Not everything important can be understood. There are some things we understand now we didn't ten years ago. Because we travel in space we know more about what is out there. Because we have picked the atom apart we know more about what is down here. Having beaten back the borders of both inner and outer space we often assume that everything is understandable, nothing is ultimately mysterious, and those things which we used to call mysterious are simply what is left over when our present knowledge has run its course. We assume that as we push the borders even farther back we will someday know the unknowable and unscrew the inscrutable.

In our scientific age mystery has been shoved aside and everything measured, weighted and categorized. What do we make then of a virgin who gives birth, she…