Virgin births in animals are no longer rare | Hacker News Reader

Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

bbc.com

213 pointsSwellJoe122 comments

I think what surprises me most about this is that the Boa produced only female offspring.

Per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZW_sex-determination_system - humans have XY chromosomes, with XX female and XY male. Boas have ZW chromosomes, with ZZ male and ZW female. I'd expect parthogenesis to produce unviable WW offspring, and viable ZZ ones. But WW turns out to be viable, and ZZ either doesn't happen, or isn't viable.

I'd previously read about this happening in Komodo dragons, which also have ZW, and there the viable offspring were all male - which makes slightly more sense to me, genetically speaking, because the children can mate with the mother to get slightly more genetic diversity in their offspring.

Quick google, http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjo... might shed some light on this: in boas, the W and Z chromosomes look identical, in other species they look very different. That might (partially?) explain why WW is viable. But I'm way out of my depth here.

Yeah, I found that surprising as well. Most of the other species mentioned in the article (other than the whiptail lizard) produce males when they reproduce asexually, perhaps so that they can return to sexual reproduction once the males are mature. Producing more females when there's a shortage of males doesn't seem to be a particularly useful trait, but maybe it's too early to generalize too much on the basis of what is already highly exceptional.

> Producing more females when there's a shortage of males doesn't seem to be a particularly useful trait

Given that mammal females are XX and can only parthenogenesize females, never males, because of the lack of any Y chromosome, perhaps that's why mammals don't reproduce asexually frequently compared to ZW birds and other ZW animals.

> Boas have ZW chromosomes, with ZZ male and ZW female. I'd expect parthogenesis to produce unviable WW offspring, and viable ZZ ones.

If the female is ZW, then I'd expect three possible choices -- unviable WW, female ZW, and male ZZ -- because both Z and W are present in the female.

Apparently WW can be a viable female:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9139000/913...

If I'm reading correctly, the offspring's chromosome pairs are identical, so they'd never get ZW.

If this article is meant to have some seasonal relevance, then we can only conclude from genetics that Jesus was a woman.

This article was meant to have seasonal relevance. It might have been published for maximum eye balls. It could also be fake or an article published earlier in 2002. Bribed to publish ?

Of course the reality of the matter is, journalists pretend to be surprised when scientists don't know anything, which is true. The all-knowing wise people of HN assert that both journalists and scientists don't know anything.

The actual reality is that neither HN nor journalists nor scientists nor anyone knows anything about reality.

Relevant Wikipedia quote [1] about New Mexico whiptail lizards:

An interesting aspect to reproduction in these asexual lizards is that mating behaviors are still seen, although the populations are all female. One female plays the role played by the male in closely related species, and mounts the female that is about to lay eggs. This behaviour is due to the hormonal cycles of the females, which cause them to behave like males shortly after laying eggs, when levels of progesterone are high, and to take the female role in mating before laying eggs, when estrogen dominates.

It blew my mind when I first stumbled upon it:

There's a species of lesbian lizards that reproduce by cloning!

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis#Reptiles

It's hilarious when you think about it. It's effectively mating via dry hump.

The way to tell if a cow is in heat, is when she stands still while other cows mount her in the same fashion a bull would. It isn't odd that very important behavior is at least partially determined by genes found on the other chromosomes.

David Icke, is that you? ;-)

I have two female guinea pigs and they do exactly the same. When they're in heat it's humping time.

I recall Josh McDowell citing the virgin birth as one of the defining reasons for believing Christ was the son of God.

I quite enjoyed Christopher Hitchens' take on Parthenogenesis: "Even if I grant you that, you still have all your work ahead of you to prove that he was divine."

Things like this add to that workload. Fascinating and festive and very HN.

"There is no god and I hate him!"

The Hebrew word for young girl was very close to the word virgin, there was only a subtle difference in the spelling.

Are you implying that the meaning was lost in translation?

That's a very common argument, indeed.

See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_birth_of_Jesus

>The word "virgin" in Christian translations is disputed. The Hebrew word is "עלמה" (almah), which scholars agree means a young woman of child-bearing age, "but has nothing to do with whether she is a virgin", and the context of the passage makes it clear that Isaiah has in mind events in his and Ahaz's near future. The Greek-speaking author of Matthew, however, used the Greek translation of Isaiah, in which the word is given as "παρθένος", parthenos, meaning a virgin.[57] The Encyclopedia Judaica calls this "a two-millennium misunderstanding of Isaiah 7:14", which "indicates nothing concerning the chastity of the woman in question".[50]

Note though that the ambiguity is in the translation of Isiah, the prophet in the Old Testament, NOT in the translation of the gospels where it is unambiguous that Mary was a virgin in the sense that she had not had sex with a man. However the reason the virgin birth is important for Matthew is because it is supposed to fulfill the prophecy in Isiah. Which in turn indicates that the story about the virgin birth probably originated among Greek-speaking Jews.

I am actually not sure that the author of Matthew wrote in Greek. While we may not know the original language in which the gospel of Matthew is written, it is written for a Jewish audience and seems to be one of the most colorful, with e.g. many dead saints coming back to life, begging the question of why no one else bothered to write about this stuff. In any event, if this did indeed happen then it's another example of something that doesn't fit our worldview today that nevertheless can take place, like black swans and freak waves.

On a related note, the Hebrew word for "wife" and "woman" are the same. And the same is true of Greek. So quotes of Jesus such as http://biblehub.com/matthew/5-28.htm are probably mistranslated, since it doesn't make sense that two unmarried people can commit adultery, so it's likely that the original word was "wife". And yet because of these translations so many young people's sexual desires were repressed so that they might not look lustfully at any woman, married or not. Whenever I ask other Christians about this kind of stuff, they never seem to have a good answer but continue to insist that it should be "woman", and that young men should still not look with lust at any woman.

But the earliest source we have for Matthew are Greek.

There are no evidence that Matthew was originally written in anything other than Greek. But Jesus probably spoke in Aramaic (not Hebrew), so the sayings in the text would be a translation, but probably translated while still an oral tradition.

Of course there is evidence that Matthew was originally written in Hebrew.

http://hebrewgospel.com/Matthew%20Two%20Gospels%20Main%20Evi...

http://hebrewgospel.com/Matthew%20Two%20Gospels%20More%20Evi...

I don't know if it is enough to in the end establish that for sure, but how do you not call it evidence?

If you are plugging in the colloquial meaning of the word lust, the sayings don't make a lot of sense because in the US in 2015, there are few public limits on lustful gazing.

It takes a classical understanding of lust for the classical interdiction to make sense:

https://www.google.com/search?site=&source=hp&ei=9aidVJHyC8O...

The new testament was written in Greek, not in Hebrew. And yes, back then, the word virgin could actually have allegoric meaning(young/innocent/beautiful/... girl). Imagine if she was actually the first ever mammal to asexually reproduce..

Yes, but the prophecy that Jesus fulfilled by being born of a virgin was from the Old Testament (Isaiah 7:14), not the New Testament. (the Old Testament was written in Hebrew)

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isaiah+7%3A14&v...

Sure, but the New Testament is pretty clear about its claims that Mary hadn't had sex before conceiving. It seems clear that at least some people thought that the Old Testament prophecies involved a virgin birth.

Yes, but Isaiah 7:14 wasn't originally written in English, and the Hebrew word "almah" didn't mean "virgin" in the Old Testament.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almah

Well, in fairness (strictly going by that article) it didn't have to mean "virgin" -- but it sometimes did:

"Almah (עלמה, plural: alamot עלמות) is a Hebrew word meaning a young woman of childbearing age who has not yet had a child, and who may be an unmarried virgin or a married young woman."

I'm not saying that Wikipedia gets the final say here, just pointing out what the quoted article says.

It would be pretty fantastic to generate an Y chromosome. It think it's more likely she was cheating on Joseph.

It's actually more likely that Jesus as an out of wedlock child that pre-dates Joseph. Jesus was referred to as "Jesus son of Mary" not Joseph, which was the custom at the time for illegitimate children. It particularly contrasts with how his brothers were referred to (yes, he had brothers, and probably sisters).

Speaking of which, it's striking that James "the Just", brother-of-Jesus, first-patriarch-of-the-Jerusalem-Church never mentioned the virgin birth. Ever.

Source: Zeolot, a fascinating read.

> It's actually more likely that Jesus as an out of wedlock child that pre-dates Joseph.

I'm not sure they would have drawn a line between the two at that point (hence why I as too lazy to look up when they wed). Shotgun weddings were not considered having children out of wedlock for western europe, and further back you see it's more of an economic agreement to father all the woman's children. In fact, it's entirely possible marriages would have been more of de-facto arrangements based around paternity for non-arranged marriages (which are economic transactions).

EDIT: it's insinuated he's upset because she's pregnant and they haven't had sex, but they had already been married. Again, at this point, it's more of a question of semantics of the time as to whether it counts as adultery or pre-marriage pregnancy. Historically, there may be other evidence to point one way or the other, but I don't think it matters much to joseph (or to christians).

18 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

19 Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily.

It is even more likely that he was just an ordinary legitimate child of Mary and Joseph, and the whole virgin-birth story developed later (after the death of Jesus) among Greek-speaking early Christians, in order to tie in to the Isiah-prophecy.

Not surprising. The German word for virgin is ... youngwoman (Jungfrau).

There's quite a bit of evidence that virginity only became a "thing" after lines traced paternally—i.e. a mother is pretty damn sure a kid is hers, but the father wants stronger guarantees because even in appearance there's a lot of room for cuckolding. So, given that some early germanic culture was matrilineal (e.g. the Suebi, attested by IIRC Suetonius), it's ALSO not surprising that the word for "virgin" is actually the closest approximation.

I would have expected that to be a "thing" long before humans were writing books. Given that males provided protection and resources during child rearing, I suspect there would have been strong selective pressure for males that tried to ensure that the children they supported were their own.

> I would have expected that to be a "thing" long before humans were writing books.

I agree whole-heartedly; however, books are far from the only thing that drive language. Most of the world didn't have access to books until very recently, and language is driven by that most of the world (to some extent, it's difficult to say how much).

> Given that males provided protection and resources during child rearing, I suspect there would have been strong selective pressure for males that tried to ensure that the children they supported were their own.

Careful, you're treading into "let's speculate about how genetics and society interact" territory, which is basically impossible to do correctly without many generations of evidence. Males do provide protection in many cultures, but women provide many forms of protection and resources as well. Among other things (which vary from culture to culture), they provide men. Matrilineal societies are attested many times over, as are matriarchal societies. Given that there are no reliable signals for virginity, it's quite easy to see how men might lust after young women instead of "the first sex". Furthermore, I would (again) argue that "the first sex" is by far most valuable in patrilineal societies. In societies where resources are scarce, for instance, polyandrous societies are more common, because it's more important that individual children are given the appropriate nutrition and protection than it is to ensure that the birth rate is maximized. In these situations, who the real father is is not important, because it's one of the child's caretakers (de-facto). Furthermore, male status is tied to children, so there is more impetus to protect existing children than there is to ascertain paternity.

The Hebrew word for young girl was very close to the word virgin, there was only a subtle difference in the spelling.

Sorry, but this simply isn't so.

עַלמָה -- 'almah -- is the Hebrew word for young girl in Isaiah. (The corresponding male term is עֶלֶם -- 'elem.)

בְּתוּלָה -- betulah -- is the Hebrew word for virgin. (There is no corresponding male term.)

Note that, aside from the feminine ah ending (i.e. the last consonant and the vowel under the next-to-last consonant), they don't look, or sound, alike at all and, semantically, their roots are totally different.

Correct. The problem isn't with Hebrew, but Greek.

While the chronology of the books still leave literary misinterpretation in the bag, Matthew 1:20 explicitly states that the holy spirit impregnated Mary, so under most christian belief system's it's pretty damn clear she was a virgin. Historians, not so much.

His main argument was actually the Lord Liar Lunatic one, where you need to prescribe one of those descriptions to him (He argues).

That argument came from C.S. Lewis, and the primary counter I know is that it assumes "lunatic" is a binary condition -- someone is either delusional or not. We, today, know that this isn't the case. There are people who have truly bizarre beliefs that don't otherwise hinder logical functioning.

By 'people', I presume you mean all of us.

Then wouldn't that person be a liar?

All and all Jesus said he was the Lord. So I think it is actually rather tight - he was correct, he was incorrect and aware of it (liar), or he was incorrect and not aware of it (lunatic).

That is assuming the rendition and interpretation of his words concerning him being the Lord in the gospels written decades after his death on the cross are correct. Perhaps he was merely a charismatic wisdom teacher. Even so there is a field of study (transpersonal psychology) where mystical experiences are not necessarily seen as deviant and a sign of disease. So the mystical union with the Godhead might not necessarily be lunacy. Perhaps this got understood by the leading intellectuals in the mythological imagery we have concerning Christ and it's meaning for humanity as the platonic Man.

The 4th alliterative option is 'Legend'.

Lord, Liar, Lunatic, Legend

Lunatic and Legend are far far far more likely options, which require no appeal to supernatural claims.

"Lunatic and Legend are far far far more likely options, which require no appeal to supernatural claims."

I respectfully disagree. I believe that Jesus is exactly who He said he was -- the Great I Am -- God in the flesh. I have staked my life and all of eternity on Him, and I am fully confident of who He is, and of His faithfulness to His promise to me, that all who believe in Him freely receive eternal life.

Based on what?

This is a genuine question, not snark. Serious claims like this require equally serious evidence (and if you have some, I'm quite interested).

I do not share his Faith, but I understand his views to be a Leap of Faith. While science is nice and all but as humans taking such leaps and trusting other people despite evidence to the contrary, is every day business, is it not? Of course it is rather hard to believe that such a vast majority of people take such Leaps on not just ONE person, but a whole chain of people spanning over 2000 years!! But he must have his personal reasons, and i respect those.

No.

My views are not based on any "leap of faith". A "leap of faith" implies that a person is believing in the absence of any evidence -- and that is by no means true of me.

Eyewitness testimony is used every day in courts of law. It is one of the most common forms of evidence used to determine the truth about things that happened in the past. I am convinced that the New Testament contains multiple eyewitness accounts of Jesus, the things He said, and the things He did.

My faith in Him is based on those accounts. I believe it is God who made sure those accounts were recorded. I was convinced by the evidence given in those accounts. I understand that there are many who have either never read the accounts, or read them and were not convinced by them to believe in Jesus.

Again, to anyone who is interested in knowing what Jesus said and did, I would invite you to draw your own conclusions after reading the book of John: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%201%20&ver...

You believe that the accounts of the bible are true because they're in the bible. Gotcha.

I apologize if what I said offended you in anyway, but in my opinion you still need that leap of faith to believe that not only all those eye witnesses were telling the truth, but also that the accounts recorded over 2000 years ago are still preserved the way they were. But frankly all this discussion is moot considering that if you believe in an omnipotent god, all other things should come naturally. I mean if a Being can create the entire universe from nothing (via the big bang or otherwise), then creating a Y-chromosome out of nothing is a very small feat for such a being.

Now on the contrary, if someone chooses not to believe in such a god, then I don't see how you can make them believe virgin births or the integrity of 2000 year old eye witness accounts. Especially considering that history is full of people who used religion to serve their own agenda (recent example: Al Qaeda) thus giving religion as a whole, a bad name.

"I apologize if what I said offended you in anyway"

No need to apologize (though I do appreciate the civility). I was not offended -- I just did not want anyone to think that my beliefs were based on no evidence, because that is not true.

Your point about believing in God as an omnipotent being is important. You said "...if someone chooses not to believe in such a god, then I don't see how you can make them believe virgin births or the integrity of 2000 year old eye witness accounts." I merely suggested that people read one of the accounts. I believe God is omnipotent. I believe those accounts are accurate, because God has protected them, because they are His testimony about Himself and how He has dealt with man's sin. And I believe these things because I read the accounts and was convinced that they were true, and that the accounts themselves were of divine origin.

I'm not trying to argue anyone into becoming a Christian. I'm merely stating my own beliefs, trying to explain the reasons behind them, and encouraging anyone who is interested to read the book that led me to those beliefs.

On the other point, the fact that "history is full of people who used religion to serve their own agenda (recent example: Al Qaeda) thus giving religion as a whole, a bad name" is really not an issue to me. It is cutting a pretty big swath to lump everyone who has some belief in a supreme being into one large group. There are vastly differing beliefs between people which lead them in vastly different directions. There are always people who will use anything they can for their own selfish gain. It think it is a huge mistake to ignore God altogether just because many people have done evil things in His name. My faith is not in other people. My faith is in Christ. I am convinced He is not just an ordinary man, but that He is God in the flesh. The things that He said and did, the way He talked to people, the way He answered people's questions. All of that convinced me of who He is.

Again, if anyone is interested I would encourage you to read the book of John (I linked to it in my other posts on this subject) and to draw your own conclusions.

> "leap of faith to believe ... the accounts recorded over 2000 years ago are still preserved the way they were."

It's not so much a leap of faith as a study of manuscript integrity. The field of study is called "textual criticism". I can't do it justice in a single Hacker News comment, but you can find fairly substantial scholarly books and articles on the subject.

When it comes to the New Testament, one of the keys for analysis is the multitude of spread-out manuscripts. They have subtle differences from each other, like spelling mistakes (which help us trace lineage -- the same spelling error often appears in later copies from the same source), but the core stories are extremely well preserved -- not changing from early to late manuscripts, or from region to region.

It's also worth reading through the other writings of the early church, from the first 2 centuries, which extensively quote/reference those same accounts.

The sum total of the evidence is that the current version of the Biblical accounts of who Jesus was were written within about 30 years of his death and well-preserved from that time period onward.

(There's also what we call "higher criticism", which looks at how the contents of the text correspond to known history etc. That also establishes the gospels as written ~30 years after Jesus' death. My favorite oddball data: statistical distributions of the names in the gospels compared to names uncovered in archaeological digs -- the common names are correct for first century Palestinian Jews, not Egyptian or Greek Jews.)

There are definitely leaps of faith involved in Christianity. "Does my book of Matthew match the first century book of Matthew?" is not one of them.

For those wondering about sources, Wikipedia has a solid article on the dates in the bible, and seem to settle on about 50 CE as the original authorship dates. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_the_Bible]

Totally ignorant question, but what year is accepted as the official death for Jesus?

> "what year is accepted as the official death for Jesus?"

There's some disagreement, but in the research I was doing this morning the most commonly accepted date I found was April 7, 30 AD. (Other common dates are March 25 or April 25, 31 AD.)

Interestingly enough, this provides the source for the date of Christmas. There's an old tradition that says Jewish prophets always live a whole number of years, so their death and conception are the same date, putting their birth date 9 months later / 3 months earlier. The two dates being celebrated in the 2nd century church were December 25 (based on the March 25, 31 AD date) and January 7 (based on April 7, 30 AD). We now call those two dates "Christmas" and "Epiphany". You can find these dates discussed by Sextus Julius Africanus (160-240 AD), Irenaeus (in Against Heresies, 180 AD), and Hippolytus (commentary on Daniel, 204 AD).

Rumors about hijacking a pagan celebration date started several centuries later, by Jacob Bar-Salibi in the 12th century. He probably got his causation backwards -- the Dec 25 celebration "Sol Invictus" was a result of emperor Aurelius' decree in 274 AD, meaning it took a date Christians had already been celebrating a century earlier.

This is moving quite far from the main topic, but:

Eye witnesses are actually really fallible even in fairly recent cases. You can easily manipulate how people remember scenes and how to interpret what they saw or heard.

Google "eye witness fallibility".

I think you need to go to the original texts to truly grok their meaning in their original context. I believe the King James bible is considered a literary masterpiece - and great literature, spiritual or not usually evokes feelings. The priesthood probably had the brightest literary minds of their time.

Personally I just find it cool ancient literacy can evoke feelings through a span of thousands of years.

Even taking the eyewitness accounts in the Gospels at face value, they are highly dubious. Note that the disciples don't even recognize him when they meet the resurrected Jesus (or they guy claiming to be the resurrected Jesus), and have to see and feel physical proof like the wounds before they even accept that the guy is indeed the resurrected Jesus. An then the guy suddenly vanishes again, without any explanation.

I believe there is a very good reason that they did not recognize Jesus. I believe what the text says.

The scripture in question is Luke 24:13-35. The two disciples did not recognize Jesus because Jesus hid his identity from them supernaturally:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2024:13-35...

The text says (in verse 16) "their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know Him."

Jesus hides his identity, then asks them what they are talking about (they were talking about Him, including the fact that He had been crucified). Then he goes on to explain to them how all that happened (including his crucifixion) fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament (verse 27):

"And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself."

If you don't believe in the supernatural, then it is extremely improbable that you will believe in Jesus. His miracles are all evidence of His deity. He was not limited to things a normal person could do. That being true, obviously He could hide His identity from His disciples (for whatever reason He chose to do that). Personally I think He did so to increase the impact on the disciples of the things He expained to them while His identity was hidden -- but that is speculation on my part, the text doesn't say.

I guess that makes sense in-story, but if you want to take it seriously as an eye-witness account, it is somewhat problematic that deception-magic is used. They might just as well be under deception magic when they believe they recognize him, right?

It depends which levels Deceive Unrecognize and Illusionary Identity are learned at. If they can be learned by the same level, it's all the same.

Also just to follow up on nocman, you can read "who moved the stone", where the biblical account of final hours of christs life is examined in context of what we know about the time period...does it read more like someone writing an emotional story or someone trying to relate something that actually happened?

I think that almost anyone's foundational world view is interesting, and worth asking questions about. Why, for instance, do you believe that serious claims require serious evidence?

Because if you don't require evidence proportional to the claim, your world view can end up including any and all beliefs, which is neither interesting nor useful.

One of the classical ideas in epistemology is the justified true belief theory of knowledge [1]. This has flaws (see: the Gettier problem [2]), but it's a reasonable approximation. Obviously what qualifies as justified is a debated topic, but it's generally agreed that "no justification" is not a justification.

[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology

[2] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem

You assume that requiring evidence proportional to the claim is the only conceivable filter for which beliefs to hold. Of course it's not.

I did not say that it was the only way, please don't put words in my mouth. I said it was the standard way (which it is).

What other methods would you suggest?

I was referring to your first sentence.

> Because if you don't require evidence proportional to the claim, your world view can end up including any and all beliefs, which is neither interesting nor useful.

That is only true if you assume that no other belief filter is being used.

I'll ask again, what else do you suggest?

>Because if you don't require evidence proportional to the claim, your world view can end up including any and all beliefs, which is neither interesting nor useful.

This is a reasonable approach, and probably the best universal algorithm we can choose, if we are forced to choose a single universal algorithm. Still it is clearly imperfect, limiting, and guaranteed to lead to false beliefs at some point.

The fact remains, by chance alone, that there are many important things that happened for which we do not have overwhelming evidence to support. Take all such events that have occurred in our history. Let us throw out claims made by individuals and only rely on claims made by groups of people. Let us assume that an overwhelming majority of these remaining cases are organized hoaxes. Even still, we are left with a number of cases where something happened for which we have no explanation, and no evidence, and no way of performing any further testing. These remaining events, by their nature, are guaranteed to be events that would cause a massive shift in world view for large percentages of humanity. The existence of aliens, God, and so on.

I find it somewhat silly that the two groups try to debate each other with any seriousness - those who have put their faith in God for which there is limited physical evidence, and those who have put their faith in the scientific method which requires physical evidence. The scientific method is a great tool, perhaps the greatest we have, but it is not perfect, and is guaranteed to lead us to mistaken beliefs at some point. Both sides are accepting some things as a matter of faith, whether they like it or not.

Based on what God has revealed. I am convinced by the scriptures (the Bible) which includes eyewitness testimony of the things Jesus said and did.

If anyone is genuinely interested, I would suggest you read the gospel of John, and decide for yourself if you believe what it says.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%201%20&ver...

Why do you believe the Christian Bible is the Word of God when other texts(The Quran, etc) similarly purport to be the One Truth? These other texts also include "eyewitness testimony."

FWIW, the Quran does not include eyewitness testimony in the sense you are speaking of. It is taken literally as the word of God. Although some parts in it ascribe certain quotes to certain people (e.g. Jesus said so and so, Mary said so and so, etc.), but the witness here is God Himself.

Regardless, eyewitness testimony is not reliable[0]. Many people have claimed to seen UFO's, Aliens, and crimes that people did not commit.

0. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-i...

Sure, but when investigating events of a certain magnitude, you would more likely have a bigger group of individuals who have witnessed said event. The article references incidents like murder convictions, where it can be easy to mistake one person for another, because they both happen to be of the same race for instance.

In this case; however, we're talking events like person X gave a speech and said Y. This is much more likely to have been heard by many people, so the likelihood of it have happened in the way it was relayed is much higher.

>Sure, but when investigating events of a certain magnitude, you would more likely have a bigger group of individuals who have witnessed said event.

The Torah claims a million witnesses for the revelation at Sinai. I don't see anyone rushing off to become Jewish.

It occurs to me that "number of purported eye-witnesses" may not be a good evidentiary standard.

You are absolutely correct, it is not just about quantity, but the quality of the witnesses as well. How trustworthy are they? How good is their memory? Do they have any biases? Etc.

Genuinely curious, how do you put so much acceptance into the Bible, when all four books (John, Matthew, Luke, and Mark) have anonymous authors?

Why does the anonymity of the authors matter?

Anonymous sources of information are generally recognized as less credible (for example, they have less reason to be truthful since they have no credibility on the line).

Of course, the larger problem isn't the anonymity of the authors. It's why the bible should be accepted over any other text. Perhaps it should, but that would have to be argued separately.

Disagree all you like. You are still, most likely, wrong.

And similarly, with all due respect to you, I am convinced that you are definitely wrong.

(I'm not being snarky, here. The "with all due respect" phrase in entirely sincere).

nocman and eli's bried comments above have more essential truth than the many paragraphs of other threads. They are both correct, and there's not much interesting to say than beyond what they have said.

The three L argument is aimed only at people who believe in the historicity of Jesus, as well as that he was a great spiritual leader, but who belief that there are also other paths to spiritual enlightenment or salvation. It obviously carries no weight to people who don't believe Jesus was a historical figure, or who believe he was a liar or a lunatic.

From what I understand, 'legend' means there is a kernel of history there, but it's been so crusted over with stories that it's impossible to recover. The word 'myth' is used when it's all fiction.

So the 'legend' position would be "There was a heretical Judean Jew named Joshua son of Joseph who may well have given a sermon on some mount and was very likely crucified, but beyond that we are in no position to say anything. It's been too long, the records are too poor, and too many people with motivation to lie have had a chance to spread tales."

What was the motivation to lie? One common argument is that nearly all of Jesus' closest disciples were martyred and would have had no motivation to die for something they knew to be a lie.

So the people who were martyred wouldn't have died for nothing, perhaps.

Why were there martyrs to begin with? Well, why did people drink the poison at Jonestown?

Among historians it is generally believed that there was a preacher called (something like) Jesus which was crucified by the Romans. But looking at the only available sources (the Gospels) it is not even clear that he claimed to be the Messiah. The gospels are clearly written by people who believed him to be the Messiah, but the quotations directly attributed to Jesus are quite ambiguous regarding the "divinity" of Jesus himself. Notably be appears much more "divine" in the latest gospel than in the earliest, so the divinity seem have been a development over time among his followers. Even if he did himself claim to be the Messiah, it is very different from claiming to be the Lord, since the Jewish concept of Messiah is a (blessed) human king, not a divine being. The concept of the trinity where Jesus IS God is a later concept, not even present in the Bible. And the "Son of God" thing is basically a cultural misunderstanding, because it means something different among Jews (where basically everybody are Gods children) and Greeks (where Gods like Zeus literally had half-human children with superpowers).

So apart from the Liar/Lunatic/Lord trilemma, there is the option "A cult leader that didn't really claim the be the Lord, but his followers came to believe that he was".

> there is the option "A cult leader that didn't really claim the be the Lord, but his followers came to believe that he was".

That's what I'd class as 'legend'.

Yeah, agreed. I just wanted to make clear that you could believe in the historicity of Jesus without having to accept the Liar/Lunatic/Lord dilemma, since Jesus never claimed to be "Lord" in the first place.

"I and the Father are one." --Jesus in John 10:30

Yeah, John is the latest gospel where he is presented as much more "divine". Compare to Mark, which is the earliest gospel.

John is the "in your face" gospel -- it leads with the conclusions. The other three are more like "come along for the journey" -- they walk you through the process of the disciples coming to understand Jesus. There are divinity claims all over those gospels, but they're more subtle.

For example, early in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus quotes the Old Testament saying "You are to worship the Lord your God and serve only him." At the very end of Matthew, Jesus meets the disciples, who worship him, and he does not criticize them or stop them (contrast with Peter in Acts 10.) Once that connection is made, it's an obvious divinity claim -- but it's one that might take time to realize is there.

A few other examples: Psalm 103 says the Lord "is the one who forgives all your sins"; Jesus does it in Mark 2. Both Isaiah 43 and Hosea 13 specify that God alone is Savior, and Luke 1:47 repeats it just prior to calling Jesus the Savior in Luke 2:11. Deuteronomy 10 establishes heaven as entirely God's property, but Jesus claims to be the one controlling entry to heaven in Matthew 7.

Given Jesus' obviously strong knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures, it's hard to get away from the conclusion that he was making intentional claims of being God.

But he wasn't writing the gospels. So we don't know what he intended, only what the reporter wrote down. And they were in the storey. So the possibility of slant is clear.

sure -- but we know the reporter wrote down divinity claims, even in the earliest gospels.

Keep in mind the Lord-Liar-Lunatic argument is aimed at those who claim "Jesus is a great moral teacher" based on the things Jesus is quoted as saying. Jesus is quoted as making divinity claims, many of which are obvious if you have good knowledge of Hebrew scriptures and religious practices. The "Legend" option (Jesus didn't really say those things) is still open, but that makes it harder to claim anything about the value of Jesus' moral teachings.

Well the 'obvious' thing is what's at issue. Because he (apparently) didn't refute other's claim of his divinity isn't a sure bet that he was devine - that's a very indirect thing and nothing obvious about it.

It's very obvious if you're as familiar with Hebrew scriptures as Jesus seems to be.

The claim in Matthew 7 is much more explicit to modern readers -- Jesus is discussing how people will get into heaven or not based on his say-so.

Only if you already have decided that this is the conclusion you want to reach. Which is totally fair as a kind of religious meditation over the biblical texts, but it not likely to convince anybody not yet convinced. For example Jesus states that he hands Peter the keys to heaven, which following this logic then turns Peter into God. And in the Lords Prayer, Jesus instructs his followers to forgive sins, which according to your logic turns them all into God.

> "Only if you already have decided that this is the conclusion you want to reach"

That is not a very charitable interpretation of my comment.

I don't draw the conclusion because I want to. I draw the conclusion because I've studied the texts in great detail.

> "Jesus states that he hands Peter the keys to heaven, which following this logic then turns Peter into God."

Only if you haven't studied the texts in great detail. If you have, you'll recognize the parallel to Isaiah 22 -- Eliakim taking over Shebna's role, not as king, but as palace administrator. That's very different from the role Jesus claims in Matthew 7.

> "Jesus instructs his followers to forgive sins, which according to your logic turns them all into God."

Again, you're missing some nuance. The Lord's Prayer mentions forgiving sins "against us". I can forgive sins against me and you can forgive sins against you. In Mark 2, Jesus claims to forgive sins against God, which is why the crowd considers it blasphemous.

Again, these sorts of claims permeate all four gospels. They're things that, if you have a thorough grasp of the Old Testament, jump out of the text. But if you're not that interested in the details, you might totally miss it (and, to reverse your uncharitable take on my position: if you have already decided Jesus makes no divinity claims, you can surely rationalize it all away.)

I'm not convinced that Jesus didn't make any divinity claims. We have unreliable and contradictory accounts of what Jesus said, so I consider it an unsolved mystery if Jesus actually believed or claimed he was the Messiah and/or the Son of Man as prophesied in Daniel.

The ambiguity might very well be intentional on the part of Jesus, since outright claiming to be the Messiah would be extremely dangerous - this would be equivalent to announcing a rebellion against the Romans.

But I'm totally convinced that he didn't claim he was Yahweh himself, that would have been ridiculous!

The passages you refer to are also pretty ambiguous, for example saying "Son, your sins are forgiven" does not necessarily mean that Jesus is the one forgiving the sins, it could also mean he informs the person that his sins have been forgiven by God.

> "A cult leader that didn't really claim the be the Lord, but his followers came to believe that he was"

I'm curious, what are this position's ideas on how his followers came to believe this? One common response to the general argument is that most of Jesus' disciples were martyred and would have had no motivation to die for a lie.

This is a really interesting question! There is a development through the gospels, where the oldest focus on the actions, saying and prophecies of Jesus, while the newest (John) is much more focused on the divinity of the person Jesus. Paul seem quite uninterested in the words of Jesus and totally focused on the importance of the resurrection. So the transformation from teacher or prophet (a normal human speaking the words of God) into a some kind of divine being happened quite soon. To put is crudely, Jesus start out as a priest talking about the Gods plans, but over time, in the minds of his followers, turns into a God himself. But the full transformation into "God" was only finalized with the Nicene Creed in 325. Even now there are Christian denomination which do not believe that Jesus is God, most notable Jehovas Witnesses (which holds that Jesus was created by God, and therefore not God himself).

An important transformation is that the title of Messiah (or Christ in Greek translation) has a very specific meaning in a Jewish context, as a human king or savior of the Hebrew people. When early Christianity spread beyond Jews, this context disappeared, and the title "son of God" got reinterpreted in a Greek context, where gods could literally have children.

> "the full transformation into "God" was only finalized with the Nicene Creed in 325."

The Nicene Creed is one of the clearest statements of the "Jesus is God" hypothesis, but (as I said elsewhere in this thread) there are plenty of strong claims made in the gospels themselves. There are also similar claims made in many of the earlier writings of the church (if you're honestly interested, there are 10 pre-Nicene volumes at http://www.ccel.org/fathers.html .)

Study the history of other cults, such as Mormonism.

Not how the "witnesses" changed their beliefs and how they talked about what happened over time. Even though some of them came to distrust Joseph Smith or consider him on a wrong path, once they had convinced themselves they had seen something miraculous happen they had a hard time letting go.

They later made comments that suggested they had seen the things "in a vision" (yet most people assume an actual witnessing), the important consideration is to them it was real, and just as valid as actually seeing it. In their mind there was no difference - so they had no problem claiming they saw it first hand.

Faith is a type of insanity, so naturally you can't use the assumption of faithful people acting rationally (no motivation to die for a lie) to find truth.

As to how they came to believe it, again look at other religions, spiritual practices etc. It's quite common for followers/believers to come to believe something the leader is not saying - it has to be so, that's HOW IT WORKS.

It's similar to snake oil salespeople today like Deepak Chopra - you just make a lot of hand wavy claims about energy and quantum physics and people inject their own meaning.

Put these in a time period when education and access to information was low and et voila.

I don't know, he seems pretty obviously divine in all the gospels. As for him claiming to be divine, I don't really understand the argument, because if we would assume that a report that he claimed to be divine is accurate, why wouldn't we assume that a report of clearly divine actions and attributes is accurate?

I wouldn't say "obviously divine". He certainly performs healings, exorcisms and miracles - but his disciples are also granted these powers, and they are not considered part of the trinity. So more like blessed with some supernatural powers, which is quite different from being God himself. In Acts there is even a guy walking around healing people which is not related to the disciples. So it seems in the universe where the Gospels takes place, you dont have to be a God to perform miracles.

As a non-bio person, I wonder what's the evolutionary reason for this not happening in more species. Sure, sexual reproduction is the way to go if you have the option, but wouldn't a wouldn't a mother capable of both asexual and sexual reproduction have higher chances of propagating her genes than a mother who is only capable of sexual reproduction. (I know I shouldn't be playing these mind games with zero knowledge of the subject, but I am curious)

> I wonder what's the evolutionary reason for this not happening in more species.

There's rarely an "evolutionary reason" for a trait not developing. Wings would certainly be a net benefit to mice survival-wise; but unless there's a strong evolutionary pressure for such a trait to develop, it's unlikely to appear.

It's the same for asexual reproduction: unless there's a strong advantage for a species to reproduce asexually, it's likely not going to appear.

In other words, evolutionary selection is really about the strict minimum needed for a species' population to thrive; evolution selects, but it doesn't optimize.

You also have to account for things that are hard to predict: even though on paper it seems like asexual reproduction would lead to a higher chance of propagating genes, perhaps in reality the lack of diversity in the resulting offspring would be negative to the species' survival (or while it sounds like mice developing wings would be an advantage, in reality the energy needed to develop wings would make it a survival disadvantage).

An interesting case were these rules are "suspended" are in closed ecosystems where certain species have no predators and plenty of sustenance; e.g. paradise birds in pacific islands, which can develop completely superfluous feather patterns and attributes at no evolutionary "cost".

>>unless there's a strong advantage for a species to reproduce asexually, it's likely not going to appear.

I was under the (perhaps wrong) impression that asexual reproduction predated sexual reproduction in the history of life (prokaryotes predating eukaryote?) so I always thought that organisms "lost" the trait of asexual reproduction somewhere down the line. Probably an assumption without basis.

>>perhaps in reality the lack of diversity in the resulting offspring would be negative to the species' survival.

Yes. I imagine the answer would be something like that, but the question of what is the exact reason still stands.

Like i said I haven't the foggiest idea of the subject matter but always liked to think and speculate about it. Origin and Nature of Life, Physical nature of consciousness and Neuroscience in general are all topics I find fascinating. If anybody know any popular science books they can recommend on any of these topics, it would be great.

Dawkins' books, especially the earlier ones (e.g. Blind Watchmaker), are quite a good and gentle introduction.

Yes, you are right that life originally started as asexual reproduction and sexual reproduction appeared later; my answer was more about the likelihood of a species that already reproduces sexually moving towards asexual reproduction.

Regarding the question of why the asexual->sexual shift happened in the first place, the wikipedia article on asexual reproduction has this to say:

Current hypotheses [2] suggest that asexual reproduction may have short term benefits when rapid population growth is important or in stable environments, while sexual reproduction offers a net advantage by allowing more rapid generation of genetic diversity, allowing adaptation to changing environments.

>> Yes, you are right that life originally started as asexual reproduction and sexual reproduction appeared later

No, that's a hot research topic.

E.g. a popular hypothesis is than in an RNA world very early and simple organisms had inefficient metabolism and error-prone genetic copy. They didn't have enough energy to sustain a backup of their genetic information, RNA is not very stable, etc. So the only way to keep functioning was to constantly mate with other organisms and exchange good replacements for broken genes.

Thanks for your replies (Need to think more about them) and book recommendation.

These topics are truly fascinating. Many seem to consider them 'soft' compared to Physics, but in some ways, I find some of the questions involved at least as deep and fundamental (or even more) as those currently being asked in the Physics discipline.

wouldn't a wouldn't a mother capable of both asexual and sexual reproduction have higher chances of propagating her genes than a mother who is only capable of sexual reproduction?

A lot of animals are social. In that case, finding a mate of the opposite sex is not really a problem. In a herd of cows, or a flock of birds, there will be both males and females. Animals that don't live in groups often have mating calls or attractive scents, or various other ways of attracting a mate.

And then there's organisms that just do reproduce asexually when necessary, like the snakes in the article. Or like grass, which only reproduces sexually when it gets long enough to "go to seed" and otherwise just spreads asexually.

The question of why sexual reproduction exists at all is a very deep question in evolutionary theory. You shouldn't feel bad about asking it, because a lot of people have, and come up with some very different answers. The Red Queen is an interesting book about this topic.

Heh, what an appropriate theme for Christmas :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmorkrebs

This is nothing new. Lizards reproduce asexually in deserts often when the conditions become extremely stable--no new genetic info is needed. One day the whole world, once we've learned how to control it, will become female, or at least ones that can change into male if they wish. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/asexual-lizards/

I have my own terrarium inside the home with everything enclosed from outside. It includes LED lighting.

Somewhat Aphids appeared and created havoc inside. They reproduce in so many different ways, sexually, asexually or mixed that is really hard to eradicate them(in a natural way).

In the end I decided to use ladybugs to control them. Now I need something that controls ladybugs too.

Be careful, that is a long road to go down...

http://www.amazon.com/If-You-Give-Mouse-Cookie/dp/0060245867

Ah, apparently the BBC forgot about the scene in the first movie Jurassic Park!

Why was it downvoted? It is in some way relevant.

I remember in Jurassic Park 1 the premise was that the dinos reprocuded themselves because the contained parts of an African frog DNA, a species that needs only females to reproduce.

Right. As in the script of Jurassic Park at

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/quotes

early in the movie we have a discussion saying that the animals can't breed in the wild due to them all being female:

"John Hammond: [as they gather around a baby dinosaur hatching from its egg] I've been present for the birth of every little creature on this island.

Dr. Ian Malcolm: Surely not the ones that are bred in the wild?

Henry Wu: Actually they can't breed in the wild. Population control is one of our security precautions. There's no unauthorized breeding in Jurassic Park.

Dr. Ian Malcolm: How do you know they can't breed?

Henry Wu: Well, because all the animals in Jurassic Park are female. We've engineered them that way."

and later with three of the characters wandering in the park we have

"Dr. Alan Grant: [finding egg shells] Oh my God. Do you know what this is? This is a dinosaur egg. The dinosaurs are breeding.

Tim: But Grandpa said all the dinosaurs were girls.

Dr. Alan Grant: Amphibian DNA.

Lex: What's that?

Dr. Alan Grant: Well, on the tour, the film said they used frog DNA to fill in the gene sequence gaps. They mutated the dinosaur genetic code and blended it with that of a frog's. Now, some West African frogs have been known to spontaneously change sex from male to female in a single sex environment. Malcolm was right. Look..."

So, yes, the movie anticipated the OP from the BBC.

I can imagine the title of the next bbc article -- "Eloquent speech by a 3 months old middle eastern Homo Sapiens is no longer rare".

More proof of our One True Lord:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unZI3MVIZ4o

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