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Virgin births in animals are no longer rare
- carlob 12y agoHeh, what an appropriate theme for Christmas :)
- georgespencer 12y agoI 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.
- shawndumas 12y ago"There is no god and I hate him!"
- happyscrappy 12y agoThe Hebrew word for young girl was very close to the word virgin, there was only a subtle difference in the spelling.
- dangero 12y agoAre you implying that the meaning was lost in translation?
- danabramov 12y agoThat's a very common argument, indeed. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_birth_of_Jesus 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]
- olavk 12y agoNote 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.
- zkhalique 12y agoI 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 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.
- maaku 12y agoBut the earliest source we have for Matthew are Greek.
- olavk 12y agoThere 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.
- everydaypanos 12y agoThe 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..
- nocman 12y agoYes, 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&version=NKJV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isaiah+7%3A14&v...
- baddox 12y agoSure, 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.
- gohrt 12y agoYes, 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almah
- nocman 12y agoWell, 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.
- duaneb 12y agoIt would be pretty fantastic to generate an Y chromosome. It think it's more likely she was cheating on Joseph.
- SilasX 12y agoNot surprising. The German word for virgin is ... youngwoman (Jungfrau).
- duaneb 12y agoThere'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.
- baddox 12y agoI 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.
- duaneb 12y ago> 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.
- qohen 12y agoThe 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.
- cygx 12y agoCorrect. The problem isn't with Hebrew, but Greek.
- duaneb 12y agoWhile 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.
- fnayr 12y agoHis main argument was actually the Lord Liar Lunatic one, where you need to prescribe one of those descriptions to him (He argues).
- ebiester 12y agoThat 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.
- gress 12y agoBy 'people', I presume you mean all of us.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- xivzgrev 12y agoThen 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).
- fsiefken 12y agoThat 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.
- mgkimsal 12y ago
- philh 12y agoI 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 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%2Fjournal.pbio.1001643 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.
- kijin 12y agoYeah, 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.
- vorg 12y ago> 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.
- vorg 12y ago> 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.
- cygx 12y agoRelevant 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis#Reptiles
- fein 12y agoIt's hilarious when you think about it. It's effectively mating via dry hump.
- jessaustin 12y agoThe 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.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- BerislavLopac 12y agoDavid Icke, is that you? ;-)
- radicalbyte 12y agoI have two female guinea pigs and they do exactly the same. When they're in heat it's humping time.
- ramgorur 12y agoI can imagine the title of the next bbc article -- "Eloquent speech by a 3 months old middle eastern Homo Sapiens is no longer rare".
- throw_away_001 12y agoMore proof of our One True Lord: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unZI3MVIZ4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unZI3MVIZ4o
- lazylizard 12y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmorkrebs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmorkrebs
- graycat 12y agoAh, apparently the BBC forgot about the scene in the first movie Jurassic Park!
- frik 12y agoWhy 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.
- graycat 12y agoRight. As in the script of Jurassic Park at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/quotes 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.
- _nedR 12y agoAs 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)
- GuiA 12y ago> 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".
- _nedR 12y ago>>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.
- Htsthbjig 12y agoI 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.
- baldeagle 12y agoBe careful, that is a long road to go down... http://www.amazon.com/If-You-Give-Mouse-Cookie/dp/0060245867 http://www.amazon.com/If-You-Give-Mouse-Cookie/dp/0060245867
- dynofuz 12y agoThis 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/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/asexual-lizards/