🚩 Mark Clark’s Claim
In The Problem of God, Mark Clark dismisses the oft-cited parallel between Jesus and the Hindu deity Krishna, particularly the claim that Krishna was born of a virgin. He argues:
- Krishna had seven siblings, which in his view, undermines any claim of virginity.
- The miraculous conception story involves a white elephant impregnating his mother, which he says is “spectacular” but “not a virgin conception at all.”
- He concludes that the parallels to Christianity are weak or fabricated, and suggests that some pagan stories actually borrowed from Christianity, not the other way around.
🔍 What Does the Evidence Really Say?
Clark’s rebuttal simplifies or misrepresents Hindu mythology and ignores the nature of myth-making, particularly in oral traditions that evolve over centuries and contain symbolic rather than literal meanings.
Let’s address each of his key points:
1. Krishna’s Birth Story
Krishna’s mother Devaki was the sister of Kamsa, a tyrannical king. Upon hearing a prophecy that her eighth son would kill him, Kamsa imprisoned Devaki and her husband Vasudeva, killing each child as they were born. When Krishna, the eighth child, was born, he was miraculously smuggled out and raised by foster parents.
Was it a virgin birth?
No, not in the literal biological sense. But neither was Jesus’ birth in any historically verifiable sense. The claim that Jesus was born of a virgin appears only in two Gospels (Matthew and Luke), and even those accounts are riddled with literary tropes, anachronisms, and theological motives. The concept of a divine or miraculous conception is common across mythologies and serves as a symbol of divine selection or intervention, not necessarily a gynecological claim.
Further, while Clark points to seven siblings as a refutation, this is biologically irrelevant to the idea of divine intervention in one particular birth. Miraculous conceptions in myth often occur after prior normal births—this does not disqualify the miraculous nature of the latter.
2. The White Elephant Myth
Clark claims that a white elephant impregnated Krishna’s mother. This is actually a confusion with the birth of Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha), not Krishna. In Buddhist tradition, Queen Maya dreams of a white elephant entering her side, a vision interpreted as foretelling the Buddha’s divine birth.
There is no known Hindu text that describes Krishna’s conception via a white elephant. By confusing these mythologies, Clark undermines his own credibility. Such a conflation would be like attributing Moses parting the Red Sea to Muhammad—a basic factual error.
3. Parallels and Plagiarism
Clark insists that “several of these stories come later than Christianity and borrow from it.” This is a common apologetic tactic, but it is chronologically and academically dubious.
- The Mahabharata, where Krishna’s story appears, is dated centuries before the Common Era.
- Krishna worship was well established in India long before Jesus of Nazareth is believed to have lived.
- The oral traditions and folklore surrounding Krishna go back possibly as early as the 9th century BCE.
Apologists often invoke the idea of pagan stories borrowing from Christianity, but this is historically and geographically implausible when it comes to Indian texts, which predate and developed independently of any Christian influence.
🧠 The God Question’s Core Philosophy
Let’s apply our framework:
| 🔍 Lens | Insight |
|---|---|
| Curiosity over certainty | Rather than defending Christian uniqueness at all costs, we must ask: why do so many cultures tell stories of divine births, miracles, and resurrected saviors? What human need or cultural pattern do these myths reflect? |
| Evidence over belief | Clark demands historical scrutiny for Krishna but suspends that scrutiny when it comes to Jesus. A consistent approach reveals that all divine birth narratives lack empirical evidence and share common mythological features. |
| Seeing faith as human | The Krishna story—like that of Jesus—reflects human hopes, archetypes, and storytelling patterns. The real question is not whether one is “true” and the rest are “false,” but what these stories tell us about us. |
🔚 Conclusion: Dismissing Parallels Doesn’t Prove Christianity
Mark Clark’s treatment of Krishna is riddled with factual errors, cultural misunderstandings, and apologetic bias. The virgin birth parallel may be symbolic, but so is the Christian version when viewed through a historical-critical lens.
Rather than undermining the case against Christianity’s uniqueness, Clark inadvertently reveals how common the themes of divine conception, miraculous life, and divine mission are across world religions—including those predating Christianity.
The more honest approach is not to defend one myth as uniquely historical while labeling all others as “fabricated,” but to recognize that myth-making is universal, and Christianity is one expression of this larger human pattern.
God or Delusion? 