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It's easy to lose sight of this among lights, carols and presents, but Christmas actually celebrates a birthday.

In Luke 1, an angel visited Mary to inform her that she has "found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever; his kingdom will never end."

That would be a lot for anyone to take in. Some people might focus on how life-changing it would be to give birth to royalty. Or what a never-ending kingdom would look like.

Mary homed in on something much more practical and immediate. Even 2,000 years ago, people knew how babies were made.

"'How will this be,' Mary asked the angel, 'since I am a virgin?'"

The angel told her that her son would be conceived by the Holy Spirit and "be called the Son of God."

In an amazing act of faith, Mary submitted herself to God's plan. It's easy to glance over that detail now, because we know the end of the story. But she didn't. She had to assume an out-of-wedlock pregnancy would end her engagement to Joseph and ostracize her socially or worse.

The Virgin Birth was and is a vitally important part of Christmas. It was the fulfillment of a Messianic prophecy in Isaiah 7. "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel." It also explains something God said in Genesis 3. After Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God cursed the serpent, who was Satan.

"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel," God said.

Why was this hostility just between the woman's offspring and Satan? Because Jesus didn't have a biological human father.

A 2017 Pew Research Poll found around two-thirds of Americans believe in the Virgin Birth. But among those 18 to 29, just 54% did.

It's easy to understand their hesitancy. Setting aside modern technology, it's impossible for a virgin to become pregnant. Therefore, a virgin can't give birth. It's just science.

But that statement is incomplete. It's physically impossible for a virgin to become pregnant. But the Bible explicitly states that the Virgin Birth was a supernatural event. God overruled the laws of nature. That's what makes it a miracle.

This is where science can't weigh in. Science is the study of the natural world. By definition, it can't tell you about the supernatural. Even the scientific method -- the making and testing of a hypothesis -- doesn't apply here. Miracles aren't events humans can repeat on command.

Science is a wonderful thing, but it's not all-encompassing. Quick: Use science to explain why murder is wrong. It's an impossible task, because morality is also beyond the scope of science.

Now, this doesn't prove the Virgin Birth happened. But it's a mistake to believe science can refute it.

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Victor Joecks is a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Email him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or follow @victorjoecks on X. To find out more about Victor Joecks and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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