I meant to write this yesterday, and to write something more interesting today. Maybe I'll catch up tomorrow.
Here's another of my pet peeves: It drives me nuts when people say "immaculate conception" when they mean "parthenogenesis."
Parthenogenesis is, more or less, spontaneous pregnancy without fertilization by a man. It's what gets you a virgin birth.
The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception refers to the fact that the Virgin Mary was born without the stain of original sin.
If you want to reject the idea that either or both of these have ever occurred, that's fine. Just please understand which is which and don't say things like, "Don't you see? You don't have a father. You were immaculately conceived!"
Even if you are a fictional character on a television show, you will sound ignorant, and some pedantic geek somewhere will complain about you on the internets. Then how will you feel? Not so good, I bet.
Re:well
vsergu on 2005-07-12T16:09:49
Well, there was that Athena incident. Wasn't that sex-free?Re:well
rjbs on 2005-07-12T16:27:56
What they don't tell you is that he got his headache from too much masturbation.
Re:original sin
chromatic on 2005-07-12T23:14:15
That's a popular idea, but it doesn't have any textual support as far as I can tell. The last time I looked, the furthest back I could find the idea was fourth-century Augustine, due in part to a lot of self-loathing and in part to a great respect for (fairly misogynistic) Greek philosophy.
