evidence for and against miracle claims

[atheist buddy]

That Jesus was born of a virgin, that 9 months before he was born, one of Mary's eggs was NOT fertilized by a human sperm cell, is not a nebulous metaphysical claim. It's an empirical claim about the physical world.

As such, it is, or should be, subject to the same level of evidence-based scrutiny as any other empirical claim.

If the empirical evidence for it is found to be nill or close to nil, highly unreliable and very dubious, whereas the evidence against it is found to be plentiful, reliable, testable, falsifiable, and convergent from multiple independent spheres of knowledge, then it must be concluded that the claim that Jesus was born of a virgin is not credible, and thus belief in it is not justified.

So, I will write below all the evidence I can think of for and against the claim that Jesus was born of a virgin, and let's see what we come up with.

Evidence against Jesus being born of a virgin:

Biological evidence - where babies come from
Human reproductive biology is fully understood. Our understanding of the subject is so profound, that just by taking a cheek swab of any two individuals, we are able to predict with complete accuracy whether their child will or will not have Achondroplasia, Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, Antiphospholipid Syndrome, Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease, Charcot-Marie-Tooth, Cri du chat, Crohn's Disease, Cystic fibrosis, just to stay witin a partial list of the diseases within the first 3 letters of the alphabet. In courts of law, we are able to determine with 99.99% certainty the paternity of a child. We are able to perform cloning, invitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, and more. We understand the mechanics of procreation to a degree that can be fairly described as complete. All of the material empirical evidence, which we understand completely, points to the fact that for a mammal to become pregnant and give birth to fertile offspring without the intervention of a male member of her same species, is biologically impossible. The same biologists and doctors who's expertise has been demonstrated by centuries of tangible results predicated on the correctness of their opinions, all agree on this.

Chemical evidence - the chemistry of fertilization.
The same chemical expertise that allows us to develop life saving medicine, and which is also part and parcel with the biology that allows us to understand DNA, tells us with no shadow of a doubt that the spontaneous materialization of a complete set of 23 human chromosomes inside a human egg, is chemically impossible.

Physical evidence - the physics of DNA
We are able to split the atom and send men on the moon. We are able to accelerate subatomic particles to almost the speed of light and take photos of them crashing into each other, and to land unmanned vehicles on mars. We can predict eclypses with to-the-second accuracy, and we can tell the chemical composition of a star trillions of miles away based on its light spectrum. The very understanding of physics that allows your phone to work and your pacemaker to work, and your GPS to work, and the internet to work, shines a light as powerful as the sun itself on this simple fact: Inside our universe, it's physically impossible for matter to come into existence from nothing. The chemical components of a human being that would ordinarily come from a sperm, simply cannot appear in the absence of a sperm. It's physically impossible.

Historical/anthropological evidence
There are countless stories of virgin births throughout history, many predating the story of Jesus. It seems evident that ancient tribes found it necessary to claim their favorite folk heroes were born of virgins to lend them an aura of exceptionality. Much like in modern times for a starlet to end up on the tabloids it seems necessary that she either has a sex video or a public emotional breakdown, or a DUI, it seems that in the bronze age, for someone to become a celebrity, his mother needed to be a virgin. In any case, the fact that humans at the time seemed to have a propensity for making up stories about virgin births, fatally undermines the proposition that on one particular instance, they happened to be telling the truth.

Historical/literary evidence
It is an irrefutable fact that whoever wrote that Mary was a virgin, was not monitoring Mary's sex life 9 months before Jesus's birth. Historians agree that the first statements about Mary's virginity were made long after Jesus's and Mary's death. Furthermore, the earliest available copies of those texts are copies of copies of copies of dubious originals written by anonymous authors, each copy also being made by anonymous authors with dubious agendas informed by the sociopolitical realities of the time, and the necessity to consolidate political power through a unified religion. Mary could have made the story up. The guy who claims Mary told him the story could have made it up. The guy who claims the guy who Mary told the story to, could have made it up. The first guy to write it down could have made it up. The first guy to make a copy of that original text could have added it and thus made it up. The guy who made the copy of that copy could have made it up. Any ONE of these people could have made it up for any number of reasons ranging from avoiding being stoned to death for adultery, to consolidating power of the priesthood by tieing in the popular mythical theme of virgin birth to the figurehead of a rising religion, and their fabrication would be no less consistant with the evidence we have today than an alleged true claim would be.

Linguistic evidence.
Ooof, I'm getting so bored. "Mary was a virgin" is actually a mistranslation of "Mary was a young woman". Nobody refutes this. The OT makes the prophecy that the Messiah would be born of a young woman, whoever wrote that Mary was a virgin mistranslated the passage in the OT, and therefore felt it necessary to say Mary was a virgin to match an OT prophecy that actually was never made. Look it up, and if you contest this, we can discuss.

Common sense
Let's say for the sake of argument that it is true that Mary never had sex with a man. Isn't it more likely that she had a bath in a tub where some guy had previously masturbated and got pregnant that way, than that everything we know about medicine, biology, chemistry, physics is wrong?


Evidence for the virgin birth
Some guy we don't know wrote it down. Period.



Conclusion: As expected, the evidence against the virgin birth is overwhelming, and the evidence for it is nil.

I look forward to responses.

[Wordleymaster1]

That Jesus was born of a virgin, that 9 months before he was born, one of Mary's eggs was NOT fertilized by a human sperm cell, is not a nebulous metaphysical claim. It's an empirical claim about the physical world.

As such, it is, or should be, subject to the same level of evidence-based scrutiny as any other empirical claim.

If the empirical evidence for it is found to be nill or close to nil, highly unreliable and very dubious, whereas the evidence against it is found to be plentiful, reliable, testable, falsifiable, and convergent from multiple independent spheres of knowledge, then it must be concluded that the claim that Jesus was born of a virgin is not credible, and thus belief in it is not justified.

So, I will write below all the evidence I can think of for and against the claim that Jesus was born of a virgin, and let's see what we come up with.

Evidence against Jesus being born of a virgin:

Biological evidence - where babies come from
Human reproductive biology is fully understood. Our understanding of the subject is so profound, that just by taking a cheek swab of any two individuals, we are able to predict with complete accuracy whether their child will or will not have Achondroplasia, Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, Antiphospholipid Syndrome, Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease, Charcot-Marie-Tooth, Cri du chat, Crohn's Disease, Cystic fibrosis, just to stay witin a partial list of the diseases within the first 3 letters of the alphabet. In courts of law, we are able to determine with 99.99% certainty the paternity of a child. We are able to perform cloning, invitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, and more. We understand the mechanics of procreation to a degree that can be fairly described as complete. All of the material empirical evidence, which we understand completely, points to the fact that for a mammal to become pregnant and give birth to fertile offspring without the intervention of a male member of her same species, is biologically impossible. The same biologists and doctors who's expertise has been demonstrated by centuries of tangible results predicated on the correctness of their opinions, all agree on this.

Chemical evidence - the chemistry of fertilization.
The same chemical expertise that allows us to develop life saving medicine, and which is also part and parcel with the biology that allows us to understand DNA, tells us with no shadow of a doubt that the spontaneous materialization of a complete set of 23 human chromosomes inside a human egg, is chemically impossible.

Physical evidence - the physics of DNA
We are able to split the atom and send men on the moon. We are able to accelerate subatomic particles to almost the speed of light and take photos of them crashing into each other, and to land unmanned vehicles on mars. We can predict eclypses with to-the-second accuracy, and we can tell the chemical composition of a star trillions of miles away based on its light spectrum. The very understanding of physics that allows your phone to work and your pacemaker to work, and your GPS to work, and the internet to work, shines a light as powerful as the sun itself on this simple fact: Inside our universe, it's physically impossible for matter to come into existence from nothing. The chemical components of a human being that would ordinarily come from a sperm, simply cannot appear in the absence of a sperm. It's physically impossible.

Historical/anthropological evidence
There are countless stories of virgin births throughout history, many predating the story of Jesus. It seems evident that ancient tribes found it necessary to claim their favorite folk heroes were born of virgins to lend them an aura of exceptionality. Much like in modern times for a starlet to end up on the tabloids it seems necessary that she either has a sex video or a public emotional breakdown, or a DUI, it seems that in the bronze age, for someone to become a celebrity, his mother needed to be a virgin. In any case, the fact that humans at the time seemed to have a propensity for making up stories about virgin births, fatally undermines the proposition that on one particular instance, they happened to be telling the truth.

Historical/literary evidence
It is an irrefutable fact that whoever wrote that Mary was a virgin, was not monitoring Mary's sex life 9 months before Jesus's birth. Historians agree that the first statements about Mary's virginity were made long after Jesus's and Mary's death. Furthermore, the earliest available copies of those texts are copies of copies of copies of dubious originals written by anonymous authors, each copy also being made by anonymous authors with dubious agendas informed by the sociopolitical realities of the time, and the necessity to consolidate political power through a unified religion. Mary could have made the story up. The guy who claims Mary told him the story could have made it up. The guy who claims the guy who Mary told the story to, could have made it up. The first guy to write it down could have made it up. The first guy to make a copy of that original text could have added it and thus made it up. The guy who made the copy of that copy could have made it up. Any ONE of these people could have made it up for any number of reasons ranging from avoiding being stoned to death for adultery, to consolidating power of the priesthood by tieing in the popular mythical theme of virgin birth to the figurehead of a rising religion, and their fabrication would be no less consistant with the evidence we have today than an alleged true claim would be.

Linguistic evidence.
Ooof, I'm getting so bored. "Mary was a virgin" is actually a mistranslation of "Mary was a young woman". Nobody refutes this. The OT makes the prophecy that the Messiah would be born of a young woman, whoever wrote that Mary was a virgin mistranslated the passage in the OT, and therefore felt it necessary to say Mary was a virgin to match an OT prophecy that actually was never made. Look it up, and if you contest this, we can discuss.

Common sense
Let's say for the sake of argument that it is true that Mary never had sex with a man. Isn't it more likely that she had a bath in a tub where some guy had previously masturbated and got pregnant that way, than that everything we know about medicine, biology, chemistry, physics is wrong?


Evidence for the virgin birth
Some guy we don't know wrote it down. Period.



Conclusion: As expected, the evidence against the virgin birth is overwhelming, and the evidence for it is nil.

I look forward to responses.

I've found looking for ANY evidence for anything Christian is like looking for elephants on Mars: Yeah good luck with that!
Christainity doesnt' look for facts and ignores any they accidentially find that doesn't support their worship system, and instead relies on fear, guilt and brainwashing. None of these things rely on facts or evidence.
If you're looking for evidence in Christianity, you're wasting your time. It's ALL about belief - INDIVIDUAL belief.
Should we hold Christianity to the same levels of fact-finding as anything else that influences our lives? Absolutely. But, as with so many things "Christian", this gets 'a free pass' as well. It's accepted because 'that's the way it's always been'.
Shameful really.

[Freddy_Scissorhands]

As much as I tent to agree with the fact, that miracle claims don't match what we know about the world...
Isn't this kind of the point? Miracles are specificly things that do NOT match these things. So pointing to all the things we know do not match the natural world as we understand it, and try to make an argument against the miracles based on that makes little to no sense.

What we can say is, that there is no good reason to believe in such events, because by their very nature they become something we can't empiricaly test and verify... and therefore the claims are unbelievable, even if they were true.

[Overcomer]

Freddy Scissorhands wrote:

As much as I tent to agree with the fact, that miracle claims don't match what we know about the world...
Isn't this kind of the point? Miracles are specificly things that do NOT match these things. So pointing to all the things we know do not match the natural world as we understand it, and try to make an argument against the miracles based on that makes little to no sense.

Yes, you're right. A miracle is defined as something that cannot be explained by natural laws which is usually attributed to a divine agent. Therefore, listing natural laws doesn't prove miracles can't happen. It merely shows that natural laws provide no explanation for them -- which, as I said, is the definition of a miracle.

I wrote about this elsewhere on the forum some time ago. I have witnessed a number of miracles with scientific evidence to back them up. For example, an endoscopy revealed that the lining of my stomach was raw and bleeding and full of bacteria. Being allergic to antibiotics, there was no way to get rid of the bacteria to allow my stomach to heal. I went to a man with a healing ministry who prayed over me and my symptoms (pain, indigestion, etc.) went away immediately.

A few days later, I had another endoscopy. It showed that the lining of my stomach was pink and healthy and there was no sign of bleeding or bacteria. When I asked the doctor how my stomach had been healed, he said he couldn't imagine because there was no way the bacteria could go away on its own. And there was no reason the stomach lining would suddenly heal like that outside of a miracle.

I have a friend who had a lump in her breast. Again, people prayed over her and when she went to have it removed later that week, it was gone. Again, there were the "before and after" mammograms as well as the fact that the doctor had been able to feel the lump as it was quite large.

For those who don't think miracles can happen, I recommend C.S. Lewis' Miracles in which he provides sound philosophical reasons for accepting them as possible.

And then there's Craig Keener's massive work, also entitled Miracles, in which he documents miracles from all around the world -- with evidence to substantiate them.

For example, he records a number of miracles involving the replacement of organs. In these cases, people have had organs removed (kidney, spleen). Upon returning to the doctor for a check-up following the surgery, x-rays/MRIs show that the patient who had a kidney removed now had two kidneys and the patient who had the spleen removed now had a spleen.

It's interesting to note that, according to polls, 70 per cent of doctors believe miracles can happen and 40 per cent of them say they have seen miracles.

The naturalist/materialist worldview is limited. It doesn't allow for miracles. However, that doesn't mean they can't happen or haven't happened and aren't happening today. The naturalist's pre-assumptions dictate his conclusions before the arguments even begin.

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to post 4 by Overcomer]

Do you have any links to your records documenting what happened. I don't think we can conclude it was the prayer that healed you withought knowing what kind of bacterial infection the time period between your first and last exam and what treatments the doctor recommended if at all aside from the anti biotics.

A lot of bacterial infections clear up on their own too. The body has an immune system that is generally pretty good at fighting these things, even cancer.

I often find miracle claims lack the fine details that are necessary to make any deductions. At this point we can't rule out the correlation fallacy.

As for 70% of US doctors believing in miracles thats not shocking given that +70% of US citizens are Christian. An appeal to majority is not convincing. I seriously doubt that 70% of Japanese or European doctors belive in miracles to.

[atheist buddy]

As much as I tent to agree with the fact, that miracle claims don't match what we know about the world...
Isn't this kind of the point? Miracles are specificly things that do NOT match these things. So pointing to all the things we know do not match the natural world as we understand it, and try to make an argument against the miracles based on that makes little to no sense.

What we can say is, that there is no good reason to believe in such events, because by their very nature they become something we can't empiricaly test and verify... and therefore the claims are unbelievable, even if they were true.

"Matching with what we know about reality" is the definition of real.

"Not matching with what we know about reality" isn't just the definition of miracles, it's also the definition of fantasy.

If we don't limit ourselves to believing things which match with reality, then we open up ourselves to all sorts of beliefs based on imagination.

If you say to yourself "Virgin births don't match with reality, but I believe in them anyway", then what is there that you cannot say? "Mohammed's flying horse doesn't match with relaity but I believe in it anyway", "Santa Claus doesn't match with reality but I believe in him anyway", "Apollo doesn't match with reality but I believe in him anyway".

There is a word for someone who believes things which do not match with observed and observable reality in any way: Clinically insane.

If we give Christians license to believe in virgin births even though they don't match with reality, then we open the flood gates and are logically required to also give creedence to equally not-reality-based beliefs in bigfoot, goblins, tooth fairy, Spiderman, alien abductions, zeus, thor, Poseidon, Santa, voodoo, Juju monsters, the Boogieman, and the invisible dragon hiding in my basement.

[atheist buddy]

Freddy Scissorhands wrote:

As much as I tent to agree with the fact, that miracle claims don't match what we know about the world...
Isn't this kind of the point? Miracles are specificly things that do NOT match these things. So pointing to all the things we know do not match the natural world as we understand it, and try to make an argument against the miracles based on that makes little to no sense.

Yes, you're right. A miracle is defined as something that cannot be explained by natural laws which is usually attributed to a divine agent. Therefore, listing natural laws doesn't prove miracles can't happen.

Just like listing natural law doens't prove Apollo isn't real, and Santa's flying reindeers can't happen, and the earth isn't flat.

If you propositionally allow that magic is real, that the laws of physics don't always apply, and that anything is possible, then you've obliterated the partition between reality and fantasy, and there truly is nothing you cannot argue for.


Let's test it: I will now argue for the most absurd physically impossible, demonstrably not true thing I can think of, and let's see if it's possible to justify it by the same method you justified the virgin birth. Here we go:

In 7000BC, the earth was flat. Then a giant zombie robot residing on a nearby asteroid sneezed, and the force of his sneeze caused the earth to wrap up onto itself, becoming a globe. The giant zombie robot missed his girlfriend (who was a a unicorn with two heads), so to celebrate their anniversary, every 1000 seconds he causes time to stand still and in that temporal interim causes the earth to be flat again and he wonders in the fields picking flowers. Then he sneezes again, the earth goes back to being round, he unlocks the flow of time, and everything goes back to normal.

Now. Everything we know about the laws of nature tells us that this story is just a fantasy. On the one hand we have the entirety of human knowledge telling us that the story is not real, on the other we have an anonymous guy (me) writing down that it's real.

If we base our opinions on reality, we obviously come to the conclusion that the story is just fantasy. Much like we come to the conclusion that the virgin birth story is fantasy.

But if we allow the proposition that there is a God or a Zombie Robot who can transcend the laws of nature and cause virgin births or change the shape of planet earth, then all bets are off, and the virgin birth and flat-to-round earth theory are equally viable.

So, do you embrace the existence of God and the Zombie Robot, or do you base your beliefs on reality?


This is the argument you're making: Virgin births aren't real, but if we allow that unreal things are real, then the virgin birth is real.

I wrote about this elsewhere on the forum some time ago. I have witnessed a number of miracles with scientific evidence to back them up. For example, an endoscopy revealed that the lining of my stomach was raw and bleeding and full of bacteria. Being allergic to antibiotics, there was no way to get rid of the bacteria to allow my stomach to heal. I went to a man with a healing ministry who prayed over me and my symptoms (pain, indigestion, etc.) went away immediately.

A few days later, I had another endoscopy. It showed that the lining of my stomach was pink and healthy and there was no sign of bleeding or bacteria. When I asked the doctor how my stomach had been healed, he said he couldn't imagine because there was no way the bacteria could go away on its own. And there was no reason the stomach lining would suddenly heal like that outside of a miracle.

"There was no reason for the stomach to heal other than a miracle".

Mmm. Have you ever heard of the "Immune System"?

I have a friend who had a lump in her breast. Again, people prayed over her and when she went to have it removed later that week, it was gone. Again, there were the "before and after" mammograms as well as the fact that the doctor had been able to feel the lump as it was quite large.

Please provide links to those mammograms?

Let me guess, you can't, much like the guy who made up the story that Mary was a virgin can't provide evidence of his claim either.

For those who don't think miracles can happen, I recommend C.S. Lewis' Miracles in which he provides sound philosophical reasons for accepting them as possible.

Yup, read the book. Not impressed. Do you have any portion of his argument that you'd like to discuss here, or do you agree that it's laughable in its entirety?

And then there's Craig Keener's massive work, also entitled Miracles, in which he documents miracles from all around the world -- with evidence to substantiate them.

For example, he records a number of miracles involving the replacement of organs. In these cases, people have had organs removed (kidney, spleen). Upon returning to the doctor for a check-up following the surgery, x-rays/MRIs show that the patient who had a kidney removed now had two kidneys and the patient who had the spleen removed now had a spleen.

Wow, I also heard that if you dig a hole in the ground, put some money in it and water it, a money tree will grow out of it!

Ladies and gentlemen, can we please all agree that it's ok to describe Overcomer's account of magically materializing organs as "laughable"?

What response can there be to this other than ridicule? Am I truly expected to break the facts down for him, explain that just because some guy says something happened it doesn't mean it actually happened? Am I expected to point out that if a person with only one kidney suddenly had two, it would be immediate international news, not an account of some unknown fundamentalist? That if somebody's kidney suddenly appeared where it shouldn't have been, the FBI would immediately get involved in investigating black market organ transplants? Is there any way that somebody who can bring himself to talk about the magical kidney in the the first place, can understand that he was wrong when exposed to mere logical arguments?

The naturalist/materialist worldview is limited.

Right. It allows for reality, not for fantasy.

It doesn't allow for miracles.

Right. Fantasy, miracles, whatever.

However, that doesn't mean they can't happen or haven't happened and aren't happening today.

That's true. It doesn't mean they can't happen. It just means they can't happen in reality. They can still happen in your imagination.

The naturalist's pre-assumptions dictate his conclusions before the arguments even begin.

Yes, caring about what is true in reality, dictates that you don't believe what is true only inside a theists imagination.

Well, I'm glad we sorted that out.

[Freddy_Scissorhands]

"Matching with what we know about reality" is the definition of real.

"Not matching with what we know about reality" isn't just the definition of miracles, it's also the definition of fantasy.

Actually, that's not true.
I've chosen my words carefully to avoide this error.

"Matching with reality" would be the definition of "real".
But reality doesn't necessarily match what we (think to) know about reality... Or it might match what we know about reality, but our knowledge is incomplete.

Maybe the term that tipped you off was "know". Because I don't think we truely KNOW (with 100% certainty, absolutly doubtless) anything about this reality, therefore "think we know" might be more accurate.

But either way:
If there is something about reality that doesn't match our knowledge about reality, then our knowledge would be the thing that was wrong, not reality itself. Therefore, there is always the possibility (even though it's not a usefull concept) that reality doesn't match the model we have about it.

[Freddy_Scissorhands]

I have witnessed a number of miracles with scientific evidence to back them up. For example, an endoscopy revealed that the lining of my stomach was raw and bleeding and full of bacteria. Being allergic to antibiotics, there was no way to get rid of the bacteria to allow my stomach to heal. I went to a man with a healing ministry who prayed over me and my symptoms (pain, indigestion, etc.) went away immediately.

A few days later, I had another endoscopy. It showed that the lining of my stomach was pink and healthy and there was no sign of bleeding or bacteria. When I asked the doctor how my stomach had been healed, he said he couldn't imagine because there was no way the bacteria could go away on its own. And there was no reason the stomach lining would suddenly heal like that outside of a miracle.

I have a friend who had a lump in her breast. Again, people prayed over her and when she went to have it removed later that week, it was gone. Again, there were the "before and after" mammograms as well as the fact that the doctor had been able to feel the lump as it was quite large.

See, the problem with these stories is... well, they are stories! It's not evidence! The plural of "anecdote" is not "data"!
I don't know what has happend to you or your friend. Maybe it was a miracle. Maybe you remember wrongly. Maybe your doctor screwed up. Maybe your delusional.
How can I know?
And given that we can't replicate it or investigate it, given that you seem to admit yourself that these things happend without leaving any evidence (your stomach is perfectly fine now, right? No scars, nothing?), how could we possibly investigate it... and therefore how could we possibly believe it?
Even worse: Whenever we DO investigate this stuff, it turns out to be hoaxes, having natural causes or something similar like that.
AND what about all the people where the healing doesn't work? If the healer you've consulted had real powers, couldn't he demonstrate them in a statisticly significant way?
And yet, these healers are not replacing our doctors in the hospitals. And believe me, if they could produce reliable results, that's exactly what would be happening!

For those who don't think miracles can happen, I recommend C.S. Lewis' Miracles in which he provides sound philosophical reasons for accepting them as possible.

Why would I read a book that explains to me, why miracles are POSSIBLE?
I dont' reject the possibility of miracles! And you don't need any real philosophical arguments to demonstrate that they hypothetically COULD be true...
But ghosts could also be true!
So could aliens on Mars!
I don't care for what COULD be true, I care for what we can demonstrate to most likely be true. So, if somebody tries to sell me a book where he can give "sound philosophical evidence, that X could be real!", I think he is ripping me off, because something like that is extremly easy to argue for!

And then there's Craig Keener's massive work, also entitled Miracles, in which he documents miracles from all around the world -- with evidence to substantiate them.

For example, he records a number of miracles involving the replacement of organs. In these cases, people have had organs removed (kidney, spleen). Upon returning to the doctor for a check-up following the surgery, x-rays/MRIs show that the patient who had a kidney removed now had two kidneys and the patient who had the spleen removed now had a spleen.

You really have to increase your standard of evidence, I think...
These kinds of anecdotes and urban legends make for a fascinating story-night, but evidence it is not.

[1213]

Conclusion: As expected, the evidence against the virgin birth is overwhelming, and the evidence for it is nil.

But is there any good reason to assume that virgin births should occur regularly? No one is claiming that virgin births are basic thing that should occur all the time. Your idea would be ok, if someone would claim that it is common thing and not rare event.

I think we have many things that happen only one time. For example I think I will not be born several times in future. Does it mean that I could have not been born even one time?