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Semi-Identical Twins Discovered
daftna writes in with a story from Nature about a pair of twins who are neither identical nor fraternal: they are semi-identical. Researchers discovered twins who share all of their mother's DNA but only half of their father's. Both children are chimeras — their cells are not genetically uniform, but include a mix of genes from two separate sperm cells that fertilized a single egg. This is, apparently, not as rare as one might think; but the resulting fetus is rarely viable. This report marks the first known incidence of two half-identical twins resulting from a double fertilization.
Subject says it all.
We're finding new chimeras every day, now that DNA testing is becoming more common. Discovery Health even had a program where genetic testing showed a mother's children to be the product of her BROTHER and her husband; though she had no brother. Turned out she was a hermaphrodite- some of her cells, including her EGGS, were male- a fraternal twin that had been absorbed early in the gestation process.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
This story was already posted!! Oh, no, wait...
I understand it's mythologically correct to use the term "chimera" but whenever I hear it I always envision something else: a ghastly soulless beast with an iron heart, breathing fire out of a cavernous tooth-lined maw, crushing entire houses under gigantic feathered elephant legs; a scaled, whiplike tail kicks up ashy dust clouds as its dragged for miles behind this monstrocity.
No matter how many times I hear the biological equivalent of the term (which is never as exciting) I'm always let down. I always think some giant monster has been discovered, or someone turned into this monster, or geneticists have new clues as to the cause of this monster.
It's a bit annoying once I'm letdown but for a precious few seconds I'm always aghast in wonder.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
How is this interesting? What are the implications?
(I'm sure it is, it just seems.. moot to me).
having it all over the news that their mom was into double penetration i mean jesus maybe she was in college
Well that should cock up the old joke about the blonde who gave birth to twins and wanted to know who the father of the other one was.
No I can count up to five, even with one hand busy!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Maybe this was slightly different, but I knew two guys back in high school who were genetically half-identical twins. I guess the condition was caused by the polar body (which normally disentigrates) containing enough cytoplasm to sustain itself, and thus allowing it to be fertilized by a sperm other than its pair. They refered to this as "Polar Body Twins". It is extremely rare, but not unheard of. Furthermore, they really looked the part, being much closer in appearance than fraternal twins, but being subtley different from identical twins.
There seems to be a hot debate over the possibility of this happening. Some scientists fully support the notion that this happens, while some have rejected the notion altogether, citing that polar body's don't "normally" contain enough cytoplasm to sustain themselves. But this sounds like a rediculous arguement, to me, since the exact amount of cytoplasm that is both required for fertilization, and the exact amount that a polar body usually contain, very wildly.
Unfortunately, it's very difficult to confirm whether or not this occurs, since percentage of difference in genetics between both fraternal twins and polar body twins is not exact. Polar Body twins will always contain between 50% to 100% of the same genentics (averaging at 75%0, where-as fraternal twins could be anywhere between 0% to 100% similarity. So, my friends will never actually know whether they developed from identical zygotes, but their genetic makeup was similar enough, that many doctors speculated that this was the case.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Well, at least the father was the donor of BOTH sperm cells! Would have been interesting had there been 'something else' going on!
Hate to be the party pooper, but do you have a link?
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
for detecting mitochondrial milkman DNA?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"Almost never".They're either identical or not, theres no in-between.
There's a great book series by Bryce Courtenay where the first book's (The Potato Factory) last story arc tells about the birth and childhood of a unique pair of semi-identical twins. The mother was a white woman who gave both a black man and an American Indian the right to have sex with her on the same night (long story, read it if you're interested) and had a pair of twins where one was black and the other white. The next book (Tommo and Hawk) was all about the boys and their teenage years living in Australia and New Zealand in the early 20th century. Great series but the really interesting part are the boys, who are technically twins, but are very different in both looks and personality.
Actually now that I think about it they might not have been semi-identical but just fraternal...
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
...welcome our freaks-of-nature-semi-identical twin overlords?
I'm with you.
One of these days, something from the Monster Manual is going to happen.
I don't know if that's good or not.
While it would be cool to see a Mind Flayer wandering about, it's probably not a good start to the day if you run into him.
My mom says I'm cool.
So, does it mean that if a woman has sex with 2 guys, she could (theoretically) have 1 child from 2 men. Does she get to collect a child support from both of them?
According to my anatomy textbook, after the spem digests its way through the zona pellucida:
they will go on to write a film called the matrix.
I Predict A Riot
Didn't something like this happen to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito in that one blockbuster smash?
The NY times reports today http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/science/27marm.h tml the marmoset family of monkeys does this.
We don't get bupes, we get semi-identical posts.
(Damn! It mutated on me.)
I always envisioned a chimera as an alien hybrid with glowing hands, but on another note I wonder if this would be anything like Fry being his own grandfather...;)
This is just another example of the far left trying to discredit intelligent design
Or can I now claim ( in mixed company ) to be a semi-identical non-twin?
Semi-dup!
That's like me and my twin, if not for the Evil gene, we'd be identical!
That usually means something else.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
These two are almost, but not quite completely unlike identical twins?
It just hasn't happened in humans yet.
. stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6196225
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
I heard about this over a year ago, and the explosion of DNA testing has led scientists and researchers to realize this is far more common that once thought. Hermaphrodites are probably the most common noticeable result of this; spontaneous abortions are by far the most common (but not commonly linked to this cause) result, but many apparently 'normal' people also have more than one set of DNA that can be traced back to this. When a sperm penetrates an egg, the chemistry that blocks out other sperms is *almost* immediate, but not quite. There is a window of opportunity for this to happen. Go sperms go!
All pass beyond reach of medicine. None pass beyond the reach of love.
Well that explains a lot.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
> This is just another example of the far left trying to discredit intelligent design
Reality has a well-known liberal bias!
who weighs about 150 while I weigh 210. I guess you could say I'm much more identical than my twin!
did the parents require a transmutation circle?
023AD01('Semi-Identical', 'Twin')
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
but no personal life or even ability to enter either public restroom without people looking at you dubiously.
I dunno about you, but when I go to the restroom, people usually don't see my weenie. And there's always the stalls to do your business, you know. Furthermore, if people really want this sort of thing "corrected", there are surgical procedures and drugs to make anyone clearly male or clearly female. As for medical risks, most people who are chimeras never seem to find out anyway.
laugh, it's funny
Not to hijack the story, but:
This story poses an interesting challenge for those people blocking stem cell research on religious grounds.
The concept of the soul entering the zygote at the moment of conception raises puzzling questions when the resulting cell goes on to split into two viable individuals. What happens to the soul? Is it split in two? Does another soul enter the second? What happens when the individuals are not identical, do we get another soul?
The situation becomes even more untenable when individual zygotes (re)combine to form a single individual (apparently this happen quite often). Where does the second soul go? Did either have one to begin with?
As Sam Harris said - "This sort of soul arithmetic does not make sense."
Stem cell research has the potential to save the live of many. Let's get some sense into the debate and drag ourselves away from ancient thinking.
I don't make predictions, and I never will.
The Chimera are spreading again?!? I thought I just defeated them in Resistance: Fall of Man. Time to go slaughter them again!
I hope the world doesn't get overrun by the Chimera again!
Here's one thought for you: Splash Conception. A.k.a., anal sex is not 100% reliable as birth control. It only takes one drop of sperm on reaching the vulva, and the spermatozoa's mobility takes it from there.
Then there are things like an elastic hymen, and various other fun ways to end up pregnant while technically a virgin.
And to make it even more fun, think this: they later had to invent an explanation for exactly this kind of thing, namely the succubi and incubi. Virgin virtuous girls (yeah right) were supposedly impregnated by incubi. You don't invent a whole explanation for something that never happened ever since. So basically they knew it happened more than once, and in fact it happened again and again.
So here's what _really_ makes me wonder: why is everyone pretending that something happening all the time is a one-time divine miracle? I mean, hello? It's like proclaiming that there is only one Car made by God himself, and steadfastly refusing to acknowledge all the other cars around you. They can't exist, because God said they don't exist.
I don't know, it's basically fascinating how people can basically force themselves in a thoroughly schizophrenic frame of mind where they believe two completely opposite things at the same time. E.g., simultaneously that (1) Mary's virgin conception was such a unique and inexplicable thing that can only possibly be explained by divine intervention, yet at the same time (2) thousands of other virgin girls got pregnant too, e.g., via incubi. Hello? How can one have unyielding faith that something is unique and non-unique at the same time? Or that it could have been possible only by divine intervention, yet at the same time the same happens without divine intervention all the time? (E.g., via demons.) Mind boggles.
Or maybe that's the ticket. The more absurd and illogical a religion is, the more people will rabidly fight against anyone saying otherwise, because it trips their own insecurity and doubt. Better burn the heretic before he manages to make you think more about that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Read the Bible:
.. I think it's pretty clear that she was a virgin. If not, why would she ask "since i am a young girl?" instead .. it makes far more sense that she's a virgin asking that.
Luke 1
31You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
34"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"
From that
Do you really think that this is the biggest problem intersexual people will ever face in their life? If yes, you seriously need to read up on these things a bit.
First of all, as a disclaimer, I'm not intersexual myself, but I'm interested in inter- and transsexuality and know a couple of people who are. Most of the intersexuals I know had a gender surgically assigned to them after birth, too (female, FWIW; as doctors say, "it's easier to dig a hole than build a pole"). But you know what? Neither of them is happy.
In fact, the *exact opposite* is true. *Every single* intersexual I've talked to or heard about has said the same thing so far - that doing so is, essentially, butchering, a traumatic experience that will haunt you for your entire life. Even in these times where sexual reassignmet surgery is not impossible anymore, the results are far inferior to anything that nature came up with (if you can even afford the whole procedure!), and the psychological problems associated with having your body mutilated after birth are just as serious.
What really needs to be done when an intersexual child is born is really easy: bloody leave them alone. The child will eventually grow up and be able to make their own decisions; if they decide then that they really belong to one gender, it's not too late to do surgery etc.. What's more, it might well be that the child decides that they're really male - contrary to popular opinion, "intersexual" and "transsexual" do not mean "a guy who wants to become a chick".
But there's also a decent chance that the child will say "I'm happy the way I am", and who's to say that that's not within their rights? If the only reason you can come up with is that there might be confusion over which restroom is appropriate, well... I'm sorry, but that isn't quite enough.
What's more, when you're talking about things like restroom usage, you make a very fundamental mistake: you look at what other people and society in general will see the child as, rather than what the child themselves thinks. But it's the child who will have to live with their body; the idea that society has a right to say "you don't fit into our binary system, so we'll cut up your body and then pretend that you do (even though you really still don't)" is outrageous.
FWIW, BTW, another fundamental mistake that's often being made is the assumption that it's even possible to reassign gender - that is, the actual gender that someone identifies as, as opposed to their physical sex. One of the reasons why intersexual people were mutilated in the past and raised as girls is that doctors (wrongly) believed that if you just cut off everything that was non-girly and if you just put the child into a dress and told them they were female, they'd really believe it and grow up as a normal, well-adjusted *woman* - but in reality, it doesn't work, and never has.
Of course, I do understand that there are no ulterior motives - doctors, parents etc. really are trying to help intersexual children. But it's also important to realise that it's not working and that the only thing you're doing is CAUSING harm, not preventing it.
So, although this has little do to anymore with the original TFA, just let me say this: leave intersexual children alone, and let them make their own decisions when they're old enough. Until then, be tolerant, be honest, explain to them why they're different, and explain that it doesn't make them worth less or anything like that. That's the ONLY way you can actually help them.
butter the donkey
Well, for the hermaphrodite twin, the implications are "corrective" gential surgury, followed by lifelong hormone therapy. Whether this is needed or even works at all is largely a secondary issue. You should read up about the expieriences of people born with ambiguous genitalia and the sufferring they have to endure at the hands of modern medicine and psychiatry.
May the Maths Be with you!
Twins Discovered?
I guess they discovered themselves first.
Credit where credit's due.
Twins Discovered?
I guess they discovered themselves first.
Credit where its due.
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
It should be twin chimeras found. A cloned chimera is exponentially unlikely to be identical.
Basically each chimera has two sets of semi-identical DNA. The identical portions inherited from the mother make it possible for the DNA to be identical enough to interface and mix together to create a single entity. The TWO stains of DNA are 3/4 average identical. But for the DNA to be compatible enough that the child is viable is rare.
It's possible to have two children 3/4 identical just by chance. You would just need to have lots of babies and compare the DNA against each other. This is a case of true semi identical siblings (though not twins).
But if you took these two children and swapped organs and mixed their body parts and didn't give they anti-rejection drugs it's unlikely they would be similarly identical enough for them to survive as chimeras.
Duly noted, but:
1. Even if it was invented later, still, at some point people -- and for that matter the church sponsoring those inquisition trials -- had to believe or preach _both_ at the same time. Both that (A) Marry's virgin pregnancy was a one-time divine-intervention-only miracle, and (B) that the same was possible via incubus, and happened all the time.
2. Believe it or not, incubi and succubi aren't an inqusition-only thing. Belief in that kind of thing is spread all over the world, including in areas where the catholic inquisition had no say. E.g., you can see the same or similar beliefs in orthodox Eastern Europe, various tribes, etc, and even in Europe they appear _long_ before the inquisition.
3. While having sex with the devil in exchange for power was indeed a theme for inquisition trials, incubi and succubi generally just used as a makeshift explanation for erotic dreams. If a boy dreamt something erotic and came in his nightgown, the succubus explanation was what they thought of it, but noone brought him to trial for it. Ditto for girls having erotic dreams. They may have told the bugger to fast and pray and have a crucifix near the bed to hold demons at bay, but that was just about it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Isn't that term used to describe *animals* which have cells originated from different zygotes?
Or, it could be that the parents are named Typhon and Echidna.
In a slightly related note: we've seen on slashdot FA about mouse with human braintissue, recently sheep with 15% human DNA in it, etc. I'm curious how far one will go in this, and where to draw the line. I can accept most human-like organs grown in animals for the benefit of medical advancement (e.g.replacing ones' organs without the current difficulties would be a huge bonus), but of course, there is the problem of easier animal-to-human virus contamination.
That said, what about the brain? Surely, people must realise there are ethical dillema's in regard to this. (And, no, I'm not arguing from religious grounds; I'm an atheist). The problem is, what do you do with, say, a monkey who has 30% human braintissue, or 50%, or 70%? when does it stop being a monkey, and when does it start being human?
Politicians and courts don't seem to have thought about the matter yet. I guess it will remain thus, untill some medical experiments are done on an ape who actually is more human than ape, and has a scientist willing to acknowledge that. When you have a chimera that is half human and half animal (including the brains), and thus the distinction becomes blurred; what or whome are you experimenting on? Is it still ethical? Is it solely a matter of being able to communicate one is selfconscious? (To remain consistent in that case, one should allow experiments on infants an severely retarded people too).
My two euro's on the matter is, that research where the brains of animals are genetically altered into a more human form should be severely restricted, if not forbidden outright.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
When I say "severely restricted, if not forbidden outright", I mean in regard to treating them as animals.
I had to think about the SF-book 'startide rising' where dolphins and apes are genetically altered to be as intelligent as us. If we ever create a chimera individual (or a race) with an intelligence comming close to our own (note: how to evaluate that, though?) they should have the same rights as ordinary people.
The problem is, you will always have a grey area.
Then again, I already think expirements on primates should be illegal now too. (I am, however, not a green tree-hugger zealot who thinks all animal testing should stop; as long as there are no viable alternatives to it, I think some animal testing to ensure the safety for humans is acceptable).
Anyway, I think, in the future, sooner or later this issue is going to become one of the great ethical dillema's (together with the classics of abortion and euthanasia).
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
I bet mom didn't pass up on that epidural. Spikey!
The article is Nature is very poorly researched. Half-identical twins resulting from double fertilization of a single egg has been known about for decades. I have a friend whose cousins were the first pair identified, back in the 60's. I am myself godfather of a pair of gorgeous four and a half year old half-identical twins, a brother and sister.
wrong. -1 redundant
Chimeras are possibly the limiting factor in DNA testing reliability. Chimeras include absorbed twin, maternal cells, sperm mitochrondial surviving fertilization. There is a short time window in the early embryo when this can occur.
I remember seeing a case on Dateline TV where a child was removed from a mother because the standard DNA test did not match, even though the immediate footprint taken at birth did match. Turned out to be a rare case of father's mitochrondia. Same issue with the identification of the Russian Czar's family bone id. Many of the familys' tissues had mitochronia DNA from both parents.
Too resolve these ambiguities you have to employ much more expensive and quirky nuclear DNA testing. And there can be ambiguities there.
Only a porn star could receive sperm from two different males in a small enough period of time to make your idea happen
Why? In various tests it can be shown that some people's "swimmers" are faster than others. So maybe person (a) had the lazy backstroke variety while person (b) had the olympic athlete variety. What's the optimal time to reach destination, and I've heard that it be in excess of an hour... which is plenty of time for things to happen with two donors.
old news:
http://www.marykateandashley.com/
nobody thought it was odd that "fraternal" twins looked nearly identical?
"...if you don't like your job, you don't strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed..." -Homer
Who's your daddies??
-Xoltri
No, we're not talking about two different fathers, but two sperm from the same father, each divided (in some proportion) between the two children. So the genetic make up is as follows:
First child:
50% - Suzie
23% - Joe Sperm A
27% - Joe Sperm B
Second Child:
50% - Suzie
27% - Joe Sperm A
23% - Joe Sperm B
Of course, those aren't the actual percentages of genetic makeup from each sperm in each child, but this illustrates the point.
Actually, I'm surprised you didn't make the point about female genital mutilation...
Somalia: "We'll fuck up these girls so they'll fit in our social structure and not be stigmatized."
America: "We'll fuck up these babies so they'll fit in our social structure and not be stigmatized."
The rest of the world does it, too, of course. The US often does it without even informing or asking the parents, however, which makes for a tighter analogy.
Ironically... captcha: benefit
This is a misleading post... the nor fraternal implies that they aren't fraternal, which they are... I hate to be pedantic, but this is Slashdot.
not real flamebait, just an observation
redundanat body text to fool lameness filter
1. I didn't say (necessarily) "raped". Let's face it, since the dawn of time, a lot of men were curious about that. I can just imagine a caveman in a stylish sabertooth-skin loincloth pleading with his woman to let him try that way too. Note that I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just that it happens.
And a lot do say "yes" at some point or another. I was reading a statistic about a decade ago, and IIRC about 50% of the polled women had taken it up that route in the USA, and it was raising well over 80% in some other countries. Don't quote me, though, it's been a really long time since I've read that.
And "you _must_ be virgin at marriage" expectations just seem to make that happen more. It doesn't take a genius to figure out, "hmm, if she took it up the ass, she can jolly well stay a virgin for all I care". Throw in a rabidly fundamentalist theocracy, with a habit of killing people for as little as spilling their seed on the ground... and it just gets a lot more tempting to try that instead of outright breaking the tabu.
2. I never said it's _only_ the virgin conception, but I didn't feel like going into the whole list of absurdities, contradictions and non-sequiturs. It was a long message as it is.
3. See, the thing is, "if you believe Jesus is God" also tends to raise the bar of what I'd expect in the way of miracles. He can come down here in a more convincing way than asking everyone to just trust Mary that there was a miracle involved, without any other proof. God can do a lot better than that.
If far simpler explanations exist for a lot of the stuff, ranging from the virgin birth, to the thoroughly unsurprising fact that someone wasn't quite dead after a couple of hours on the cross(*).... I dunno, I'll tend to apply Occam's Razor. If it's no different from a normal every day event, then I'll believe that the normal every day event was what happened. E.g., if I find an apple under an apple tree, dunno about you, but I'll assume it simply fell, not that this particular apple came down via divine miracle.
((*)It usually took days to die on the cross, since the cross itself didn't do much more than make your stay up there painful and uncomfortable. Volunteers, whether religious nuts or in the name of scientific experimentation, spent comparable times with their wrists tied to a cross without coming even near to death.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Basically, that's just what I was hinting at, yes.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
You realize they stole the chimera name from greek mythology, right?
Man, you really need that seminar!
Well, if we're talking about what I believe, basically that's my point of view too. On both accounts.
I'm not saying _I_ am confused by that, I'm saying there are and were people whose religion involves believing things that directly contradict each other. Yes, it can be easily resolved by reducing it to "so both Mary and those 'incubus victims' were just girls who got laid by a man, not by some God or demon". But that's not a reduction that a bible thumper would do, or has done.
That's all I'm saying. _Not_ that it confuses me no end that two incredible claims contradict each other. Just that some people actually managed to believe both at the same time.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Premarital sex isn't adultery. People weren't stoned for it. IIRC, the penalty was a fine, and getting married.
Well, do _you_ need to construct a strawman _you_ can deal with? The point isn't what _I_ believe, but the contradictions other people choose to believe at the same time. So what on Earth, other than some cheap attempt to derail the topic, would it serve to shift to a completely different topic of your choosing?
Well, bingo. Someone give that man a cigar ;) _That_ is the topic. The kind of contradicting things people can believe at the same time.
Anyway, believe whatever you will, but it's not a straw man. A _lot_ of religious drivel has been written around the premise that Mary's pregnancy is something unique and inexplicable in any other way than divine intervention.
That modern-day semi-christians have no trouble taking the bible as just a metaphor, and as "yeah, well, so it happened more than once, big deal" is one thing, but talk to some genuine bible thumpers or look back in history and you'll see those notions taken a lot more literally, and a lot more rabidly as unique one-of-a-kind miracles. Just tell one of them your "ah well, see, lots of girls end up pregnant while technically virgin: e.g., via anal sex" or "yeah, well, lots of people woke from the dead without divine intervention" ideas, and see them start foaming at the mouth, not shruging it off as "yeah, so it is, just this time it was divine."
A lot of people today seem to have this notion that being "christian" pretty much means taking the bible as a fable, along the lines of "yeah, well, maybe the Genesis really means creating it all through evolution, and the 'days' were really 500,000 years each". (And similarly loose interpretation of everything else, New Testament included.) That's actually a very new and fairly minority notion. For most of the last 2000 years, the Bible was supposed to be a _literal_, hard-fact chronicle, and where it was vague, the Pope's interpretation was literal, God-dictated fact. People actually calculated stuff like the age of the Earth by totalling the ages of the people mentioned in the bible, in all seriousness. It wasn't a metaphor, it was for them hard fact and hard numbers. Some still do. People sold off their farms and went to the first crusade, because the church told them that the end of the world is nigh and God is gonna be mightily pissed off if humans don't free Jesus's tomb by then. _That_ kind of blind faith.
And before you start screaming "strawman!" again, there's a reason I'm telling you all that: that the same literalist interpretation applied to _everything_ coming from Rome. Including the lots of stuff about Mary's virgin pregnancy being so utterly unique and miraculous, as to be in itself _proof_ that Jesus can't be anyone else but God incarnate. That wasn't just a case of "yeah, well, so it was another girl who got pregnant while virgin, only this time with God", it was one thing that the church hammered on non-stop as being as miraculous as it can possibly get. It was one of the cornerstones of Christian faith, not just some footnote as to how Jesus got down here.
But if you want an actual historical example of people who genuinely believed both, take the authors of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum. (Mighty fine witch-hunter manual, and interesting insight in the workings of two thoroughly deranged, rabidly fundamentalist minds, and disturbingly extreme cases of mysoginism to boot.) They were perfectly able to reconcile a ra
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
How about, say, St. Cyril of Alexandria? Would that qualify as a properly Christian source for you? You know, seein' as it's one of the guys who shaped the doctrine of Immaculate Conception at the Council of Ephesus, 431 AD? That's as official as it possibly gets, to my mind. Here, catch: "Who can put Mary's high honor into words? She is both mother and virgin. I am overwhelmed by the wonder of this miracle." You'll notice how that's presented as an overwhelming miracle in itself, not as something that's common and happening all the time.
:P
Too old? How about one of the Novenas on EWTN Global Catholic Network? "O Mary, Mother of God, endowed in your glorious Immaculate Conception with the fullness of grace; unique among women in that you are both mother and virgin " Ok, not exactly an official text of the Church, but just shows that someone actually believed that to be unique, and presumably noone protested too much.
I could give more examples, some even more explicit, prayers stating unequivocally stuff like "never was another maiden a mother", but it's almost 2AM and I have better stuff to do than research and cross-reference this crap any more just to make a stupid point. If in your denomination the uniqueness of Mary's situation isn't a central point, or whether you want to believe that it's some unimportant thing, in the end, suit yourself. It would be sorta absurd for me to persuade you to some religious position over another, given that I don't really give a damn about either position, other than as some idle armchair-philosopher musings
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
They're referring, of course, to President Bush, and Alfred E. Newman.
Well, see, except that's what religion as a whole used to _mean_. It took repeated plagues and an age of depression and disillusionment to even _start_ to budge people's faith. And even from there it would be another half a millenium of going "downhill" (from the church's point of view) to get to today's liberal, or even agnostic/apathic, attitude about one's own professed faith. Being a literalist/fundamentalist didn't use to mean "some weirdos down south", it was the normal and expected frame of mind.
It wasn't a few weirdoes. _Masses_ of people went on an massive exodus in the first crusade, or indebted themselves to buy equipment and supplies for those who did. Or raised in massive revolt and waged bitter war upon each other for something as ridiculous (by today's standard) as whether the other's position is fully supported by a literal read of the bible. See, for example, the hussite wars. It was the expected baseline, rather than being something extreme.
Why I'm saying that is just to make it clear about what _context_ I'm talking. When one religion replaced another, that was the context in which it happened. When fundamentalists chose to believe something absurd, we're not talking about a few deranged loonies doing it, but _masses_ of people doing it. That, in a nutshell is what I'm wondering about. I can understand a few being deranged, that is no surprised. Whole populations forcing themselves to be schizophrenic, well, that's a damn scary thought.
That is an interesting hypothesis, to be sure.
However, from what I can tell, at least technically, humans _are_ rational and logical full time. Where human logic tends to fail is in the fact that most use it backwards or circularly, starting from what they want to believe and working from there towards how they can justify it. E.g., instead of starting from the facts and working towards "ok, then I need a pony", they start from "I want a pony" and work backwards towards finding some unconvincing justification for it. Discarding any facts that stand in the way. (I religion case, the "pony" being "I don't want to permanently die".)
Even there, IMHO usually there is some actual logic behind it all, they just don't want to admit it, sometimes not even to themselves. E.g., when someone comes up with something like "so I need ayacht and you need to work overtime to make that happen", there tend to be some good logical reasons behind it, mostly along the lines of (A) "a yacht would increase my social status, which is a good thing", and (B) "who the fuck cares about _you_? You're the worthless peon there." Except they can't admit that publically, or for most people even to themselves. So they work backwards to some unconvincing rationale as to why they objectivel need/deserve/whatever a yacht, and why it's only good/right/whatever that you break your back working for it.
It tends to end up very unconvincing, which is why it appears like lack of logic from the outside. If you take it at face value as "X and Y => Z", and think he/she genuinely started at X and Y and genuinely arived at Z, it looks like the bugger can't even think logically at all. In reality he/she started from Z and was grasping for straws to find some semi-believa
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
At least in the Catholic tradition, which I abandoned eons ago in favour of rationality, ther is absolutely no question that the official position of the church is that Mary was a virgin (i.e. she conceived Jesus without having sexual intercourse with anybody).
If sects of Christianity give this a completely different spin, well, lets say that God was a lousy messanger.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.