I was reading in the New Testament last night and was reading about Jesus' birth. (Herod was one mean dude, wasn't he?)

Anyway, I was reading about the Immaculate Conception and looking at stuff on the internet about it and came to a few realizations:

God had sex out of wedlock with a virgin, Mary.
God got the virgin Mary pregnant, resulting in Jesus.
God told Joseph to take care of Mary.
God moves on.

Ewww. How is this ok? Cause its god? Doesn't this creep anyone out? I've just always accepted the story, never really thought about it. Clearly a case of "do as I say, not as I do" if ever there was one.

Since I've left the church though, I question everything now, especially religion.

I find the whole concept of the immaculate conception disturbing. Does anyone else?

Why is this story ok and accepted?

The Immaculate Conception has to do with the birth of the Virgin Mary, not the birth of Jesus Christ:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07674d.htm

Though, to be honest, it's kinda like quibbling over whether Greedo or Han shot first.

Only Mormons believe that God had sex with Mary. Most Christians reject that idea completely and believe that through miraculous means Mary became pregnant through the power of the Holy Ghost. And what makes you think God moved on -- that doesn't seem to be the New Testament story. The New Testament version is that God and Christ continue to have an intimate oneness throughout Christ's life as a man -- remember the quote from John 14:10: "Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." Now you can reject the theology if you like, but you are misrepresenting it.

...God still impregnated someone out of wedlock and then split.

The underlying moral justification is that God, being the one who makes the rules, can do whatever he wants, and it is good.

Yeah, well bite me. That sort of morality is just the old rights of a monarch crap writ large. Oh well, the king's word is law, whether we serfs and slaves like it or not. Our job is to go along.

Right. I was referring to the church's version, 1st Nephi Chapter 11.

By moving on, I meant God moving on from Mary, not Jesus.

I specifically stated:

God told Joseph to take care of Mary
God moves on

Joseph was to look after Mary, in other words.

Yes its always been weird to me either way...

Either he had sex with her... WEIRD!

OR she was miraculously impregnated... WEIRD!

Lol. +1

Maybe Mary started Christianity?

What better excuse to tell your fiancé that your preggers?

I love that theory! "No I didn't cheat on you. This is baby is the son of God."

And since no one knew how any of that worked it was believable ;-)

The only downside is that you have to raise your kid making him think he is a savior of the world...lol

But I think we have all seen the lengths people will go to in order to cover up a lie ;)

Hey that's how Anakin Skywalker was conceived, too. We now have the answer to Christianity - midichlorians.

It does bother me. He got an unmarried woman pregnant in an era that could result in her being killed. He had Joseph lined up to take care of her, though.

The Mormon version bothers me more. It was a wham, bam, thank you ma'am, one night stand in the Mormon version.

The Greek gods were very fond of schtupping mortals, siring children by them, then buggering off, only to re-enter the lives of their demi-god offspring later in life.

Beyond the Greek myths themselves, the Greeks would also create a false genealogy which would show their heroes, politicians and important people descended from the gods. In the same vein, Jesus' genealogy was created to show that he descended from David down both of his parental lines.

The Jesus narrative has as much in common with Hercules et al as it does with Mithra.

There truly is nothing new under the sun.

And probably the most likely source of the whole Jesus mythology.

Maybe god took her for a quick Marriage/annulment in Vegas, BYU style.

I'll buy that.... I bought everything else the morg taught for many years. Lmfao!;-)

According to Brigham Young, God was Adam, and thus Adam came back to have sex with Mary.

I re-read First Nephi 11. I don't see the difference between this account and the biblical account. Both talk about being carried away by the spirit or set upon by the holy spirit.

Where are you getting the doctrine that god had sex with Mary? I was never taught this and only heard such a thing from other Christians insisting that this is what my church taught.

Do Mormons really teach that God and Mary did the deed, or are you folks just being inflamatory?

It's pretty commonly believed within Mormon culture but it is not an official doctrine.

There is a huge undercurrent of "deep doctrines" that Mormons who think they are really smart sit around and chew the cud on. This is a good example of one.

Note: Mormon of these deep doctrines are initiated by Joseph Smith or Brigham Young or Bruce Mckonkie or some other athoritative figure so even though they are not part of standard Mormon canon they are still problematic because someone hailed as a prophet somewhere typically believed and taught it.

One example of a more recent to enter the Mormon culture is the idea that Jesus went through every person in the history of earth one by one and personally, individually felt the pain of each of our sins. Bednar has recently stated this in general conference.

Note: On this board the peer pressure to say inflammatory things and to not uncover the actual truth about Mormonism (which is already bad enough) is nearly overwhelming. If inflammatory, inflamed, conjecture, and exaggeration are not the spin you want, you are in the wrong place. (It's not all that way by a long shot - there is a good amount of well studied out and reference information here - e.g. Steven Benson posts this kind of stuff all the time.) It's a kind of truth about Mormonism mingled with conjecture kind of board.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/2012 02:38PM by ronas.

Ya I don't follow. I was taught that Jesus was half man half god. Firstborn in the spirit of the father and only begotten in the flesh of Mary or some crazy crap like that. Someone help me out here

Well holy hell. Not that anyone needed another reason to ditch Mormonism but seriously?!?!

God shows up has sex with mary. He didn't even ask, but told her what was going down. Couldn't you say that god raped Mary?

Oh shit, if I were Joseph I'd be soooo damn pissed at God.

I was taught that (God had sex w/Mary) by my mission prez (Randy L. Bott) in a zone conference back in early 1990's



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/2012 04:28PM by quebec.

From the link:
"The state of original sanctity, innocence, and justice, as opposed to original sin, was conferred upon her, by which gift every stain and fault, all depraved emotions, passions, and debilities, essentially pertaining to original sin, were excluded. But she was not made exempt from the temporal penalties of Adam — from sorrow, bodily infirmities, and death."

Right there, is a point that shows how it doesn't make sense.
She is made exempt of the original sin but not from the temporal penalties which actually came because of the so-called sin.

As Boilermaker pointed out, the Immaculate Conception is about Mary's birth, not Jesus'. I was raised as a Catholic; from what I recall, Mary had to be pure enough to serve as the birth mother for Jesus. Somehow, God made it so that she alone was born free of original sin.

The birth of Jesus is another matter. If anyone's interested in reading more about that, you might try Laurence Gardner's "Bloodline of the Holy Grail." (Gardner's written several, increasingly-weirder books after this one -- I'm not recommending them to anyone).

Gardner gives extensive historical context about dynastic marriage and the requirements, leading to his theory that Joseph and Mary, had unauthorized sex, resulting in her pregnancy with Jesus. Jewish leaders assigned Jesus an official birthday (much like Queen Elizabeth and other heads of state have "official" birthdays) in order to regularize his status. That did not end controversy about the event.

It may be that his followers and later writers invented the New Testament birth narratives (and subsequent doctrines adopted by the Catholic church) to cover up what really happened and create some positive spin.

Not only that, but it's his umarried virgin daughter too!

33 And I, Nephi, saw that he was lifted up upon the cross and slain for the sins of the world.

Hokay, so much for "the Atonement" happening at Gethsemane. Next.

13 And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the great city of Jerusalem, and also other cities. And I beheld the city of Nazareth; and in the city of Nazareth I beheld a virgin, and she was exceedingly fair and white.

White? Really? More obsession with whiteness - oh, right, it's supposed to mean purity. Sure. And Nazareth was hardly a "city" - more of a dip in the road, no record of it's existance until about 200 AD; blink and you'll miss it.

18 And he said unto me: Behold, the virgin whom thou seest is the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh.


"After the manner of the flesh" - what is that supposed to have meant? Smith was a horrible writer.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/2012 04:47PM by serena.

More words have been wasted attempting to explain this bizarre concept than almost any other in all of Christianity. Really, the semantics are right there in the word definitions and context:

Immaculate Conception = Holy F*ck

Pretty simple, huh?

So, I like to ask, where exactly did Jesus get his Y chromosome?

Was it provided by another human (like Joseph or some guy who knocked her up) and Jesus just got some kind of God twinkle to make him divine?

Or was it a divine Y chromosome? Mary could not provide one, of course. So maybe Jesus wasn't male! Or, even better, he had actual God chromosome (which means there is some serious explaining to do from a biology standpoint). Yeah, it's a mystery. Isn't it marvelous?

Another annoying thing is that Mary had to be so pure just be be qualified to carry and deliver Jesus. So much for sinners being worth crap in the eyes of God. He wanted a goody goody. Even if that didn't mean pure sexually, it still stinks. If it did mean she had to be pure sexually, that is even more disgusting.