Reply #10: Luke and Matthew make it clear

[Stunster]

that Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus.

In Matthew, Joseph at first thought of divorcing her.

In Luke, Mary herself asks how this can be since she is a virgin.

It's got nothing to do with the Old Testament.

Is it true? I believe so, because we have two independent accounts of it in Matthew and Luke, and I see no reason to think that the first Christians were a bunch of liars and frauds.

But it's impossible! The way I look at it is this: if God can cause the Big Bang, getting a virgin pregnant would be comparatively easy. And we know the Big Bang happened, creating the universe we see today. And I don't see that as any less 'miraculous' than a virgin birth.

Also, quantum mechanics assigns non-zero probabilities for every particle in the universe to show up somewhere different from where we would commonly expect to find it. Maybe God assigned unusually high probabilities of being found in an unusual location to enough small particles to create the embryonic body of Christ in the Virgin's womb.
The sheer rarity of such an action preserves the orderliness and regularity of nature in general, thus preserving the possibility of humans having rational expectations about the world. Miracles, by definition, have to be rare.