Catholics believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary always remained a virgin. She never had intimate relations with St. Joseph — Jesus being conceived in her womb by the Holy Spirit.

While many Protestants believe in Christ’s miraculous conception, they hold that Mary and Joseph had other children after our Lord was born.

But Scripture, the Church Fathers and even the early Protestant Reformers are against them.

Here’s the evidence that Jesus was indeed Mary’s only child.

The “brothers” of Jesus mentioned in the Gospels are not his blood brothers.
In Matthew 13:55 we read, “Is not this [Jesus] the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brethren James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?”

Sure sounds like Jesus had siblings!

The first-century Jews used the word “brother” to mean more than blood brothers. It also meant “cousin” and, in some cases, “uncle.” The Hebrew and Aramaic languages don’t have a word for “cousin.”

Scripture confirms that James and Joseph are not Jesus’ blood relatives. In Matthew 27:56, they are identified as the sons of a different Mary than Our Lady.

Among atheists, a popular objection to Christianity is the so-called “dark passages” of the Old Testament, wherein God seems to command the slaughtering of an entire people. Even many Christians are troubled by these passages, which include Deut. 20:16-18:

“But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Per′izzites, the Hivites and the Jeb′usites, as the Lord your God has commanded; that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices which they have done in the service of their gods, and so to sin against the Lord your God.”

If our Lord is a God of love, why would He command the killing of an entire people, which seems to include non-combatant children and women?

Here are a few explanations:

1. God has the right to take life. If God has the right to take life, He has the right to deputize others to do so. In other words, He can choose the methods by which He takes life. For example, He sent plagues that probably killed innocent people. He is free to choose the sword as well. While this view is technically correct, it’s probably not the best one to use in a debate with an atheist.

Many times pro-lifers have to convince abortion supporters that the unborn child is a person. Yet some pro-abortionists agree with us on the unborn child’s personhood and dignity. They’ve created another argument to attempt to justify abortion called the Violinist Argument.

In a nutshell, it says that someone can be equal to another but not have the right to their body. To support this point, pro-abortionist author Judith Jarvis Thomson asks you to imagine that you're kidnapped, wake up in a hospital bed and find a violinist attached to you. The violinist will die unless they stay connected to you because you’re the only person in the world with the body type to sustain their life. The doctor says you only have to be connected for nine months.

Thomson argues that although the violinist has equal rights to you, they don’t have the right to use your body without your consent. Therefore, you have the right to unplug them.

According to Thomson, pregnant women have the same right to “unplug” from the child in their womb through abortion.

Here’s why the Violinist Argument fails.

1. In most cases, a woman consented to the act of sex that produced the child.
Generally, most people know that pregnancy is a possible outcome of sex. That’s why when a couple has sex, breaks up, and the woman finds out she’s pregnant, the father has to pay child support. He may not want the child, but he consented to the sex that led to the child’s conception.

In the violinist scenario, you were kidnapped and attached to the musician. You had no idea the misfortune would befall you.

2. Parents have a responsibility to their children.
The violinist is a stranger, so you have no obligation to keep them plugged into you. But parents of an unborn child have an obligation to care for their offspring. They’re not required to do that for a stranger.