Statistical Odds of the Virgin Birth

Christians and Muslims believe in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, though Muslims do not accept the divinity of Christ as Christians do. If the virgin birth truly occurred, then this miracle could have occurred in one of two ways: supernaturally or hypernaturally.

If it took place supernaturally, then God acted outside the natural law by overriding the known laws of physics and biology. This is by far the most common view and what most people would refer to as a miracle. Such a view is not conducive to scientific inquiry.

If it took place hypernaturally, then God acted within the natural law by employing the known laws of physics and biology to produce an extraordinary, statistically improbable event. Such a view is conducive, even if only in a limited fashion, to scientific inquiry.

So, what if the virgin birth of Jesus Christ was, in fact, a hypernatural miracle? 

A 2007 Slate article, Can a Virgin Give Birth, answers "Yes-but it's very, very, very, very unlikely." In other words, as the article points out, it would be an extremely improbable event, mathematically (and biologically) speaking. But if this extremely improbable event did happen, what of the added coincidence that it would've happened to the one man billions have believed to be a miracle worker (Muslims), billions more have believed to be God in human flesh (Christians), and even quite a few agnostic & atheistic scholars have claimed to be the most influential figure in human history?

While the odds of the virgin birth being a hypernatural miracle are incredibly low, perhaps considering these odds in the larger context of the odds of humanity even existing in the first place might prove a useful comparison.  For example, in 1986, two top cosmologists, Barrow and Tipler*, wrote a book called the Anthropic Cosmological Principle. They were also mathematicians and physicists. In the book, they laid out ten steps which were necessary for human evolution. Borrowing from a blog that briefly summarized some of the key points, here is something particularly relevant:

     "Moreover, in the Anthropic Cosmological Principle two of the world’s leading cosmologists, John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, point out 10 steps in the course of human evolution, such as the development of the DNA base genetic code, the origin of mitochondria in the cells, the origin of photosynthesis, the development of aerobic respiration, the development of the inner skeleton and the development of the eye, each of which is so improbable that before it would have occurred the sun would have ceased to be a main sequence star, and would have incinerated the earth. The odds they calculated for the assembly of the human genome was somewhere around 4 to the -360th power to the 110,000th power — simply an incomprehensible number. For reasons like this as well as others, “there has developed a general consensus among evolutionists that the evolution of intelligent life. . . is so improbable that is unlikely to have occurred on any other planet in the entire visible universe."

Viewed in this broader context, one could say that the odds of a hypernatural virgin birth are much higher than the odds of humanity coming into existence in the first place.   


* Apparently, Dr. Tipler, also makes a positive argument for the virgin birth being a hypernatural miracle in his book The Physics of Christianity.