I'm being brave..

[Tanker]

Welcome BB it's always good to have new posters and theists add new and sometimes needed points of view.

[Tank]

I think we scared her off  

[Tanker]

It's only been about 30 hours give her time to come back. I don't post for days at a time and I'm a regular.

[Tank]

It's only been about 30 hours give her time to come back. I don't post for days at a time and I'm a regular.

But I want instant gratification  

[Velma]

It's only been about 30 hours give her time to come back. I don't post for days at a time and I'm a regular.

But I want instant gratification  

No.

[DropLogic]

It's only been about 30 hours give her time to come back. I don't post for days at a time and I'm a regular.

But I want instant gratification  

I can suggest some alternative websites.

[Tank]

It's only been about 30 hours give her time to come back. I don't post for days at a time and I'm a regular.

But I want instant gratification  lol

[Tank]

But I want instant gratification  :pop:

[Being_Brave]

I'm back :hmm:

[ablprop]

Hi there,

I'm not an expert in human physiology, but I can tell you that parthenogenesis is not particularly unusual in nature. You probably know about whiptail lizards, some of which reproduce without sex. If you think about it, this makes perfect sense in the short run. Why combine your genes with another individual, when you could have an offspring (or even several) with one hundred percent of your genes?

The answer is disease. We're in a constant battle with our parasites. Sexual reproduction allows us to give the parasite a new puzzle to solve with every generation. If we just cloned ourselves, as the whiptail lizards do, eventually the parasites (who themselves keep trying new combinations through sexual reproduction) would hit on the perfect attack strategy, and we'd be defenseless to stop them.

But here's a deeper question, and please don't be offended. After all, you came here. Why does it matter? Think about it this way. If God really is omnipotent, then He could do anything. Why choose a birthing method so frought with the potential for shenanigans (literally)? Why not just pop into existence fully formed, or choose some other obviously miraculous way of appearing? Why make it look so much like you're just a guy with a story to tell?

Yesterday I was talking with someone about plate tectonics. It occurred to me that there's a great example of natural processes that could only (as far as I can imagine) be stopped through a miracle. Why not stop the continents? If miracles really are flying around the universe, waiting to land somewhere, why are they always so very close to parlor tricks, hearsay, and the stuff of dreams? Why not a great big sign in the sky that says, "I'm God. No, over here! Hiya!"?

To me, it's very much like the SETI argument. I have no idea if there are intelligences beyond the Earth. And that's the point. We can easily imagine a universe in which the presence of intelligence screams out at us, impossible to miss. At least in this part of the galaxy, that's not the case. But what's true of the Galactic Federation (apparently absent) is even more true of an all-powerful God. Why hide in XXY chromosomes and rare-but-not-impossible biological events?

[Heretical Rants]

I think that God would skip all of the parthenogenisis stuff and just create new genetic material right in the womb.

[Thumpalumpacus]

It should be noted that Pratt notes that the inducing of parthenogenesis in mammals must be accomplished by mechanical, chemical, or electrical means.  It doesn't "just happen".  Nor has it been brought about in humans.  The one study of it he cites has deep flaws.

[DropLogic]

I appreciate your take on the matter...But unfortunately, god does not survive the scientific method, not even close.

[Whitney]

Let's say that virgin births are scientifically possible (I've read about it before online and remember not being very convinced)...wouldn't that be a reason to doubt the immaculate conception story and accordingly the Christ status of Jesus?

[Being_Brave]

(Going to get a little religious here, but just to explain my thinking...not offended if someone disagrees, it's good for my ideas to be challenged ) Immaculate conception is being concieved without the stain of original sin, not necessarily the part about being born of a virgin. In Catholicism Jesus' mother was also immaculately concieved, but she had a mother and father. So if the person Jesus were born by parthenogenesis he could still be born without sin (and I think his particular chromosome makeup would make him a hermaphrodite or intersex?? IDK, but it would explain why he wouldn't have gotten married or had kids *shrug*)

The story goes that "In the beginning..." He made people, animals, earth, sky, etc.. It doesn't say anything about making the blood to fill the living things with, or the minerals he made rocks of, or ANY detail like that. It doesn't say he purposely put a moon close enough to make the tides- but if I'm to believe that he is the creator of everything I have to asume he did, whether the Bible mentions it or not. There are tons of things that we now know that the guys who penned the Bible didn't back then, but that wouldn't mean that they still didn't exist, just that they wouldn't understand how it worked anyways.

What I noticed about the "miracles" of the bible is that most of them can be explained away by natural occurances. Red tide, for example, and the plagues; scientists have been able to identify causes that aren't "supernatural". The problem I have is that I think, if I were a God, I would use all the natural possibilites that I'd already made to manifest my "miracles". So, if there was already a possibility for something like parthenogenesis, and it was a way for me to get a virgin pregnant, I'd do it.

I'm sure you guys have heard this before, but God was supposed to have created us in His image. That's not supposed to mean that we look just like him, but that we have the ability to understand and reason. That would mean that he created us knowing that we would one day understand how he manifested his miracles. If that were true it would be one way that, even though miracles like those in the Bible don't occur anymore, our "debunking" them with scientific research would serve as some kind of proof that they actually happened, and weren't magic done by a big invisible magician. I know that not every claim in the Bible can be explained, but at one time we thought none of them could, and now we know differently.

My big question about the stuff I found on the internet was is that actually possible? I guess I mean to ask how ligitimate is the claim of its possiblity? From what I keep reading I know that scientists haven't been able to recreate it, but then I read that there were women who were pregnant even though their tubes were completely blocked or the tissue was dammaged so badly that pregnancy shouldn't have been an option.

Thumpalumpacus: what flaws did you find, because that's the kind of thing I'm looking for- was it in the tests done, or in the way it's reported? (To be honest, knowing will help me understand any other kind of research I read, too.)