It’s the 21st century; the age of superstition is far behind us. Once upon a time people could believe in a virgin birth, but now we know too much. We’ve observed cell meiosis. We’ve seen the gametes that unite for conception, all the way down to the very DNA that blueprints a baby’s development. We know in detail why the woman can’t make it happen without the man. So science has disproved the virgin birth, right?

Wrong. In fact, science has surprisingly little to say about it.

Not Science But Old News Instead

Science wasn’t all that necessary to the question to start with, all those many centuries ago. It didn’t take science to tell people then that a woman couldn’t conceive a child without a man. The “age of superstition” never happened; it’s practically a superstition all its own. Yes, scientists today know much more about how it all works, but the basic fact is very, very old news: virgin births don’t happen without a miracle of some sort. The ancients didn’t need science to tell them that.

But what about that word miracle? Hasn’t science proved they don’t happen? Not if you understand science correctly. Some scientists may say so, but science itself doesn’t.

Science Is Good At What It’s Good At: Where Nature Behaves Normally

Science is of course the study of how nature operates on a regular basis. That’s what it’s good at, and there within its field of competence it is extremely competent. But miracles by definition aren’t part of what nature does on a regular basis, so if they happen at all, they happen outside of science’s field of competence.

Science is good at telling us what happens normally, but on its own it has no way to know whether what happens normally is the only kind of thing that can happen

Sure, we can use science to evaluate miracle claims — X-rays showing a fracture has healed, for example. Otherwise, though, although science is good at telling us what happens normally, on its own it has no way to know whether what happens normally is the only kind of thing that can happen. Science can’t pronounce, “there are no miracles,” because if it did so, it would be speaking outside its expertise.

Scientists Doing Philosophy Instead of What They’re Good At

Things do get confused, though, when some scientists come out with claims that the laws of nature can’t be broken “because science says so.” Unfortunately when they do that they’re not speaking science but their own philosophy instead.

Not all scientists make that mistake; there are plenty of Christians and other religious believers working as scientists. The ones who do make that mistake do it because they know we depend on the laws of nature; that the world would be a very strange place to live in if those laws nature went completely haywire. And they’ve never seen (or at least admitted to seeing) the laws of nature broken.

From this they conclude that miracles can’t happen. But this is not something anyone has ever proved in the lab. It’s an assumption some scientists make based on their limited experience. Just because they’ve never seen the laws of nature broken, though, doesn’t mean they never are; and just because we depend on those laws staying consistent most of the time doesn’t mean God can’t make rare exceptions for good reasons when He wants to.

If Miracles Have Happened, They’ve Happened

These anti-miracle scientists are following the 18th century philosopher David Hume, who said we shouldn’t believe in miracles because all our experience tells us they don’t happen. C. S. Lewis answered him beautifully in his great little book Miracles:

Now of course we must agree with Hume that if there is “absolutely uniform” experience against miracles, if in other words they have never happened, why then they never have. Unfortunately we know the experience against them to be uniform only if we know that all the reports of them are false. And we can know the reports to be false only if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In fact, we are arguing in a circle.

We can’t determine whether Jesus could have been born through a miracle by pronouncing on it “scientifically” 20 centuries after the fact. If it happened it happened, and it was a miracle. If it was a miracle, then science has surprisingly little to say about it.

Born of the Virgin, Jesus Was No Ordinary Man

Jesus was no ordinary man, and He arrived through no ordinary birth.

Do we really know that it happened, then? There are plenty of good reasons to say yes, we do know. If it didn’t, then the gospels are wrong from the beginning. (Luke 1:26-35, Matthew 1:18-25) God didn’t come in the flesh. (John 1:1-18) Jesus was just an ordinary man, and when He died, that was it. He was done for just like any other man.

But we know that Jesus was no ordinary man. He lived like no other: totally and without exception devoted to serving others (Mark 10:45). He taught and healed like no other. He impressed both followers and skeptics like no other. (Matthew 5: 28-29; 27:54) He died like no other man, standing calm and even noticeably in control during the kangaroo court and beatings that led up to his execution. He forgave like no other. (John 18:15-18; 21:15-18) He rose from the dead as no one else ever has or ever will again. (Acts 1:1-11) He has inspired worship like no other man throughout all history.

Jesus was no ordinary man, and He arrived through no ordinary birth. He was and is both God and man, conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

Science may have little to say about any of this, and that’s okay. It doesn’t have to say anything about it. We still have every reason to believe it’s true.