Spirit birth and heavenly mother

[The Nehor]

8 minutes ago, Jamie said:

Sigh.  No, again.  I meant where was the baby at the instant when Q and Mrs. Q did what they did to reproduce another Q person.  In Mrs. Q's womb, as a fertilized egg waiting for the moment of birth?  Is that what we are supposed to assume?

Where was it/he/she at the first moment of that reproduction process?  What was it/he/she doing?  What did it/he/she look like at that moment?  Why did it/he/she turn out to look like it/he/she did?

Now you’re making it weird.

[Jamie]

Just now, The Nehor said:

Now you’re making it weird.

I'm just trying to get you to tell me what happened, exactly, at the moment Q and Mrs. Q decided to reproduce themselves as another individual person. I am familiar with Star Trek and the character Q and know that he was not portrayed as the same kind of being we are.  And as far as I know the show did not fill in those details. So do you think are we supposed to just assume that Q and Mrs. Q reproduced themselves in the same way as we do?  Except for being a lot faster, super fast, at doing the reproduction thing that we do?  

Anyway, you are not required to answer.  I just thought maybe you knew or know and would tell me.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Jamie said:

I'm just trying to get you to tell me what happened, exactly, at the moment Q and Mrs. Q decided to reproduce themselves as another individual person

Feel free to write the scriptwriter for more info on the sexual habits of a fictional race of beings.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Q_(Junior)

Edited May 20, 2021 by Calm

[Jamie]

1 minute ago, Calm said:

Feel free to write the scriptwriter for more info on the sexual habits of a fictional race of beings.

Sigh, again.  So where do YOU think there little offspring Q would have been?

[Nofear]

2 hours ago, AtlanticMike said:

Here ya go, I've been told that heaven has trillions of theses spirit birthing pods lined up in the garage of Heavenly Mother and Father. That reminds me, I have to check my incubator when I get home, I have baby chicks hatching any day now! 

Oh, do we really have to get all techno?

[Jamie]

15 minutes ago, Nofear said:

Oh, do we really have to get all techno?

Those little critters reminded me of something else.  From the male's contribution.  I now wonder how many eggs a woman might be able to have at one time and what would happen if the man could fertilize all at the same time? 

...with the woman able to reproduce more eggs later while the man keeps up with the fertilization efforts.

Thinking about an advanced baby reproduction facility now.  Hopefully there will still be at least a little bit of romance.

 

Edited May 20, 2021 by Jamie

[CV75]

11 minutes ago, Jamie said:

Those little critters reminded me of something else.  From the male's contribution.  I now wonder how many eggs a woman might be able to have at one time and what would happen if the man could fertilize all at the same time? 

...with the woman able to reproduce more eggs later while the man keeps up with the fertilization efforts.

Thinking about an advanced baby reproduction facility now.  Hopefully there will still be at least a little bit of romance.

 

A female fetus has 6-7M egg cells in the ovaries; at birth, the baby has 1M;  by puberty 300K remain; only 300-400 are ovulated over her reproductive lifetime.

A male generally has 80-300M sperm at a time.

On the other hand, perhaps spiritual birth is an ordinance, administered personally and one at a time, the same way the ordinances are done in mortality.

[AtlanticMike]

41 minutes ago, Nofear said:

Oh, do we really have to get all techno?

Well, that would probably work😂

[Jamie]

3 minutes ago, CV75 said:

A female fetus has 6-7M egg cells in the ovaries; at birth, the baby has 1M;  by puberty 300K remain; only 300-400 are ovulated over her reproductive lifetime.

That's in mortality, with death in play.  In and after our resurrection we and all of our parts, including all of the eggs of all females, will be restored and never will die anymore, and perhaps females will be able to reproduce even more eggs.. maybe forever. 

3 minutes ago, CV75 said:

A male generally has 80-300M sperm at a time.

What if after the resurrection a woman's gestation period is reduced from months to minutes, with less time needed in the womb for each child.  We don't really know what to expect but I'm thinking we'll see some major improvements. 

3 minutes ago, CV75 said:

On the other hand, perhaps spiritual birth is an ordinance, administered personally and one at a time, the same way the ordinances are done in mortality.

Perhaps.  Maybe.  And an ordinance doesn't necessarily need to take a long time to do.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Jamie said:

Sigh, again.  So where do YOU think there little offspring Q would have been?

Why do you keep asking for information which was never supplied by the creators of the character. What does it matter what anyone else imagines for a fictional character?  If it matters to you, then use your own brain to come up with an answer that works for you. I am guessing no one else cares. 

[Jamie]

2 minutes ago, Calm said:

Why do you keep asking for information which was never supplied by the creators of the character. What does it matter what anyone else imagines for a fictional character?  If it matters to you, then use your own brain to come up with an answer that works for you. I am guessing no one else cares. 

I have an inquisitive mind and I'm not afraid to ask questions.  Not necessarily to find out what is true, sometimes just to find out what other people think about something. I just want to know more and I believe a lot of other people do too. 

[mgy401]

On 5/18/2021 at 9:52 AM, Rivers said:

The teaching of spirit birth has always confused me.  How do resurrected beings reproduce to create spirit children?  Wouldn’t embodied beings give birth to other embodied beings? 

I recently discovered that Blake Ostler rejects both  spirit birth and heavenly mother since Joseph nor the scriptures teach those things.  Smith taught we are co-eternal with God.  I agree with Brother Ostler on the spirit birth thing.  But I don’t want to give up Heavenly Mother.  

Can I believe in Heavenly Mother without the spirit birth?  

If we believe that the leaders of the LDS church represent Smith’s legitimate successors in revelation as well as authority, then rejecting any doctrinal development just because Joseph Smith may not have unambiguously endorsed it seems . . . limited.

I think that one can reject the idea of spirit birth *if* one nevertheless embraces some form of gender essentialism in conjunction with the idea that it takes an exalted being of each gender in order to effectively “raise” a spirit to maturity.  After all, as any adoptive parent could tell you—reproduction is only a tiny part of the experience we call “parenthood”.

[AtlanticMike]

50 minutes ago, Jamie said:

What if after the resurrection a woman's gestation period is reduced from months to minutes, with less time needed in the womb for each child.  We don't really know what to expect but I'm thinking we'll see some major improvements. 

Well, if the gestation period is reduced to just 2 minutes or so like you said, then it will be equal with the copulation period of most men.😂😂

[Damien the Leper]

15 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Of course not. That is ridiculous. It is not called a harem.

Nevermind. 

Edited May 21, 2021 by Damien the Leper

[CV75]

12 hours ago, Jamie said:

That's in mortality, with death in play.  In and after our resurrection we and all of our parts, including all of the eggs of all females, will be restored and never will die anymore, and perhaps females will be able to reproduce even more eggs.. maybe forever. 

What if after the resurrection a woman's gestation period is reduced from months to minutes, with less time needed in the womb for each child.  We don't really know what to expect but I'm thinking we'll see some major improvements. 

Perhaps.  Maybe.  And an ordinance doesn't necessarily need to take a long time to do.

Where all things denote there is a God, a couple of things are interesting to me (not sure which idea to present first, for reasons that will become evident as you read along) :

By virtue of the mother having carried the egg that became the female fetus she carries, that mother is also carrying the fetus' egg cells. In a sense this is a type for the "co-eternal" spirits that are the children of heavenly parents; we co-exist with them as sex cells (and in the case of females, for an extra generation!).

A mother (whether mortal or Exalted) carries an Eve (whether of flesh or spirit, respectively). Consider that the Eve's 5-7M fetal eggs cells that do not make it past Eve's infancy, and the 999,600 that are never to be ovulated in the mature Eve, are absorbed (transformed into energy) and proceed as the foundation of the next stage of co-eternal spirits' organization (each cell giving rise to a spirit). Similarly, sperm cells that are transformed into energy are the corresponding or complementary basis for those newly organized spirits. These cells are transformed into energy by self-selection; the process is voluntary by invitation.

Taking this a step further, the male and female energies combine and agree as to what gender the resulting spirit will be. This does not mean two intelligences become one, but that the co-eternal proto-spirit existed in two places at once and ultimately chose its gender upon this next stage. Another way in which the man is not without the woman, nor is the woman without the man.

I hope no one sees the need to suggest that I am speculating

Edited May 21, 2021 by CV75

[Nofear]

13 hours ago, Jamie said:

What if after the resurrection a woman's gestation period is reduced from months to minutes, with less time needed in the womb for each child.  We don't really know what to expect but I'm thinking we'll see some major improvements.

And with trillions of children, that would basically mean one would still spend their time in a a near continuous state of pregnancy. I'm not a woman, but gosh, now I'm jealous. Who wouldn't want to be gravid in perpetuum?

[teddyaware]

2 hours ago, Nofear said:

And with trillions of children, that would basically mean one would still spend their time in a a near continuous state of pregnancy. I'm not a woman, but gosh, now I'm jealous. Who wouldn't want to be gravid in perpetuum?

“Oh ye of little faith...”

[longview]

18 hours ago, Damien the Leper said:

We do know that God doesn't have a harem of wives whom He engages in coitus with. I don't know where such a ridiculous idea originated but it is pushing the lust for anthropomorphism to beyond absurdity.

The Koran puts a great deal of emphasis on that concept.

[CV75]

4 hours ago, Nofear said:

And with trillions of children, that would basically mean one would still spend their time in a a near continuous state of pregnancy. I'm not a woman, but gosh, now I'm jealous. Who wouldn't want to be gravid in perpetuum?

Ever hear of the eternal law of gravidy?

[Nofear]

On a more serious note, there are some logical reasoning to think that there is more to spirit birth than we may first assume. Though, I base my reasoning on some assumptions that are not accepted by all latter-day saint theological frameworks. So, I'll try to spell mine out.

Premise 1) "Intelligences" are something that predates spirit bodies. It is uncreate, self-existent, and eternal.
Premise 2) Uncreate and self-existent "intelligences" are "simple" -- that is, they are monads, indivisible and without constituent parts
Premise 3) "Intelligences" can act without being acted upon (this ends up violating almost all known laws of physics)
Premise 4) There are is a vast continuum of intelligence in "intelligences".

Conclusion 1) While I won't go into it at the moment, given those two premises, "intelligences" are pretty ignorant (incapable of memory or complex perception)
Conclusion 2) Without memory or complex perception, any action of is for all practical purposes random
Conclusion 3) An "intelligence" can become not-random if organized around a mechanism that allows the "intelligence" to access memory and complex perception (e.g. spirit or physical bodies)

I've stated this line of reasoning/thinking on this board before. What is below is new.

Without attaching an "intelligence" to some information processing mechanism (e.g. a body), it is impossible to tell where on that continuum any one "intelligence" is. Some, perhaps many, are as dumb as a rock. Some are tremendous. Only a subset is worthy of humanity. But, again, without a body it would be impossible to tell which "intelligence" is which. Is this one more suitable to a lowly beast, or is this one suitable to become a son or daughter of celestial parents?

Given that scenario, it would be vastly foolish and inefficient to simply birth any random selection of "intelligences" into a spirit body, where just a few worthy ones are selected and the rest are aborted early on. It would make sense that there is some kind of filtering process before initiating gestation. Whatever that process might be, it would not make much sense to us right now (and perhaps even deeply offend our flawed sentiments) and so it would be entirely reasonable to keep such not-all-that-relevant information hidden from us during our mortal probation as an unnecessary distraction.
 

Am I committed to this conclusion? Nope. While I haven't heard anything better, the probability that it is right in the particulars is pretty slim. For example, premise 4) could be wrong and there is no continuum but all are basically dumb as rocks in their primal state. Suffice it to say, the situation is necessarily a bit more involved and the naive hypothesis that an exalted being gives viviparous birth to countless numbers of spirit bodies in a way directly corresponding to mortal births ... pretty silly in the extreme. My singular data point not inconsistent with my proffered framework is that we seem to have been deliberately withheld understanding of how things really occur. The naive hypothesis really doesn't give any reason why such information would be withheld -- quite the contrary, I'd expect it to be revealed that such were the case if it were. Such (public) revelations do not exist.

 

Anyway, this reasoning is a bit involved. It's much easier to poke fun by posting pictures of sea horses.

 

 

 

[Calm]

2 hours ago, longview said:

The Koran puts a great deal of emphasis on that concept.

God having wives?

Allah has no form, is either male nor female and is without equal. 

Edited May 21, 2021 by Calm

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, longview said:

The Koran puts a great deal of emphasis on that concept.

A bit of a stretch. There are (if I remember right) four passages about the houri and the Koran is long. I read it. I found it very dull and repetitive. I am assured it loses a lot in translation and having listened to it recited in Arabic I believe it. It has an amazing rhythm to it.

Then there are those who have come up with alternate interpretations including pointing out that the term can be taken as gender neutral so it may be a gift to both and one guy who argues that some of the words should use their meaning in Syrian in which case it is a promise for very white raisins. I hope that is not what was on the tree in Levi’s vision. I am not a huge fan of raisins.

[longview]

7 hours ago, Calm said:

God having wives?

Allah has no form, is either male nor female and is without equal. 

No.  That part about the 72 virgins and unending rapture.

[Damien the Leper]

16 hours ago, longview said:

The Koran puts a great deal of emphasis on that concept.

Yet Allah doesn't have a body from what I understand. 

ETA: Just saw your clarification. 

Edited May 22, 2021 by Damien the Leper

[The Nehor]

7 hours ago, longview said:

No.  That part about the 72 virgins and unending rapture.

The 72 virgins thing actually isn’t there. It was an American thing that caught on as a rationale for why people suicide bomb. It is based on a text but it is a lazy reading.

There is one passage that says you will get two houris (usually translated as virgin but they aren’t conventional humans and oh boy are there descriptions of them) and 70 dwellers of hell. It seems to mean you can make intercession for 70 women. So you get two houris/virgins and 70 people from hell.

It is worth noting that the Hadith this is from is considered to be the equivalent of apocryphal. In other words not all Muslims believe it. So don’t ask a Muslim about 72 virgins. They will either not understand what you are talking about or they will because they know about this understanding and might roll their eyes and walk away.