote:
Originally Posted by fred41
If that's how you want to perceive it....:)Quote:
Originally Posted by buttslinger
Jake it is just my theory, it has little hard evidence to back it up, other than the existence of 'spirits' in various world cultures as the source of life. It would not matter so much who the father was in a local setting, as the weight of 'blame' falls on the woman, although I think in some cultures the father takes the rap for not controlling his women. The idea of some behaviour being defined as 'sinful' being compensated for by behaviour that is pious is not unique or unique to Christianity.Quote:
Originally Posted by jake9jake9
As for an all-knowing God, I think science would not actually be worried that the universe and everything in it was made by God if it could be proven. The real problem is the fact that some humans not only claim to know what it is that God intended, and what it is that he wants us to do with our lives, but have also created entire social systems built on these suppositions which have drawn up rules and regulations the violation of which is punishable in extreme ways, including death. That widely different human societies have developed values which are often the same: prohibitions against murder, theft, lying and so on, suggests all humans share some values in common.
But to know what God knows, if God exists, seems to me to be arrogance. Unless he has sent one of his angels to tell you, at which point the arrow points to a door behind which men in white coats are waiting. And yet, Joan of Arc convinced most people that her voices were sincere (although many other young girls at that time heard voices), but her achievements were political rather than spiritual, and it was really for undermining the English crown in France that she went to the stake, the tribunal never could prove that she had not heard voices, and her simple language in which she defended herself reinforced her purity against the scheming of the judges who had tried and sentenced her before the sessions even began. Proof that something may not be true, but if someone believes it to be true, it is impossible to change their minds.
Well he wound me up making me waste my time reading his God Delusion book.....But I do hear what you say, so I am willing to make a small concession and will now elevate him to medium man status:(Quote:
Originally Posted by Prospero
What has been fouled up, things look fine from my narrow view.Quote:
Originally Posted by talldudeil
Virgin births not possible??? What about cloning, What about asexual reproduction (no Jesus and her would look alike, What about genetic engineering (a bit before the time but who knows), if the good book is to be believed literally (although it may have been written as a metaphorical text) who is to say what Mary was or wasn't. She may have been an anomaly or a step in the evolutionary chain
Who is to say the creator is really benevolent, I follow no book, but I see the higher order, as could you if you pondered and let go. I say this with no disrespect but your problem is lack of ability or want, to think outside the box and because of that fact your view is even narrower than my narrow view of things.:whistle: