I recall a fairly interesting conversation between a—well, let's call him what he was—a self-appointed debunker, and a Lutheran pastor. I'd known the pastor for years and knew him to be a pretty sharp fellow. He and I had had many fascinating discussions—philosophy mostly, but some religious. We didn't agree on a number of things, but I found him to be a rational debater and quite a wise man. He was of the more liberal or progressive persuasion as far as pastors go, and he would often use material from "Prairie Home Companion" or "Lord of the Rings" as material for his sermons. Cool guy.

Anyway, the debunker was all hung up on the impossibility of the virgin birth and he was essentially attacking the pastor for believing in something so patently ridiculous. The pastor listened to him rant for several minutes, then when the debunker ran out of steam and stood there smirking as he waited for an answer to his devastating assault on what he considered to be one of the major tenets of Christianity (not), the pastor responded thusly:   

"The idea of the virgin birth is merely the way stories were told back in those times—or in any times for that matter. The legends surrounding major religious figures always contain miraculous elements. That's part of the mythology surrounding the religious figure. But if you focus your concentration on the frills, you miss the main message the religious figure is trying to get across. In the case of Jesus, you're allowing yourself to be diverted by gynecological trivia. Jesus is not about whether or not he was born of a virgin. Jesus is about what he was trying to teach us."

I thought that was a helluva good answer. Most religious arguments I've ever heard (or read) focus on the garnish and miss the entrée.

Don Firth