[dragonwriter]

> Most Christians believe that that was not some biological process, but a true miracle where God himself bestowed this child on Mary.

Most Christians that have spent the time to consider what it means for God to manifest a miracle fairly explicitly accept that that necessarily involves some physical sequence of events, potentially leveraging underlying capacities which in time and space predate the event which God, being all-knowing and existing outside of time and space, may have created for the express purpose of that specific miracle.

And most of the rest of Christians would probably dismiss the mechanical question as irrelevant for miracles, preferring to ask “why” rather than “how”.

[the_af]

> Most Christians that have spent the time to consider what it means for God to manifest a miracle fairly explicitly accept that that necessarily involves some physical sequence of events

That hasn't been my experience. I don't know about "most" Christians -- I wouldn't dare presume to speak for anyone in the US, for example -- but every Catholic I've spoken with (I live in a majorly Catholic country) believes in the entirely miraculous virgin birth of Jesus.

I think the phrasing "most Christians that have spent the time to consider [...]" is unfortunate; it reads like "every Christian which believes [this thing] believes [this thing]". Or it makes Christians who do believe in the miraculous birth without a prior physical setup to be somehow less thinking Christians.

Do note I'm an atheist myself so I certainly don't believe in miracles, either direct or indirect; I've no dog in this race.

[dragonwriter]

> but every Catholic I've spoken with (I live in a majorly Catholic country) believes in the entirely miraculous virgin birth of Jesus.

Sure. I’m a Catholic and I believe that.

It’s also a non-explanation that doesn't actually rule out any particular physical process occurring as part of the manifestation of the miracle.

Other than things like the routine transubstantiation of the elements of the eucharist, where a defined part of the miracle is the absence of any physical manifestation of it occurring [0], that's pretty typical of miracles.

[0] Why doesn't the bread and wine that miraculously becomes the body and blood of Christ taste like flesh and blood? Well, because it miraculously also retains all the physical properties of bread and wine...

[danans]

> Why doesn't the bread and wine that miraculously becomes the body and blood of Christ taste like flesh and blood? Well, because it miraculously also retains all the physical properties of bread and wine...

I'm not a Catholic, but I figured that most people interpreted the bread and wine as symbolic.