OH NO! BillD was here, so he must've caught me at the 'circular reasoning' thing again. And now I'll lose all those points I'd earned toward winning a complimentary copy of his up-coming "Dissertations on Pure Balderdash!" Oh no, say it isn't so ...

Nicole that's quite the amazing article re "self-insemination"! Sheesh, it would fit nicely with the 'male lactation' phenomena. Now, if both became the evolutionary norm for this species, betcha the marriage/divorce/abortion rates would plummet. True 'gender equality' might become more than just a dream!

Hmmmm, wonder if it would be more like a nightmare ...

But on a more serious note appropriate to the spirit of this discussion, here's what Joseph Campbell has to say about the symbology of the Virgin Birth in "The Power of Myth":

"The virgin birth represents the birth of compassion in the heart, the birth of the spiritual man out of the animal man. This is a spiritual birth - the Virgin conceived of the word through the ear.
And the Buddha, with the same meaning, is said to have been born from his mother's side, from the level of the heart ... He wasn't born physically from his mother's side, but symbolically.

What is symbolically referred to is not Jesus' physical birth but his spiritual significance. That's what the virgin birth represents. Heroes and demi-gods are born that way as beings motivated by compassion and not mastery, sexuality or self-preservation.

This is the sense of the second birth, when you begin to live out of the heart center. The lower three centers..." [ie. mastery, sexuality and self-preservation] "...are not to be refuted but transcended, when they become subject to and servant to the heart."

Ahh, I luvya Joseph! And now you can get back to resting in peace...

Thanks Cluin for reminding me to look him up.

daylia