I have 2 1/2 points to make.
First is the 1/2 point.
Danny, I truely hope that you don't take this wrongly, as this post makes me believe that you are trying to encourage people to look at issues larger than themselves. This is an interesting topic to bring up. I hope that you are not insulted by getting only a half point in my reckoning, but I do think that the issue you bring up is greater than you, the one who has the courage to bring it up and consider it. So the Issue gets a bigger number.
{This is a back-handed compliment if your are too tired to recognize it at first pass, and I am not trying to act "superior", just saying that this is a BIG can of worms, and it is a tough one to confront.)
I think that I have made my viewpoint on the difference between the operational aspects of science and faith clear in previous posts. I will attempt to avoid that topic as much as possible here.
Point 1: As I understand human reproduction, it is possible, though unlikely, for a woman to be impregnated though they have an apparently intact hymen. Dis me if you want, but I won't go to the trouble of digging up some links. When I was in school at the inception of "sex ed" in this country, that was driven into our brains. I have run across the stray apparently documented example over the years. (I must say this is not an endorsement of some of the other concepts that I was taught in "health class", such as I was putting myself at risk by exiting from a hot shower that I had not turned cold because it "left my pores open", and other such things) It is thought to be impossible for a woman to become pregnant in the absence of semen from a human male (or to go to extremes, some organism very closely related in some fashion.) To go beyond this statement is to enlarge the topic as you have initially defined it, IMO.
Point 2: There are many animals that reproduce in part by the process of parthenogenesus. Among the "higher animals", insects such as aphids are an example. Virgin aphids produce young. The young are all females. There is also the example of a species of lizards, where no male has ever been observed, and yet they reproduce. As the previous sentance indicates they also invariably produce females so far as is known. This is so far unknown in mammals.
That said, I will say that there is a danger in applying our current perspectective to things of past, though there is some sort of documentation. Phlogisoton worked fine for a while until something came along and expained phlogiston and more.
I will now venture to open another can of worms, in a similar vein. I have seen many fundamentalist Baptists and the like take great pains to distance themselves from the Catholic church. Yet what was earlier called the "Roman Church" out of which grew the "Catholic Church" actively did it's best to eradicate things such as the "Nag Hammadi Library" and the like, and was the dominant "Christian" force a few centuries after what is accepted after Christ's death.
How then do the adherants to this faith claim to posses a Bible and understanding of it that is "non-Cathlolic"? As far as I can tell, the scission was based more on politcal and social bases. All the other "books" were gathered up and burned by those that were to become the "Catholics" long before they acquired their posistion of full power.
I myself just don't know where to draw the lines that some claim are so apparent.
I fully admit ignorance of such things and don't think that I can't be a "good" person despite my unwillingness to to adopt what is in my view and unsubstantiated position. To admit ignorance or the lack of substantiated evidence doesn't detract from one's ability to behave properly, and be respected for doing so.
To further stir things up, I will again bring up something that so far as is surmised is a genunine mystery, but so far thought to be due only of human origin, The Voynich Manuscript. I posted on this once before, no responses.
Do a search if you like, there are a couple of links.
The point is, even apparently left to themselves, humans can create great mysteries all by themselves.
Suspect anyone that says that they heave an answer to everything--
And though I was raised for some time as a Catholic, I am one no longer, and find the concept that I was born full of sin through no act of my own quite abhorent. I reject that notion, and did so quite some time ago.
Rusty,iIf this post should be a different thread, or not here at all, please treat it accordingly. I am tarying hard not to rub anyone the wron way.
