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The Immaculate Conception by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, |
Process Theology, Miracles,
and the Virgin Birth
by R.E. Slater
The Immaculate Conception of Mary
The Catholic phrase of immaculate conception refers to the Virgin Mary as without sin and thus able to reproduce the birth of Jesus without male insemination. Protestants differ with the Catholic sentiment and state that Mary was no different than any other human born of sin since Adam and Eve's transgressions onwards. Myself, I am learning to re-envision humanity in the image of God yet marred by sin. Meaning, that humanity holds and reveals the Godhead as much as it must deal with the fallenness of it's image of God. Regardless of percentages, whether more good than bad, or more bad than good, it doesn't matter. What matters is that humanity (as well as creation itself) needed a God who would come incarnate into this world to atone for our fallenness to thereby redeem creation unto its fullest potential in beauty, joy, strival for good, thrival for healing all we touch, and generally help God to rebirth humanity and creation towards fullness fraught with struggle, hardship, fallenness, and evil.
Secondly, the Catholic statement of immaculation is an expression of an older idea that thought of all things of matter and flesh as being evil, or touched by evil. It is a sentiment found in Zoroastrianism which had bled down in Judaism and Christianity believing in a primal "urge" and "demi-urge" disspelling downwards and downwards into the human condition. By and by it came to mean that all things which are of the flesh is evil. Though found within certain parts of the church, many churches state this is not true. That God created all things as good and holy and not as evil. Process Theology further consolidates this idea by stating that rather than thinking in terms of gradations of sin and evil we simply think of humanity and creation as good but inflicted in varying degrees by sin and evil (cf. Original Sin).
Wikipedia - "The Immaculate Conception is a dogma of the Catholic Church which states that Mary, mother of Jesus has been free of original sin from the moment of her conception. It proved controversial in the Middle Ages, but was revived in the 19th century and was adopted as Church dogma when Pope Pius IX promulgated Ineffabilis Deus in 1854. This followed Ubi primum, an 1849 encyclical wherein Pius had asked the bishops for their opinions on the matter, resulting in overwhelming support from the Church's hierarchy."Protestants rejected Ineffabilis Deus as an exercise in papal power and the doctrine itself as without foundation in Scripture. Eastern Orthodoxy, although it reveres Mary in its liturgy, called on the Roman church to return to the faith of early centuries."The iconography of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception shows her standing, with arms outstretched or hands clasped in prayer, and her feast day is 8 December."
Bisexuality is Rare but not Uncommon in Nature
Allow me please to skip ahead to the virgin birth itself. How it is completely likely to be generative from the human body without imposition of sin upon the flesh (as the Church tends to think of the human condition, whether Catholic or Protestant) or with the need for an ex cathedra enactment of a miracle per se as we normally (but incorrectly) think of miracles. I will try to explain both ideas through a biological examination of things we find in nature which are rare, but not uncommon, using biological terms. Please bear with me.
Bisexuality is Found in Nature
The adage "bisexuality isn't natural" cannot be used anymore by the church. Clearly it is not true in the blobby green algae world of nature. Bisexuality is a natural but distinctly different form of sexuality from sexuality (male-female) or asexual-only reproduction.
This third type of reproductive system is known as hermaphroditic reproductivity which changes between male or female sexual expressions thus insuring the future survival of the species without regard to environmental conditions:
"Mixed mating systems such as trioecy may represent intermediate states of evolutionary transitions between dioecious (with male and female) and monoecious (with only hermaphrodites) mating systems in diploid organisms...." - Nature (below)---Trioecy (or subdioecy) is an extremely rare reproductive system characterized by the coexistence of males, females, and hermaphrodites. It has been found in both plants and animals. Trioecy is sometimes referred to as a mixed mating system alongside androdieocy and gyndioecy. Trioecy has been estimated to occur in about 3.6% of flowering plants, although most reports of trioecy are misinterpretions of gynodioecy. - Wikipedia
Reframing Miracles and the Virgin Birth
So the quips of God not making an "Adam and Steve" pretty much falls on deaf ears in the algae kingdom where bisexuality does exist as a rarity. And as an aside, let me suggest how miracles work in a process-filled creation:
A number of years ago I had given as a tentative explanation for the virgin birth of Christ the observation that there may have been one rare example of trioecy in the human species in Jesus' mother Mary. When saying this I reframed the idea of miracles not as external alien forces placed upon the natural creative order but as internal "natural" forces from within nature / creation. - re slater
Firstly,... later I discovered this would be well within keeping when applying by rigorous usage the rules of process theology to a process-based creative order. It keeps within the rules of not stepping outside of nature to perform something "miraculously" through nature by God by using nature itself to perform that enhanced, fully natural, miracle.
Secondly, ... nor does it create exterior conditions foreign to the natural systems we live in by a God who works well within the parameters of nature itself. That is, God has imbued nature with the ability to be creative and novel through its own natural forces.
Thirdly, "miracles" as defined by process theology must therefore be wholly congruent within the natural system itself. It cannot come from the "ether" nor fabricated from a different kind of spacetime external to our own spacetime referential.
Fourthly, miracles cannot be "ex cathedra" or enigmatic to the creative system itself, but conformable (or dutiful) from the system from which it was birthed.
Hence, the natural system God has spoken into being (in the sense of "creatio with existing chaotic material" can, and will, allow for these kinds of "miraculous" differentials without being interventionist in its origins or subsequent derivative results.
R.E. Slater
July 13, 2021
Relevancy22 References re Virgin Birth
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Creatio Continua Articles
[Note: In older articles I use to say incorrectly creatio ex continua which is the wrong usage for what I was trying to say. When reading these articles please replace in your mind any-and-all of these older phrases with the corrected phrase creatio continua (without the ex). It would also help me if you notated in the comments section those typos so I may go back and correct them. Thanks. :/ - re slater]
Monday, February 2, 2015
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Tuesday, May 18, 2021
A Nice Outline Between Alternatives from an Outside Source:
[ADDENDUM]
Creatio ex nihilo is an idea found in certain faiths which means that the Creator God created the world, "from nothing". Scientifically something cannot come from nothing, and insofar as this is true, than the opposite of "creation from nothing" is "creation from something" (creatio continua). This means that the natural worlds of the universe (or multiverses) are very old but were at one time "breathed" upon God disturbing its entropically equilibrium state into formative and pronounced chaotic systems (that is, out of equilibrium with its former static (timeless) self) with the ability to create new and novel substance from its chaotic nature.
In this way the Creator God is the first Process to all subsequent (or subtending) future processes. It also means that God's image or essence in some fashion is uniquely embedded in all future processes while also remaining distinctly different in a process relational arrangement. Which also means that God doesn't know the future so much as God is the future because of His intimacy with creation in its ordering and teleology. More of this can be read about at Relevancy22 along with the virgin birth of Christ.
"The term creatio continua refers to God's continuing creative activity throughout the history of the universe. In a sense, most theologians accept creatio continua, since creation is the dependence of the whole of space-time on God. But more traditional views hold that because God is timeless and immutable, there is only one divine creative act, which originates the whole of space-time from first to last. Those who speak of creatio continua think of creation taking place in many successive acts, partly in response to events in time. Thus, at any particular time God's creation has not been completed, and the future is partly open, in some theological views, even for God." - Encyclopedia.com
R.E. Slater
July 13, 2021
* * * * * * * * * *
NATURE
Scientists Discover The First Known Algae
Species With Three Distinct Sexes
by Jacinta Bowler
July 13, 2021
Although we might think of ourselves as far removed from blobby green algae, we're not really that different.
An algae explosion a few hundred million years ago is thought to have been what allowed all human and animal life to evolve, and all told there's only about one and a half billion years between us in terms of evolution.
Plus, according to a Japanese team of researchers, algae could actually help us to understand how different sex systems - like male and female - evolved in the first place.
Researchers from the University of Tokyo and a number of other Japanese universities have discovered that a type of green algae called Pleodorina starrii has three distinct sexes – 'male', 'female', and a third sex that the team have called 'bisexual'. This is the first time any species of algae has been discovered with three sexes.
"It seems very uncommon to find a species with three sexes, but in natural conditions, I think it may not be so rare," said one of the researchers, University of Tokyo biologist Hisayoshi Nozaki.
Algae isn't a very specific scientific classification. It's an informal term for a huge collection of different eukaryotic creatures that use photosynthesis to get energy. They're not plants, as they lack many plant features; they're not bacteria (despite cyanobacteria sometimes being called blue-green algae); and they're not fungi.
Everything from many-celled giant kelp species, all the way down to cute single-celled dinoflagellates can be classed as algae.
Because algae are such a big, diverse group, there's lots of variation in the way that they get it on, but generally algae are able to reproduce asexually (by cloning themselves) or sexually (with a partner), depending on the life cycle stage they're in. This can be either haploid (with a single set of chromosomes), or diploid (with two sets).
There's also hermaphroditic algae that can change depending on the gene expression of the organism. Having three sexes, including hermaphrodites, is called 'trioecy'.
But the volvocine green algae P. starrii is different from this again. The bisexual form of this haploid algae has both male and female reproductive cells. The team describe it as a "new haploid mating system" completely unique to algae.
P. starrii form either 32 or 64 same-sex celled vegetative colonies and have small mobile (male) and large immobile (female) sex cells similar to humans. The male sex cells are sent out in the world in sperm packets to find a female colony to attach to.
Bisexual P. starrii have both, can form either male or female colonies, and therefore can mate with either a male, a female, or another bisexual.
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| Above: Sexually induced male colony of algae (left). Female colony with male sperm packet (center). Female colony with dissociated male gametes (right). | Kohei Takahashi |
The researchers are particularly excited because other closely related algae have different sex systems, meaning the discovery might be able to tell us more about how these sexual changes evolve.
"Mixed mating systems such as trioecy may represent intermediate states of evolutionary transitions between dioecious (with male and female) and monoecious (with only hermaphrodites) mating systems in diploid organisms," the team write in their new paper.
"However, haploid mating systems with three sex phenotypes within a single biological species have not been previously reported."
For 30 years, Nozaki had been collecting algae samples from the Sagami River outside of Tokyo. Samples that were taken from lakes along that river in 2007 and 2013 were used by the team for the new finding.
The team separated the algal colonies and induced them to reproduce sexually by depriving them of nutrients, discovering that the bisexual algae had a 'bisexual factor' gene that was separate to previously discovered male and female specific genes.
The bisexual cells had the male gene as well, but can produce either male or female offspring.
"Co-existence of three sex phenotypes in a single biological species may not be an unusual phenomenon in wild populations," the researchers conclude.
"The continued field-collection studies may reveal further existence of three sex phenotypes in other volvocine species."
The research has been published in Evolution.
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Intersections of the diagram represent mating systems with that combination of sexes. (a) Trioecy (green) is unstable and tends to collapse to a two-sex mating system. (b) In nematodes it has been proposed that trioecy (green) can be used as a temporary mating system in the transition between dioecy (red) and androdioecy (blue). | BioRxIV |
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Meiosis in A. rhodensis produces unexpected gametes in males and hermaphrodites. The gametes formed, as well as a relatively high frequency of nondisjuction, probably contribute A. freiburgensis sex ratio data that are highly divergent from what would be expected. | BioRxIV |
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| Cooperation and Competition as Drivers of Evolutionary Transition |
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