# The societal ramifications of an indisputable miracle **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 6, 2021, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858 "2021-07-06T22:52:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/141 "2021-07-13T01:37:04Z")
> [@Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](#): > > Science has NO EXPLANATION for this cat’s survival, and I doubt that Science ever will. It is hard to imagine how evidence would be found that would account for it. Science doesn’t know how this particular cat survived, but it also isn’t particularly remarkable. When a mosquito bites you, no one truly knows exactly where it came from. Its egg could have been laid in any of innumerable ponds of standing water in the nearby area. That doesn’t make it a miracle. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/142 "2021-07-13T01:42:49Z")
Is this Poe’s Law? ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/143 "2021-07-13T01:54:05Z")
Going with the premise of the OP, I figure a lot of people would simply lose their shit. Mass choas ensues. Good thing it ain’t never gonna happen. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/144 "2021-07-13T02:12:38Z")
> [@Reno\_Nevada\_Jr](#): > > Science has NO EXPLANATION for this cat’s survival, and I doubt that Science ever will. It is hard to imagine how evidence would be found that would account for it. Explanation’s right in the article you cited: > The furry survivor belongs to the Gonzalez family. Angela and Deven Gonzalez were seriously injured in the collapse and remain in the hospital. Edgar Gonzalez remains missing. > > The Gonzalez family lived in unit 904, which was sheared in two when part of the tower fell. > > Binx either survived the collapse or escaped what was left before the rest of the building was brought to the ground in a controlled demolition. The cat was in an apartment which was split open in the initial collapse. Two humans who had been in the same apartment also survived. The cat either survived in the same fashion that they did – with less injury due to being smaller, lighter, and more flexible or just due to landing on something softer – or else was in the portion of the apartment which didn’t fall initially, and got out afterwards, as the apartment was no longer an enclosed space. (He then apparently allowed a stranger to pick him up and take him to a rescue center. This would be extraordinary behavior for some individual cats, but entirely normal behavior for others.) ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/145 "2021-07-13T06:15:45Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Are there contemporary first-hand reports of how people reacted to supposed miracles? > [@Velocity](#): > > The 1600s isn’t really “contemporary,” but when Miguel Pellicer had his lower left leg restored (which had been missing for two years,) the Catholic church launched an extensive year-long investigation process with numerous witnesses, and then Pellicer was also invited to the royal court at Madrid where King Phillip kissed his restored leg. That’s a great link Velocity. It underlines the point that most miracles admit a mundane cause and the OP’s hypothetical is by necessity pretty unusual. As the [IMHO thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/youre-now-a-miracle-worker-what-would-you-do-to-prove-this-to-the-world/945929/56) shows, convincing miracles are harder to engineer than you might think, even with supernatural powers. Anyway regarding the OP, while any miracle would be a media sensation, if it was one and done there’s no reason to call a halt to either civilization or the scientific method. If the miracle contained additional information (eg, evidence for a monotheistic God - something not specified in the OP) that would be interesting. Such evidence could shift beliefs among the scientific elite, although again I doubt whether it would cause a collapse of international western capitalism or scientific progress. From a bird’s eye view, I’d say societal ramifications would be minimal, even with large swings in public opinion. OTOH, if miracles were common occurrences, we could uncover patterns via the science of Miracleology. ---
**Author:** ![Stanislaus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stanislaus/32/3391_2.png) [@Stanislaus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stanislaus)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/146 "2021-07-13T09:40:40Z")
Reflecting on this thread, I’m revising my view on what the societal implications would be. I now think that in the event of a miracle, large swathes of society would turn away from rationalism, retreating instead to discredited dogmas and irrational ideologies rather than simply deal with the evidence in front of them. Awkward facts would be ignored; the scripture of prophets would be a source of comforting myths about the nature of the world. The methods of intellectual inquiry would become ossified, no matter how outdated or inappropriate they had been shown to be. I’d originally been more optimistic than that, but this thread has been a real eye-opener. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/147 "2021-07-13T12:39:20Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > And using **Dark Sponge** ’s own anecdote mentioned abovethread - when a deaf woman at his church had hearing restored, half of the congregation regarded her as a liar while the other half treated her like a celebrity. I don’t understand why that would have been the only two reactions. Personally, I would have regarded it as a fortuitous, but perfectly secular, event. The body sometimes does repair damage that most doctors would have thought was permanent. You can call that a miracle that an improbable and beneficial event happened to you, sure, but it’s not as if such things are without precedent in non-believers as well. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/148 "2021-07-13T13:00:59Z")
I’m not sure how you got to that conclusion. Not only are there quite a number of different perspectives given in this thread, but none of them indicate anything along the lines as you have claimed. The only options in the face of a “true” miracle is to try to understand it, or to throw up our hands and no longer believe that anything can be comprehended. It sounds as though you are saying that trying to understand it would be to cling to ossified methods of intellectual inquiry, and that the only rational response would be to give up on understanding anything about our environment. Personally, I would give more credence to advance technology from alien civilizations before invoking the supernatural. In fact, I would assume we live in a simulation, where the people running the sim have decided to go ahead and mess with us before assuming the divine. ---
**Author:** ![Stanislaus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stanislaus/32/3391_2.png) [@Stanislaus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stanislaus)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/149 "2021-07-13T13:51:57Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > The only options in the face of a “true” miracle is to try to understand it, or to throw up our hands and no longer believe that anything can be comprehended. Yes, absolutely! > [@k9bfriender](#): > > It sounds as though you are saying that trying to understand it would be to cling to ossified methods of intellectual inquiry, and that the only rational response would be to give up on understanding anything about our environment. That is in no way what I am saying. What I am saying is that in a world where it is indisputable that the laws of physics can be broken, you cannot investigate the breaking of the laws of physics by a methodology which relies on the laws of physics being unbreakable. An enormous - possibly immeasurable - amount of ontological uncertainty has been added to the system and the approach we take to investigating the miracle - or indeed anything else - has to in some way account for this uncertainty. Proceeding to investigate under the assumption that physics always works and that therefore experiments are reproducible, for example, is wilfully shutting your eyes to important new knowledge. We need a new epistemology; sticking with the old one is irrational. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > In fact, I would assume we live in a simulation, where the people running the sim have decided to go ahead and mess with us before assuming the divine. OK, you make that assumption. The next day, a child who has always been honest in your dealings with her comes to you and says she was hiding in a wardrobe and found herself in a magical land talking to a faun. How do you decide whether to believe her or not? If you go to the wardrobe and rap on the back of it, does that prove anything? In this world, you don’t need to test the wardrobe. You know how physics works, and it’s not like that. But if you’re operating under the assumption that we’re in a simulation then “someone programmed the world to work like this yesterday then deleted that subroutine today” is a perfectly possible sequence of events. So what tools do you use to investigate the claim? ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/150 "2021-07-13T14:03:37Z")
> [@Stanislaus](#): > > In this world, you don’t need to test the wardrobe. You know how physics works, and it’s not like that. But if you’re operating under the assumption that we’re in a simulation then “someone programmed the world to work like this yesterday then deleted that subroutine today” is a perfectly possible sequence of events. So what tools do you use to investigate the claim? That may be the path of the devout Cleric or the naturally gifted Sorcerer, but the far mightier Wizard would instead investigate these claims in a manner not unlike our own scientific method. For example, he or she might try opening the wardrobe under a full moon, or when Saturn is ascendant, or will send a child of pure heart to open the wardrobe, and so on. ---
**Author:** ![Stanislaus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stanislaus/32/3391_2.png) [@Stanislaus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stanislaus)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/151 "2021-07-13T15:19:07Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > That may be the path of the devout Cleric or the naturally gifted Sorcerer, but the far mightier Wizard would instead investigate these claims in a manner not unlike our own scientific method. For example, he or she might try opening the wardrobe under a full moon, or when Saturn is ascendant, or will send a child of pure heart to open the wardrobe, and so on. Sounds like the Wizard (an odd job title for someone living in a simulation, but let’s go with it) is privy to certain arcane knowledge: to wit that there are rigid laws governing the opening of magical wardrobes which can be discovered by reproducible experimentation. How did she come by this knowledge? Was it vouchsafed to her by an oracle? Did she conjure up a demon and ask it? I mean, she has to know it somehow, otherwise she would just blithely be assuming that she can use the scientific method to deduce and predict the behaviour of whatever entity is running this simulation. An unevidenced assumption that would be mere faith. There’s a word for unjustified belief about the nature of a higher power and “scientific” ain’t it. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/152 "2021-07-13T15:31:32Z")
> [@Stanislaus](#): > > Proceeding to investigate under the assumption that physics always works and that therefore experiments are reproducible, for example, is wilfully shutting your eyes to important new knowledge. We need a new epistemology; sticking with the old one is irrational. Well, the new epistemology is by definition irrational, as it cannot be predicted, reproduced or explained. It does _not_ follow reason. So, we either try to find rational explanations, or we just give up and embrace the irrational ones. What do you propose we do, in a world where we can no longer count on the world acting according to cause and effect? > [@Stanislaus](#): > > That is in no way what I am saying. I can’t tell what you are saying then. You agree that the only two options are to try to understand it, or to give up on understanding anything, and it seems as though you are saying that we shouldn’t try to understand it. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > In this world, you don’t need to test the wardrobe. You know how physics works, and it’s not like that. But if you’re operating under the assumption that we’re in a simulation then “someone programmed the world to work like this yesterday then deleted that subroutine today” is a perfectly possible sequence of events. So what tools do you use to investigate the claim? I compile other claimed anomalies, and attempt to see any pattern or reason to them. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/153 "2021-07-13T15:32:33Z")
Either there are rules to discover, in which case the scientific method is your best bet for doing so, or there aren’t, in which case NOTHING you do will help. So you need to try to discover the rules, no matter how esoteric. Maybe you’ll find them and maybe you won’t, but at least you’re trying, unlike the Cleric who falls to his knees and starts to grovel. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/154 "2021-07-13T15:34:17Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > unlike the Cleric who falls to his knees and starts to grovel. Even the Cleric grovelling is attempting to get a reproducible result. If prayer worked, even if only part of the time, that would be data that would help to explain what was going on. “Oh, we make this deity happy and this happens. We make it mad, and this other thing happens.” ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/155 "2021-07-13T15:42:15Z")
That’s true, but it’s a matter of approach. The Cleric recites his prayer due to tradition. The Wizardly approach would be to figure out WHY the prayers work. Is it because an ultrapowerful entity is listening for your prayer? Is that deity interested in your intent, or in the specific sounds or actions performed as part of the ritual? Can you “hack” key bits from the traditional Cleric’s rituals in order to harness these “miracles” more easily? It’s the difference between a witch doctor saying “we put all these plants in a mortar and pestle, grind them up while chanting, make a broth that we put in a gourd and wave around your head twelve times, then you drink the liquid and it will cure your disease” and a regular doctor figuring out that one of the plants involved contains chemicals with antibiotic properties and that those can be synthesized. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/156 "2021-07-13T15:47:05Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > Is that deity interested in your intent, or in the specific sounds or actions performed as part of the ritual? Can you “hack” key bits from the traditional Cleric’s rituals in order to harness these “miracles” more easily? And how fickle is that deity? Maybe he would have cured your disease, but you caught him right after a fight with his ex, so instead your condition worsens. ---
**Author:** ![Stanislaus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stanislaus/32/3391_2.png) [@Stanislaus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stanislaus)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/157 "2021-07-13T15:55:15Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > Either there are rules to discover, in which case the scientific method is your best bet for doing so, or there aren’t, in which case NOTHING you do will help. This is essentially Pascal’s wager isn’t it? Fantastic! > [@k9bfriender](#): > > What do you propose we do, in a world where we can no longer count on the world acting according to cause and effect? > [@k9bfriender](#): > > I can’t tell what you are saying then. You agree that the only two options are to try to understand it, or to give up on understanding anything, and it seems as though you are saying that we shouldn’t try to understand it. I propose that we attempt to develop new epistemologies that are better suited to such a world. For example, revelatory epistemology becomes infinitely more viable. Failing that, we need to develop ways of investigating reality that allow us to cope with uncertainty. That doesn’t mean not trying to understand reality, it means approaching the problem in an intellectually honest way, with the tools suited to the job. > [@Babale](#): > > It’s the difference between a witch doctor saying “we put all these plants in a mortar and pestle, grind them up while chanting, make a broth that we put in a gourd and wave around your head twelve times, then you drink the liquid and it will cure your disease” and a regular doctor figuring out that one of the plants involved contains chemicals with antibiotic properties and that those can be synthesized. Research Theology would be a wonderful development. Would it be restricted to responses to prayer’s/rituals or would it include other aspects? If someone came to the Wizard and said that last night the deity spoke to them, would the Wizard accept these revelations as evidence about the nature and will of the deity? Or would only revelations obtained under a double-blinded RCTbe acceptable? ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/158 "2021-07-13T16:05:42Z")
> [@Stanislaus](#): > > What I am saying is that in a world where it is indisputable that the laws of physics can be broken, you cannot investigate the breaking of the laws of physics by a methodology which relies on the laws of physics being unbreakable. An enormous - possibly immeasurable - amount of ontological uncertainty has been added to the system and the approach we take to investigating the miracle - or indeed anything else - has to in some way account for this uncertainty. > > Proceeding to investigate under the assumption that physics always works and that therefore experiments are reproducible, for example, is wilfully shutting your eyes to important new knowledge. We need a new epistemology; sticking with the old one is irrational. So are you saying that an indisputable miracle would “break” science? That we could no longer do science (at least in the same way) because we could no longer count on events always predictably obeying natural laws? That may be the case. (And, if it is the case, it might be offered as a reason why God would not do indisputable miracles.) But I can think of two possible rebuttals. One is that science _already_ can’t count on events always predictably obeying natural laws, because of quantum randomness (which says that some things aren’t determinate), and perhaps also chaos theory (which says that some things, while determinate, are not predictable in any practical sense). The other is that, throughout the history of science, there have been scientists who were religious believers who believed in at least the possibility that God could intervene in reality in miraculous ways (even if God seldom or never actually did so). But they continued to do good science, because when they were acting as scientists they considered it their job to study the way the world normally works, when God does not miraculously intervene, which is at least the vast majority of the time. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/159 "2021-07-13T16:09:08Z")
> [@Stanislaus](#): > > This is essentially Pascal’s wager isn’t it? Fantastic! Not even close. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > I propose that we attempt to develop new epistemologies that are better suited to such a world. How would we evaluate them? > [@Stanislaus](#): > > For example, revelatory epistemology becomes infinitely more viable. How so? Which revelation are we going with? How does something unexplainable by science occuring indicate _which_ god did it? > [@Stanislaus](#): > > we need to develop ways of investigating reality that allow us to cope with uncertainty. We have that. It’s called statistics. If it doesn’t bear itself to statistical analysis, then it’s just random, and we can no longer evaluate _anything_. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > That doesn’t mean not trying to understand reality, it means approaching the problem in an intellectually honest way No, it means that to be “intellectually honest”, by your definition, means giving up on understanding reality. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > with the tools suited to the job What tools are there, other than that of using methodology to understand cause and effect? > [@Stanislaus](#): > > Research Theology would be a wonderful development. Would it be restricted to responses to prayer’s/rituals or would it include other aspects? That would still be following the scientific method, just with a new area of study. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > If someone came to the Wizard and said that last night the deity spoke to them, would the Wizard accept these revelations as evidence about the nature and will of the deity? Why would they without some sort of evidence? If they said the deity told them that the sun would stop in the heavens at noon, and it did, then that would be evidence of the nature and will. If they just said that the deity told them that gay people are icky, then that is not necessarily evidence of any kind. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > Or would only revelations obtained under a double-blinded RCTbe acceptable? If we want to actually understand the universe then yes. If we want to just accept that we are at the whim of fickle and irrational beings with power over the universe, then it doesn’t really matter. We may not be able to understand any better than a Sim can understand how that chair just appeared out of thin air in front of them. ---
**Author:** ![Stanislaus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stanislaus/32/3391_2.png) [@Stanislaus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stanislaus)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2021, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858/160 "2021-07-13T17:09:28Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > So are you saying that an indisputable miracle would “break” science? That we could no longer do science (at least in the same way) because we could no longer count on events always predictably obeying natural laws? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying, thank you. > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > But I can think of two possible rebuttals. > > One is that science _already_ can’t count on events always predictably obeying natural laws, because of quantum randomness (which says that some things aren’t determinate), and perhaps also chaos theory (which says that some things, while determinate, are not predictable in any practical sense). I’m not very current with the influence of quantum randomness/chaos on scientific epistemology but I have just come across this utterly fascinating snippet in [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_indeterminacy#Indeterminacy_and_incompleteness): **In fact, Einstein, [Boris Podolsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Podolsky) and [Nathan Rosen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Rosen) showed that if quantum mechanics is correct, then the classical view of how the real world works (at least after special relativity) is no longer tenable.** What I was going to say was that I think there would still be a fundamental difference between statistical randomness on one hand (which can perhaps be measured and accounted for) and the universe being subject to acts of Will by a deity. However, further googling reveals that there is enormous debate about your exact point, as [witness](https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198814979.001.0001/oso-9780198814979): > ABSTRACT > Scientific realism has traditionally maintained that our best scientific theories can be regarded as more or less true and as representing the world as it is (more or less). However, one of our very best current theories—quantum mechanics—has famously resisted such a realist construal, threatening to undermine the realist stance altogether. The chapters in this volume carefully examine this tension and the reasons behind it, including the underdetermination generated by the multiplicity of formulations and interpretations of quantum physics, each presenting a different way the world could be. Authors in this volume offer a range of alternative ways forward: some suggest new articulations of realism, limiting our commitments in one way or another; others attempt to articulate a ‘third way’ between traditional forms of realism and antirealism, or are critical of such attempts. Still others argue that quantu m theory itself should be reconceptualised, or at least alternative formulations should be considered in the hope of evading the problems faced by realism. And some examine the nature of these issues when moving beyond quantum mechanics to quantum field theory. Taken together they offer an exciting new set of perspectives on one of the most fundamental questions in the philosophy of modern physics: how can one be a realist about quantum theory, and what does this realism amount to? How cool is that? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-societal-ramifications-of-an-indisputable-miracle/945858.md?page=9)