Was Jesus born of a virgin?

The only way Mary, or any woman could have conceived without having sex, is through artificial insemination. And that's it. Female conception requires a shot of spermatazoa from a male donor. There is no way around it. We are a sexually reproducing species. We are not parthenogenic. If Mary was a whiptail lizard, or a Komodo dragon, then yes, she could have conceived without sex. But the Bible makes it clear through context that Mary was human. I am not aware of any denomination that claims that Mary was, for example, a Komodo dragon.

So assuming that a man named Jesus existed at all, perhaps sexual intercourse per se wasn't necessary, but semen from a man certainly was.

Jesus,being God,was not subject to,nor limited by normal human biological rules.Au contraire, my friend , he created those rules.To paraphrase William Jennings Bryan,when speaking of the Jonah story from the Old Testament,a God big enough to make a fish,and big enough to make a man, is big enough to make both do as he pleases.

The bible is fiction, and so is the christian god, along with several hundred other gods that have come and gone since the dawn of man. Ergo, Jesus was not god and was not born of a virgin.

What about Jesus' genetic material?

Humans are diploid. We get our genes from our fathers and our mothers.

I realize that 'God is miraculous,' but for Christ to be physically human at all, he'd need to have genes from some source other than Mary - unless he were a clone of Mary, and again, I am not aware of any denomination that claims that he was.

I presume the answer is, 'his paternal genes came from God,' but this begs the question, does this mean that God actually has genes that he can pass on?

Why would God have genes?

For that matter, since we are "made in his image," why does God gave a physical body at all?

And why was Mary even a virgin at all? She was married, no?

The Gospels imply that Mary got married after her Immaculate Conception just to avoid any scandals in the society that she was living in at the time. The stigma of what would the neighbors think is indeed a powerful one throughout history. She was set aside to be the new Eve as some might make the comparison. Jesus Christ, by the mystery of the Incarnation and the doctrine of the Trinity, is fully God and yet also fully human at the same time. During the spearing portion of the Crucifixition, He bled out both blood and water. Joseph was merely ordained by God the Father to be Jesus Christ's earthly father (some have called him like a stepfather or adopted foster father in this sense).