RE: [asa] Rejoinder 9C from Timaeus - to George Murphy

George,

Thanks for the comments. I'll just reply to the last. You wrote, "I understand the feeling, but why does the fact that we understand something mean that there can be no awe or wonder involved in contemplating it?"

As indicated in my first comment, I actually get excited learning about things like the Red Sea periodically retreating from a certain locale, which might have allowed an army to walk across. So in general I would say, such things shouldn't reduce the awe or wonder we feel at seeing *how* God did something that we previously only believed that he did do.

I can't fully explain my reaction in this case, however. The article was a scholarly discussion about how the virgin birth could have been explained as a combination of an extremely rare (never before observed in mammals) spontaneous generation resulting in an XX chromosome, combined with a rare sex reversal to coincide with the Biblical description of Jesus' maleness. My initial gut reaction was one of disgust at the scholarly presumption perhaps, or the ridiculous sound of the unnecessary proposal, in comparison with the apparent beauty of the traditional formulation, "and the Holy Ghost shall come upon you" (whatever that actually meant in Mary's case). I'll admit it's not necessarily a rational objection since I don't have any idea what the Holy Ghost did biologically to effect the conception, but rather a feeling that's probably based on traditional sensitivities. Never mind the fact that such a hypothesis is completely untestable, and therefore mere idle speculatio!
 n, unless the real "Shroud of Turin" is discovered so that one could check the DNA.

Jon Tandy

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Received on Wed Nov 19 14:09:34 2008