Proving the Virgin Birth

. . . or not. Bruce Alderman has a good post about Tipler’s efforts in this regard. (Peter Kirk has also discussed this, and both articles are well worth reading.

Physicists seem to look at the world a bit differently than I do, and I often don’t understand what they’re up to, but for me the whole effort to make a miracle possible is a bit self-defeating. If it could happen by normal means is it a miracle any more? Isn’t it just an unusual event? And how can one ever prove absolutely that a miracle is not just an unusual event for which we don’t yet know the cause?

I apparently just don’t get it.