>>And you don't think the frightened, pregnant girl, out of wedlock, is a more likely explanation then the immaculate conception?
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>Haha, a practical application of Occam's Razor.

Say what?

>
>It sure sounds like a possible explanation. But then again, wasn't Mary already married when she got pregnant? At least, that is what the Gospels state, IIRC.

Not sure about her marital status when she got up the duff. If she was married then sorry, yes, stoning was the punishment for adultery, wasn't it? Check this hypothesis:

I don't know whether Joseph had been away on a protracted carpentry conference and Mary had her fling. Joseph obviously loived her and forgave her, but ghe couldn't claim the child to be his own, so they concocted this stor

>
>Anyway, the point is that the the importance of the entire question of whether this particular miracle - or any other miracle for that matter - happened, in the case of Christ, has been exaggerated.
>
>About the question of miracles in general, one Mirza Abul-Fadl (a Bahá'í scholar) wrote something in the sense of:
>
>If you want to buy a tyre, you will look at the quality of the tyres, and not judge the vendor by his ability to convert plain tyres into gold tyres.

Don't get the point of this allegory but, damn yes! if my tyre dealer could convert the tyre into gold I could go and get is assayed, sell it, and go a buy all 4 corners with a fraction of the proceeds! :-)