Talk:Virgin birth (mythology)

message: 1. Wasn't Prometheus a Greek Titan?  Titans were not so much born as they were spewed out of the living earth.  If he belongs on the list, so do all the other Titans.  There IS a cloned horse named Prometea, though....
2. If oddball births count, Athena should definitely be on the list.  She had no mother, she just leapt out of Zeus' skull one day.  But Zeus was certainly no virgin.  Does that count?  Most of the Greek gods and heroes had totally insane birth stories, in fact.  Being born the normal way was much more of a miracle, like a child having two living parents in a Disney cartoon.
**Metis was Athena's mother and was the product of a sexual relation with Zeus, but the birth process itself was unusual. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:36, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some additions, maybe deletions 

message: These are the reasons:
1: Half of these guys have fathers, such as Anikan Skywakler or Hercules. They Need to gat taken off.
2: I think Jesus should be included, he is the most famous.
3: Some of these guys have no Parents at all.
* This page needs more than editing.  It could be dispensed with.  Clicking on several of the names I find no mention of any virgin birth.  Several, like Romulus and Remus, had Jupiter as their father, which does not qualify as a virgin birth.  Reading the article on Buddha I found no mention of a virgin birth.  It is articles like this that make people think that Wikipedia is not serious and cause serious students to turn to a well-researched encylopedia. rvogensen
===Explanation===
I created this page on August 9th, as "Virgin birth" (not "List...") because we had a "problem editor" at that time who kept repeatedly inserting this list into the then-article "Virgin Birth", an article about Christian doctrine.  To finally try to deal with the problem, I moved that page to Virgin Birth (Christian doctrine), and pasted his list onto this redirect page.  Of course I know most of them are suspect, since they weren't really supposed to be "virgin" births (This has finally been dealt with in a more NPOV manner at the main article), but I really didn't want to have anything more to do with this article after that, I was mainly just dumping garbage off VB (CD), and hoping someone else who cared might come along and fix it / change it from a list stub into a fuller article.  Instead, it got petrified as an official "List" with no details added.  Personally, I have no problem if it is deleted. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 15:58, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  This Page needs editing 

message: I created this page on August 9th, as "Virgin birth" (not "List...") because we had a "problem editor" at that time who kept repeatedly inserting this list into the then-article "Virgin Birth", an article about Christian doctrine.  To finally try to deal with the problem, I moved that page to Virgin Birth (Christian doctrine), and pasted his list onto this redirect page.  Of course I know most of them are suspect, since they weren't really supposed to be "virgin" births (This has finally been dealt with in a more NPOV manner at the main article), but I really didn't want to have anything more to do with this article after that, I was mainly just dumping garbage off VB (CD), and hoping someone else who cared might come along and fix it / change it from a list stub into a fuller article.  Instead, it got petrified as an official "List" with no details added.  Personally, I have no problem if it is deleted. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 15:58, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Explanation

message: I am removing all of the unsourced entries, i.e. all of them. Each of them should be put back in the article when (and only when) a good verifiable source citations is found, per WP:V.
Of course, this does not require proof that the individual in question was born of a virgin. Verifiability does not mean the fact must be proven, it means there must be an authoritative source and that source must be verifiable—that is, it must say what we say it says.
In the case of this article, required is a reference citing a book and page number, (or other good source), and, where possible, a quotation. In many cases the book might simply be a reference book on mythology. 
In cases where our article on a personage already contains such a reference, that reference should be verified and then added to this article. I did a quick check on Buddha and Prometheus, and those articles don't seem to mention a virgin birth—at least, not at a quick glance—but Deganawidah does and it has a web link to a dictionary of Canadian biography which checks out, so I've moved that one back myself. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:49, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unsourced entries 

message: — JIP | Talk 09:57, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  AfD result 

message: I've removed the text There is an urban legend stating that lawyer Jack Thompson is a virgin birth., contributed by User: Drevius; please only add it back if you can find a citation for it. --ArthurDenture 00:27, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jack Thompson?! 

message: Perhaps List of virgin births in mythology would be better?--Greasysteve13 04:07, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  They should change the name of this artcile because it suggests they were actually virgin births. 

message: why is jesus excluded from this list? --lquilter 05:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: interesting question, why is he excluded?Teardrop onthefire 10:10, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

text: I believe Jesus should be included under Islam as well, with perhaps a comparason of the different wording and affirmation of virgin birth. Faro0485 (talk) 00:16, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  why is jesus excluded?  

message: Since he was conceived from un-toiled ground. [and the Earth was regarded as a feminine element, whereas the heavens were considered to be masculine].
*Because he wasn't "born" at all. 98.199.17.94 (talk) 16:04, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why not Adam? 

message: I had always understood Mithras to have been an early Roman cult with a virgin birth around Dec. 25th that was likely to have been an influence on early Christian beliefs. Will dig up the cites. --Lquilter 02:19, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Mithras? + Zeitgeist

message: I've clarified what is meant by 'virgin birth', and removed those entries where the virgin status of the mother or the sexual reproductive technique was via normal sexual penetration. Many of the gods in the previous list were miraculous births, but for some the mothers already had children or were married, so obviously not virgins.
GDon (talk) 10:02, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Some clean up done

message: I have never heard of Alexander the Great (a real person, not a myth figure) being represented as a virgin birth. The article cites Plutarch's Life of Alexander, which clearly and numerously gives Alexander's father as Phillip. One such quote:
"It is agreed on by all hands, that on the father's side, Alexander descended from Hercules by Caranus, and from Aeacus by Neoptolemus on the mother's side. His father Philip, being in Samothrace, when he was quite young, fell in love there with Olympias..."
I am removing Alexander the Great from the article. If someone can find evidence of his virgin birth, it can be readded.--Marcus Brute (talk) 05:28, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alexander the Great 

message: Perhaps we should confine virgin birth to human (mythology), seeing how a shark gave a virgin birth. Faro0485 (talk) 00:50, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Human vs other animal species 

message: Zoroaster from virgin birth? This is highly dubious according to the zoroaster wiki article, and others who say he had a father named Porushaspo and his mother Dughdhvo. Faro0485 (talk) 01:00, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Zoroaster 

message: This article has been transformed from an encyclopedia article into a personal essay. Please follow the writing conventions given at WP:LEAD, WP:MoS, and elsewhere. In particular, the lead should not be presenting unique facts and espousing positions. The lead is purely a summary of the rest of the article. It is also wholly inappropriate to have a "Summary and conclusion" section. The lead is supposed to be the summary, and articles do not have "conclusions", per WP:OR and WP:NPOV. Sentences such as "This approach has been misleading" are violations of both of those policies. If a reliable source says that an approach is misleading, the article should say which source and mention if any other sources disagree. Adding personal analysis is completely inappropriate for a Wikipedia article. Kaldari (talk) 16:27, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Nothing in this article is personal opinion.  Boslooper said the 'history of religions approach has been misleading.'  I'll put him there as the source.  He probably got it from one of his sources, so I can find those sources if that won't do.  The tone of this article was framed by the source given in the introduction. There are probably differing opinions, but if you are requiring that I become familiar with all the sources, that is a lot to ask. This is a "comparative analogical analysis."  It is a standard element in Biblical historical criticism.  I can make slight changes in the way it is written--presenting some statements as arguments made by theologians, etc.  The conclusion can be called something else, but some of the objections to this article before I worked on it have indicated confusion about the point that was being made.  People have asked whether it was intended to be a simple list of myths, etc.  --Hammy64000 (talk) 17:45, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The 'misleading' statement was already attributed to Boslooper!--Hammy64000 (talk) 17:50, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, it wasn't an encyclopedia article before I started.  It was a few paragraphs about individual myths with nothing tying it together.  I added material about bees several weeks ago and no one objected.  In fact no one has bothered with this article for quite some time.--Hammy64000 (talk) 18:47, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for cleaning things up. Sorry I didn't realize that the statement had been cited to someone previously in the article. Normally, specific citations are given in the article body, and general summarizing statements are given in the lead. In this case, you just needed to switch them. I actually wouldn't object to you restoring some more of the material you removed, so long as it is clear who is making the statements, i.e. third-parties, not Wikipedia. Kaldari (talk) 20:43, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

text: Thanks. I'll try to review things more carefully in the future and not jump to conclusions. Kaldari (talk) 21:56, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tone and content of article are inappropriate 

message: The article has been fully protected two months due to the edit war which is documented at WP:AN3#User:Hammy64000 reported by User:ari89 (Result: Protected). Ask for unprotection at WP:RFPP if consensus is reached on whether a separate article should exist at this title, instead of a redirect to Miraculous births.  Until then, article changes can be requested using  if they have general support. EdJohnston (talk) 14:54, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protection 

message: There are two levels of detail, Miraculous births and Virgin birth of Jesus, which are respectively more general and more specific than this article.  If it is not to be merged with one of these, it should seek to carve out an intermediate class of specifically virgin miraculous births, which should be covered with no special emphasis on one particular faith.
Something that is very confusing about this is that these virgin births are not truly parthenogenic births; they come about with the intervention of a deity.  Somehow, the virgin births listed here are distinguished from those attributed to, say, Zeus, who somehow seemed to take a more "physical" role in conception.
What would be best would be to have some sources cited up front, which list certain accounts as virgin births, to provide a sourced definition of what is and isn't included. Wnt (talk) 19:16, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a new idea to me that these births should be specifically parthenogenic.  Can you explain this idea?  Also, Wnt, 1. virgin births do come about with the intervention of a deity.  2. Births which come about through impregnation by Zeus involve sexual intercourse.  The mother, therefore, would not be a virgin.  3. This article does not emphasise one religion.  4. This should not have to prove a distinction from Miraculous births.  Any similarities are caused by this material being merged in that article.  I gave links so you could see the miraculous birth article before Ari merged this one with Miraculous births. Hammy64000 (talk) 07:54, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Please look at the Miraculous births article and compare it to this one.  All the places on this article where Ari inserted citation requests and other aspersions on the material are sourced in the same places in his article.  They are the same sources.  He hasn't marked citation requests there.  Also, I just noticed that he omitted the Greek and Roman section in this article and another section after that. Hammy64000 (talk) 08:18, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The remedy for similar repetetive articles is not a merge.  "A content fork is the creation of multiple separate articles all treating the same subject. Content forks that are created unintentionally result in redundant or conflicting articles and are to be avoided. As an article grows, editors often create Summary style spin-offs or new, linked article for related material. This is acceptable, and often encouraged, as a way of making articles clearer and easier to manage."
Wnt, Remedies are summary style spin-offs or new, linked articles for related material. This is acceptable and even encouraged. The article "Virgin birth (mythology)" was already here in unfinished form, and as I have said I did not intend to offend. Ari is treating it as a POV fork. The definition of a POV fork is an attempt to avoid neutrality rules--or something to that effect. I didn't write this for that reason. Miraculous births could be a spin-off or a new linked article. I'm not sure what do do about material that he got from Virgin birth (mythology). It is clearly repetitive to have it in both places.
Hammy64000 (talk) 08:46, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

text: Whatever the source and travails of the text, right now Miraculous births clearly looks in better shape.  I could support the idea of "claiming" a group of virgin births to be covered in full detail in this article and only summarized there ... provided that some good source(s) can be used to identify only those births as virgin births.  But if there's no way to decide which births are virgin except by reading the article and picking which ones you or I think sound like virgin births, then I can't support dismembering that article on that basis.  And if this article can't define its scope clearly and is repetitive of that one, it will have to be merged in the end.  So it all comes down to sourcing what traditions count as virgin births.  That will decide whether the merge is made. Wnt (talk) 15:55, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I have been explaining the problems with dividing virgin births for days.  I don't know why you are still taking this approach.  A group of virgin births?  This is not something that can be proved or documented.  Even Jesus's birth can be shown to be a normal human birth until the 2nd century.  Also, even if it were available, a list of virgin births is not a quality article.Hammy64000 (talk) 16:11, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You are not going to help me.  I'm sorry I started with this.  I hate everything about it.  I feel sick.  I feel the presence of a dark soul here who gloats and turns everything around and puts everything on it head.  Mostly I feel a threat to my sanity and to my very soul.  I will not return.  Do what you want.Hammy64000 (talk) 16:22, 5 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps there is some aspect to this discussion that I don't understand.  In any case, some sources speaking of virgin births in multiple religions:   But I'd prefer to have at least a less partisanly atheist source to cite, so as not to be dominated by a narrow perspective. Wnt (talk) 06:30, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: No, you didn't miss anything. Hammy64000 has many problems with Wikipedia, to the extent of him suggesting Wikipedians were stalking him and trying to steal his house or something or other. He documented the conspiracy against him on his talk page. The polemics you provided aren't reliable sources and they fly in the face of scholarship. --Ari (talk) 13:35, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia "reliable sources" don't need to be scholarly in nature; we have an absurd number of articles about Pokemon characters, for example.  The 1922 essay by Jocelyn Rhys seems to be fairly widely disseminated and is certainly notable.  But it would be more practical to begin with a broader range of essays and underlying viewpoints, so that the article is more clearly about virgin births rather than what atheists editorialize as virgin births. Wnt (talk) 13:55, 14 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please decide on the article scope