How can sane rational people believe in LITERAL PHYSICAL virgin conceptions as in Jesus & Mary?

Question

OK, believe your girlfriend when she tells you that.

Answer 1

Right! And how can sane rational people believe in BLACK HOLES, singularities that are so massive that not even light can escape? How can they believe that those purdy little pin points of light in the night sky are really suns, some thousands of times bigger than ours?

Everybody knows that if it's not immediately empirical, it can't be true.

Answer 2

Hi there.
It isn't that hard to believe, in all honesty. Compared with coming back from the dead, walking on water and healing lepers the idea of a human woman producing a child without intercourse is quite straightforward.
There are many examples in nature, for instance. If God can set the whole universe moving, the immaculate conception is small fry.
Cheers, Steve.
PS Mind you, your definition of sane and rational would now appear to exclude me as I don't believe the same as you. In your reckoning that makes you the only yardstick of sanity and rationality in the world, which is quite a responsibility.
PPS And even less likely than a virgin birth!

Answer 3

Good question. Strange things have always happened in history...maybe they were only thought of as "miracles' because they couldnt be explained by the science and knowledge of the day.

If the Virgin birth happend nowdays, there would be a miriad of different explanations and scientists trying to prove thiers is the right one.

I guess 2 thousand years ago, the only explanation would have been "God" did it. Joseph believed Mary end of story.

You can bet nowdays, Joseph would have helped stone Mary if it were legal.

As for people still believing it today...I dont know. I am pretty sure they are taught something and they have no want or need to change their views. Does that make sense?

Answer 4

A sane, rational person does not believe that. However, people are taught that there are some bad consequences for not believing that, and feel fear and the possibility of rejection by close others to question what "God" supposedly said or did.
So a human being being human will justify the most irrational beliefs to save their self-worth. Divine Truth doesn't ask you to suspend basic reality for blind faith. Faith of Spirit yes, blind faith in whatever someone tells you, no.

The concept of "virgin birth" came about because the early Christians had to sell the concept of Christianity to other groups. In numerous pre-Christian traditions, a divine conception not involving sexual intercourse was typical. Altering things in this manner was a good marketing move.

In many other belief systems, people are honest about the sacred texts intent to teach spiritual Truth through symbolism.

Don't just take my word for it. Please research for yourself.

God Bless.

Answer 5

Well, speaking as an Orthodox Christian who believes that Christ was miraculously conceived by the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit and a PhD student in philosophy, I think I am in a nearly unique position with regards to answering your question here on Yahoo! Answers. The fact is, however, that while the Virgin Mary LITERALLY conceived Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, that is not a physical explanation of what transpired. It is a spiritual, noetic, explanation. Christians ought to understand that we don't have a PHYSICAL explanation of what happened and how it actually worked. I can honestly say I don't know HOW the Holy Spirit and the Holy Theotokos (i.e., the Virgin Mary) conceived Christ, but the how is irrelevant. True Christianity isn't about giving scientific explanations for stuff, it is about achieving salvation through Christ's atonement.

Answer 6

I'm sorry, but because scripture says something, that should NOT be good enough for you. Where's your curiosity, your drive to understand and learn? You're being told to believe something that is physically impossible--don't you want more information? If everyone had this kind of intellectual drive, we'd all still be living in caves, illiterate and worshipping a large rock.
Edit: behonest, you really need to accept that Mary was immaculately conceived. It's part of the whole story. Or are you one of those people who takes off from school or work on December 8th for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and believes it's about Jesus' conception, not Mary's?

Answer 7

Obviously people who believe in the LITERAL PHYSICAL virgin conceptions are neither sane nor rational. Well, they may technically be sane, but they certainly are not rational, by any definition of the word.

Case in point:
"The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it."

"How can sane, rational people believe that we evolved from a prim-ordeal goo, sprouted fully functional eyes and went on to become what we are today?"
Uh - because sane, rational people are capable of learning without putting up God Road Blocks in their heads to shut out any information that contradicts their fairytale of choice, padre.

"For example, can you give me a sane, rational answer to the question, "what came first, the chicken or the egg"?"
The egg. If a chicken evolved from a predecessor species that was very, very close to a chicken but not quite the same, and it produced an egg containing an offspring with a mutation that makes it different enough from its parents for human beings to describe it as a different species - chicken - therefore the egg came first. That's easy.

Answer 8

First, the earliest narratives we have of Jesus are not of a "virgin" birth. That was a later grafting by the writer of Matthew of a Greek mistranslation of Isaiah, who wasn't even talking about the Messiah, but someone else entirely.

So, most Christians who study and understand their history and the Scriptures do not believe in the virgin birth literally. But it does speak to us on a metaphorical level of Jesus' special nature.

Answer 9

Don't believe that Mary was born of a virgin birth, but I do believe that Jesus was born of a virgin. Believe it or not, there are plenty of young women that have become pregnant without ever having actual sexual intercourse. The hymen can be broken by riding a bicycle or horse or by any other number of ways OTHER than intercourse (mine was not intact when I had sex for the first time, but I was a virgin). Semen can travel far and fast and if it is anywhere next to the vaginal opening, pregnancy can occur. Jesus, however was a miracle birth that did not require any of these methods to come about. God placed Him in Mary's womb, end of story.

Answer 10

A virgin birth was necessary because Adam sinned. Since Adam was the head of the human race, every person born into it through natural generation or through the process of birth inherits the old sinful Adamic nature.

God came to take upon himself a body with blood so as to shed His blood for sinners. The sin-tainted blood inherited from Adam would not qualify Him as the sinless Saviour, so a body was prepared with blood produced by the Father, and placed into the womb of a virgin by the blessed Holy Spirit. Christ eventually went to the cross and shed His blood. Because he was the God-man shedding untainted holy blood, mankind may have eternal life by receiving this sacrifice.