3point14rat: I am confused. If god impregnating a woman is immaculate conception,
It isn’t.
then both Mary and her kid were immaculately conceived… right?
No, only Mary. Although Jesus himself is considered to have been conceived without original sin, it isn’t called an immaculate conception by the Catholic church. True, it seems to be the same thing, but Mary’s conception of Jesus is called an “incarnation”. Jesus being conceived by god made it “immaculate”, but Mary, having been conceived by two human parents, had to have been created without original sin in order to be impregnated by god. It’s useless to try to make sense of it. Just remember, “Immaculate Conception”: how Mary was conceived. “Incarnation”: how Jesus was conceived.
Wow! So God got to put his holy spirit member in a sin-free virgin. I never even had sex with any virgin. I wonder what it was like. Probably, relatively boring, except for the novelty.
As you say, even Catholic clergy can’t explain all dogma simply and clearly. In my personal experience, trained theologians resort to sophistry, but don’t usually try to blame you for being ignorant, stupid or 'full of spiritual pride", I can’t blame anyone not from the Catholic tradition to begin to understand the woo.
Ya know wot? I don’t really care. I think between us we have already spent far more time on this issue.
Wow! So God got to put his holy spirit member in a sin-free virgin.
A
No, he didn’t do it with his “member”. He probably never had one. What would he need one for? He had Mary conceive by magic, the same way he created heaven, earth and everything in it, including the first two humans, in six days. But when it came to creating, Jesus he must have lost some of his magical powers, because he seems to have needed a woman to conceive and gestate him. I’ve often wondered why he didn’t just create Jesus full grown out of dust, the same way he created Adam. Nobody would have known how he came to be, and all the claptrap about Mary, Joseph and the Angel Gabriel would have been completely unnecessary. God certainly works in mysterious ways.
Me, I’m fine with the notion of an unknowable God, something more, that’s beyond our reach and timeless.
<p style=“text-align: left;”>But according to the bible he is not unknowable. He wanted humans to “know” he created the universe and Adam and Eve in six days. And he wanted humans to “know” he made Mary without original sin and fathered a son with her by incarnation. Besides that we “know” he gave us a moral guide, made us humans capable of “sinning” and watches us for any sign of it so he can relegate us to heaven or hell, as if he didn’t know what we’d do ahead of time. Is that being “unknowable? He’s apparently knowable sometimes and unknowable other times. Neat. </p>
Ok. BTW, why did adam and eve (the first born) have belly buttons??
Yeah; I just asked that question on another thread, citing Adam’s navel on the Sistine chapel painting. Be willing to bet there were learned theological arguments at the time.
A quick look online shows different opinions. The arguably more rational, like the Catholics, say of course not; a navel shows the person was once attached to its mother. Adam and Eve were created, not born, so no navels.
Au contraire, say the fundies; everything which exists today is as god made it, so of course Adam and Eve had navels.
A third answer; nobody knows.
Fourth answer, most rational answer. (imo) . Adam and Eve are mythological creatures who never actually existed.
Lois, If man was created in God’s image, the “member” is a pretty important part of that image, one would think.
Perhaps God’s “member” serves as an adjunct organ that helps enable his omniscience. This could explain why men so often seem to think with their “member”.
To TimB. Indeed! MEN could have been created in god’s image, but what about WOMEN? They don’t have a “member”. Does that mean god has female genitals and breasts, too? Perhaps god is a hermaphrodite.
Leave it to human men to decide they were made in their god’s image. Pretty narcissistic, don’t you think?
“Well if I happen to be narcissistic, it’s only because I am so great.”
I seem to have read a something similar recently, out of the US. Can’t remember from whence it came.
LoisL there are heaps of really impressive goddesses around, if you don’t mind leaving the Abrahamic faiths. I’ll always been partial to Diana and to Kali.
Jewish apocrypha tell us the first woman was a fiery redhead called Lilith. She wouldn’t do what Adam told her to d0, so Adam went whining to god, who mad Lilith a demon. God then made Eve, a treacherous madame if ever there was one.
Recent discoveries in Israel have led to the conclusion that that YHWH originally had a wife called Asherath*
*sources. :
The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, a book published in 2001, discusses the archaeology of Israel and its relationship to the origins and content of the Hebrew Bible. The authors are Israel Finkelstein, Professor of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University, and Neil Asher Silberman, an archaeologist, historian and contributing editor to Archaeology Magazine.
Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel, (Eerdmans, ISBN 0-8028-2852-3, 2005),[1] is a book by Syro-Palestinian archaeologist William G. Dever, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Archeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Did God Have a Wife? was intended as a popular work making available to the general public the evidence long known to archaeologists regarding ancient Israelite religion: namely that the Israelite god of antiquity (before 600 BCE), Yahweh, had a consort, that her name was Asherah, and that she was part of the Canaanite pantheon.
PatrickD: Yeah; I just asked that question on another thread, citing Adam’s navel on the Sistine chapel painting.
Lois: do you think Michelangelo knew what Adam and Eve looked like or whether they had belly buttons? Presumably he based the painting on humans he knew and they all had belly buttons. The idea that they shouldn’t have had them might never have occurred to him. If it did, he probably thought that without belly buttons they would have looked odd. He was painting an allegory.
Seeing Adam is a mythical figure (or at least the European version is) Michelangelo would have made an aesthetic choice . Yep, would have looked odd without a navel. Much the same as portraying Jesus as he would most probably have looked; A dark, stocky man of possibly semitic appearance .(at that time, Jews were still very much a people with some common features) . Most mythology has conventions and rules, which are widely understood by believers.
For all I know, the first homo sapiens may have looked like the San people of southern Africa
Below a broadly accepted image of Jesus’ probable appearance
One can’t help but wonder about their personal hygiene. Hot country too ; they must have been a bit over ripe. Their hair must have looked most unattractive. Yet. old Yoshua still managed to attract female followers. . He must have been a terrific orator. OR perhaps the his merry men were really ugly,
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