Years ago some might have thought bats navigating perfectly in a completely dark room was a miracle. We humans are biased toward vision. IIRC scientists had to invent a machine that could detect the frequencies bats use for echolocation, since much of it falls outside our range, so we could confirm that. Until then we were blind to our own blindness deaf to our own deafness. Heck, some animals have senses we don’t have at all, like a pit viper sensing heat or sharks with electric field sensors.
So I think there are things that people may sincerely believe to be miracles. They’ve ruled out all kinds of possible explanations until all that’s left is something supernatural. Maybe science can’t explain them…yet. But one day a machine or procedure or test will show that it isn’t a miracle.
Also there are fakes, charlatans, tricksters, whatever.
So if I get this right, part of the rebuttal is, if it happened in the physical world, axiomatically there is a physical-world explanation for it, and maybe we just don’t/can’t detect it, but it still is not a miracle. Because, some say, it would turn the whole system chaotic and unpredictable.
ISTM, part of what makes a miracle a miracle, as opposed to applied magick, is that it is extraordinary. You still have carry on expecting things to happen according to the regular order of things. Extraordinary claims, etc. The problem is that believers in miracles then begin seeing miracles all over the dagblasted place and everything is a miracle and miracles happen every day. That wouldn’t be miraculous, that would be a new normal and yes, that would make a mess of everything.
The hypothetical in the OP is that genuine bona fide actual for real literal unquestionable bankable indisputable veritable true no-shit miracles occur.
If you’re lost at that point, this isn’t the thread for you.
Actually, many others do not see a problem on noticing the limitations of the OP.
As others noticed too, an undisputable miracle, as past ones showed, leads to more complacency and the slowing of progress.
It also leads to a big, big mess, because many faiths then will claim to be the ones that do understand why their own deity did it. It would seem to me that in that case, whoever is performing the miracle will come eventually with a revelation that will royally piss off the vast majority of faiths, or even worse: Come up with a new one that will seed more chaos on earth.
Miracles are events contrary to the laws of nature. So to extend the analogy, imagine living in a state where the laws didn’t always apply. Some days, it’s OK to murder people. But you’ll never know when. Sure, you’d life both not murdering people and not expecting to be murdered, much as now. But the simple fact that at some point higher authority might decide that the law isn’t the law would have a fairly destabilising effect on society. We can see this in corrupt societies where it is at least possible to predict what class of people might benefit from the law not applying. Imagine if laws were annulled arbitrarily!
Similarly, yes, in miracle-world, I’d still exit my house by the door and not the second-floor window because I wouldn’t want to bet on a miracle happening. But the knowledge that at some unpredictable point the laws of physics could stop working would cause big changes in people’s behaviour, even if most people live their whole lives without being affected by a miracle.
As you say, false miracles would abound, con-artists would thrive, all manner of conspiracy theories would gain a new lease of life - as soon as we abandon the idea that there is a knowable objective reality, everything goes to shit.
Yes, very likely. In a world where miracles actually occur, religion is going to be a much bigger deal than science. Theology - the understanding of the god or gods who can affect our world so much - would become the most important human intellectual endeavour, quite possibly receiving similar levels of government funding as e.g. nuclear physics once did. In fact, theocracy may very well be on the cards.
In that case, there will be more conflicting religions controlling nuclear weapons. Some now then with a bigger reason now to go in the fastest way possible to kingdom come.
Quite possibly. And in general excesses of faith similar to those seen in pre-scientific history - religious mania, cults, self-destruction, crusades/jihads/pogroms. If you know you need to propitiate a higher power but don’t know what it wants, you’re going to be open to a lot of suggestions from people who say they do know.
Are they totally invalid the same way every time, or is it unpredictable? Are other effects of the gravity reversal consistent, or is there a difference in how it works from instance to instance?
Exactly. People who tout miracles aren’t claiming that all laws of nature can now be thrown out of the window, on the contrary, they’re claiming that because the laws applied and still apply, that’s what makes the miracle notable. The claim about the person who jumped 30+ feet onto concrete yet suffered zero harm is notable because it’s not normal for people to be able to do that; virtually everyone who falls from that height onto that hard a surface suffers some form of injury - and that is still the default expectation going forward in the future. They are not saying that because Alice did so unscathed, Kevin can imitate her as well; if Kevin does, he’ll get himself some smashed vertebrae, maybe die.
But then that might lead to the more esoteric scientific discussion of just how ironclad a law of science has to be to be a “law.” If a “law” holds true 99.999999999% of the time, but then 0.000000001% of the time there is a proven incident that defies it, would scientists still call it a “law?” (or would they take the droll Pirates of the Caribbean approach and say “They’re more like guidelines?”)
There’s no such thing as a “law” that holds true 99.99999999 percent of the time. It is either true, or not. If it is not true, you might be able to come up with an alternative law that does hold true 100% of the time.
For example, “an object at rest stays at rest” isn’t a law because sometimes objects at rest start moving. But if you say “an object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by an outside force” you have a true statement that accounts for the exceptions that falsify the first statement.
But under the assumption of miracles, it’s not enough to add “unless acted upon by an outside force”. What miracles bring to the table is: “An object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by an outside force except sometimes this isn’t true and you’ll never know why.”
Most people claiming miracles would say, I think, that the “outside force” is God; and many of them would say they knew at least part of the reasons why.
I expect, however, as I think I said earlier in this fairly long thread, that even if a miracle had indisputably occured, there would be disagreement both about which God and about what reasons, if any, that particular God had for choosing to enact that particular miracle; as well as disagreement as to whether the “outside force” had indeed been any God, as opposed to, say, either aliens or a glitch in a simulation.
You need to understand, the situation you’ve described is already an epistemic reality. Regardless of whether actual miracles have ever happened, there are events that science has yet to explain adequately. Certain people are convinced it’s the hand of god (and only their god), and it gives them moral license to discredit other religions and mistreat other people. Meanwhile skeptics are going to say “I reserve judgment pending further scientific inquiry.”
This has been the status quo for centuries, and it would not change even for
an “incontrovertible” miracle.
In order for it to really change anything, simply healing a compound fracture in a couple of hours isn’t going to cut it, there would need to be some revealed truths that help to answer some intractable metaphysical questions.
They likely would but:
“The outside force is God” is a category error. In this context, “outside force” specifically refers to a measurable physical cause and God is none of those things.
Whatever reasons they gave for “why” would be generalist and self-fulfilling but would break down on specifics e.g. why this person got her prayers of healing answered but this person didn’t. Answers would be circular “the first person had true faith” or boil down to “God moves in mysterious ways”.
All of which means that even believers would be unable to formulate natural laws that accounted for miracles.
Undoubtedly. But to my mind the argument over who was responsible for shattering our illusions about the existence of a consistent and knowable universe would only be one aspect of a bigger convulsion: the coming to terms with the idea that the universe was not consistent or knowable.
. That was the laugh I needed today.