was pre-Columbian native american culture primitive compared to Europe?

Yes. Your point?

Male offspring requires both chromosomes. mothers can only provide the X chromosome. Thus, assuming Jesus was male (which makes sense, given the historical record), we must assume a father with human-compatible y chromosomes. According to the Nicene creed, that father is God. That would require God to be human. The only alternative - that the Y chrtomosome was provided through an act of creation rather than organically - is made implausible by the insistence of the Nicene creed on the fact that Jesus was begotten (genetos). Since we know humans do not live for even thousands, let alone billions of years, we can confidently assume that God, assuming he exists, cannot be human. If he is not human, he cannot beget human offspring. Obviously, it is not necessary to make any of these assumptions for Christianity to work, but if you do make them, you have to temporarily switch off your knowledge of genetics to prevent cognitive dissonance.
 
Male offspring requires both chromosomes. mothers can only provide the X chromosome. Thus, assuming Jesus was male (which makes sense, given the historical record), we must assume a father with human-compatible y chromosomes. According to the Nicene creed, that father is God. That would require God to be human. The only alternative - that the Y chrtomosome was provided through an act of creation rather than organically - is made implausible by the insistence of the Nicene creed on the fact that Jesus was begotten (genetos). Since we know humans do not live for even thousands, let alone billions of years, we can confidently assume that God, assuming he exists, cannot be human. If he is not human, he cannot beget human offspring. Obviously, it is not necessary to make any of these assumptions for Christianity to work, but if you do make them, you have to temporarily switch off your knowledge of genetics to prevent cognitive dissonance.

And...SUPPOSE God exists (it doesn't matter if you believe He does or not. If you don't, then pretend that he does anyway) - what a small matter would it be for Him (using the male pronoun as per tradition) to circumvent the laws that He himself created?
You're extrapolating from a overly literal reading of Nicaenum (of course no one at Niceanum believed that God the Father was a human being - though God the Son was! - and that's not what the word "father" is meant to imply in this case), and that doesn't bring fruitful results.
In order to understand a text such as Nicaenum, you must look at its background and its context...as well as what the assembled bishops meant by what they all agreed to in the end. To impose a late 20th early 21st paradigm of using all words in the language as technical terms, upon a text from the 4th century, is utterly anachronistic, and is useless in a debate.
 
Doesn't that just prove that even if religions defy scientific facts they still can't be disproved? Proving the OP wrong about how some religions are better than others by virtue of being more "true" or whatever?
 
Doesn't that just prove that even if religions defy scientific facts they still can't be disproved? Proving the OP wrong about how some religions are better than others by virtue of being more "true" or whatever?

Well, it's true that religion can't be disproven, because the very object of their devotion (in Christianity: God) lies beyond what the natural sciences can say anything about. In the same way, you can't point to anything in the natural sciences and say: "THIS proves that Christianity is right!".

But relativism is an unneccesary consequence to draw from that. There can only be ONE statement on any given subject that is true at any given time. EITHER Christianity is true....or it's a load of hogwash, for instance.
 

iddt3

Donor
Does any other Socio-Philosophical system actually try for "Objective reality"? I don't know all that much about pre Colombian Meso-American intellectual traditions, but I suspect that this question can only even be asked within the Western tradition, which means that by asking the question, you've probably already loaded the answer. Now personally, I think that answer (The West is the Best!) is more or less right, or at least useful, but the way the question is asked inspires stupid rage debates between different currents of western philosophy (i.e. subjectivist vs objectivist).
 
I think the best answer is that we can't possibly know for sure, as the Spanish destroyed so much stuff. We don't know if there was an Aztec Chaucer, or whatever. In addition, both Europe and pre-Columbian America varied widely. Now, what does Jesus' chromosomes have to do with anything?
 
And...SUPPOSE God exists (it doesn't matter if you believe He does or not. If you don't, then pretend that he does anyway) - what a small matter would it be for Him (using the male pronoun as per tradition) to circumvent the laws that He himself created?
You're extrapolating from a overly literal reading of Nicaenum (of course no one at Niceanum believed that God the Father was a human being - though God the Son was! - and that's not what the word "father" is meant to imply in this case), and that doesn't bring fruitful results.
In order to understand a text such as Nicaenum, you must look at its background and its context...as well as what the assembled bishops meant by what they all agreed to in the end. To impose a late 20th early 21st paradigm of using all words in the language as technical terms, upon a text from the 4th century, is utterly anachronistic, and is useless in a debate.

Actually, by the lights of the Nicaeanum, the use of the specific term genetos makes absolute sense. Since its framers had no understanding of genetics, they went wioth the assumption of the time, namely that the generative process in the womb was engendered by the vital fortces of both partners. God, though not understood as a human, could easily be viewed as having or spontaneously generating such vital force. Thus, the idea that Jesus, as a human being, was begotten in the way human beings are, not created as God brought into being all living things, was perfectly plausible. It is only through our understanding of genetics that we know they were mistaken. It is NOW we know there is one of a limited set of possibilities:

- Jesus was not physically begotten by God, but was the physical son of Joseph (a position most Christians today tend to at least concede to have merit, but one that was strongly opposed by the framers of the Nicene Creed)

- God caused Jesus to come into being by either manipulating Mary's DNA or by producing DNA ex nihilo. That would, both by the lights of Late Antiquity and those of modernity, have to be classed as an act of creation.

- Jesus is a legendary persona and thus was never begotten or created.

Of course none of this is relevant to the validity of Christianity, either in the fourth and fifth century or today. QED.
 
if you had to objectively compare Europe and the Americas in 1450, which one would you say was the most technically advanced? and which would you say was the most philosophically advanced?

Do we really have good access to pre-Columbian philosophy? There are major discontinuities between them and us.

That said, I'd speculate that the westerners would be more philosophically advanced, because of a longer intellectual tradition that had more sources to draw on, but that's just speculation.

Does it matter?
 
Thus, the idea that Jesus, as a human being, was begotten in the way human beings are, not created as God brought into being all living things, was perfectly plausible.

The "not created" does not refer to that distinction. It refers to the Christological disputes over the nature of Christ - was He preexistant or not? And if so, in what WAY is He preexistent? The "not created" isn't referring to anything in Jesus' conception, but to the question of His nature: Is he begotten (proceding) from the being of God, or is He merely a creation (albeit the first!)? THAT was the question facing the bishops assembled at Nicea.

"- Jesus was not physically begotten by God, but was the physical son of Joseph (a position most Christians today tend to at least concede to have merit, but one that was strongly opposed by the framers of the Nicene Creed)"

And for good reason. It contradicts Scripture, and it makes Jesus a fraud, his death on the Cross worth absolutely zero. The Virgin Birth, as well as the Ressurection, is one of Christianity's non-negotiables. And to claim a place in Christendom while still saying "Jesus was the physical son of Joseph" is akin to saying "I'm a communist, but I believe the means of production should be in private possesion.". A contradiction in terms.

"- Jesus is a legendary persona and thus was never begotten or created."

I don't know of any serious historians (Christians or otherwise) who claim this. I know Georg Brandes did back in the 19th century, but he wasn't a historian, and his "reasoning" was laughable. I've been so unfortunate as to waste about an hour of my life reading his book on the subject.

"Of course none of this is relevant to the validity of Christianity, either in the fourth and fifth century or today. QED."

Nothing has been proven, so the QED is misplaced.
Furthermore: What we're discussing here is not only RELEVANT to the validity of Christianity - we're at the core of the matter here. If Jesus isn't who He himself says He is, and who Niceno-Constantinopolitanum claims he is, then there is no Christianity. Or rather: Christianity is false and should be abandoned.
How awesome, then, that it isn't so :)
 
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