Dear Josephus,

I know you never stated the Roman Church invented virgin birth. The point is that the virgin birth, resurrection and miracles are all pagan nonsense. That nonsense is in the New Testament. The nonsense in Christianity was there from the beginning.

Women don’t have babies without a male sperm. Nobody comes back from the dead. Miracles don’t happen.

The Catholic Church added more nonsense to that already in the New Testament. Getting rid of Catholic doctrine and going back to the New Testament does not get rid of all the nonsense. The New Testament itself contains nonsense. To get rid of all the nonsense one has to get rid of the New Testament or admit that part of it is nonsense.

Dear david f,

You have used the word nonsense nine times in this short post. It reveals more about your emotions than about the subject of the post which has been dealt withmuch more seriously by hundreds of thinkers - some of them scientists some of them philosophers some neither - over many centuries, most of them agreeing that these things are not to be taken as something natural science can investigate and pass judgement about.

David f,
You stated,
The point is that the virgin birth, resurrection and miracles are all pagan nonsense. That nonsense is in the New Testament. The nonsense in Christianity was there from the beginning.

Women don’t have babies without a male sperm. Nobody comes back from the dead. Miracles don’t happen.

The point of a virgin is the hymen is intact and ancients inseminated sperm so as to ensure the child and heir was of the father. That is why some queens lost their head when it was found the hymen was not intact. Mary was impregnated with sperm from young men from the lineage of David. The NT states she knew not a man till Jesus was born. Read James protevangelion available on the internet. James was the elder son of Joseph, known as James the elder present at Jesus birth.

Regarding miracles they are happening even today, ask doctors if they see miracles happening. Are people restored from death yes, ask dead atheist Kerry Packer if he was restored to life.

Hi Josephus,

The notion of human virgin birth, in the case of Mary/Miriam, is quite confusing. Your post raises some intriguing issues:

* for instance, was James the elder son of Joseph AND Mary, or did Joseph have another wife ?

* If Mary was impregnated with the sperm of young men in David's line, how many young men are we talking about ? And how could she do that without ecstatically losing her virginity ?

* If Mary was impregnated with the sperm of young men in David's line, how does God come into the picture ? Did he, or the Holy Spirit, take turns ? Or did he/she (ah yes, it can't be a 'she') turn back time, impregnate Mary as a virgin, then rewind time so that James was born first ? Or was Mary impregnated simultaneously by Joseph and God ? Or by Joseph possessed by the Holy Spirit ? Yeah, that might do it.

* Given Jewish adoption rules, that Jesus was taken on as the full son of Joseph, thereby giving him a lineage back to David (and Abraham), was Jesus one of the first to have two fathers ? I wonder how that would go down on his birth certificate these days: two fathers and one mother ? Or One Divine father and two earthly mothers ?

Perhaps it's a bit late to ask Kerry Packer about coming back to life. Maybe it works only once.

Fascinating diversions.

Joe

When I originally started this thread I wondered how long it would take before it was hijacked by religion. The answer was immediately.

I have just caught up with this theme after a couple of days out of internet contact, quite appropriately out on the Murray cliffs with a bunch of geochronologists - those people who date the earth.

So while I can't help with what was 'before' the universe, except that if there was no 'before', the question is irrelevant, I can advise on what is north of north.

The magnetic polarity of the earth switched regularly so what was north became south and vice versa. The earth didn't flip just the magnetic field. So when the old north pole became the new south pole, what used to be south of it suddenly became north of it. Clear? So when you're considering the universe, remember you can't even trust north to stay put. (This is used for dating rocks and sediments, because when they form they preserve the magnetic inclination of the time). That's on top of the effect drifting continents - about 200 million years ago the south pole was at Bourke (that is, if it wasn't the north pole then), or to put it another way, the continental plates had drifted to place Bourke at the south pole.