I think its important to recognise that the word miracle is pretty loaded. Personally, I’ve observed every moment that exists as its own miracle, at least when I’m feeling alive and awake and positive enough to recognise it as such.
Science doesn’t really go in for miracles, but it tends to avoid making claims about them. Or rather, it explains the ones it can, and tries to work out how the others worked. It then argues, theorises, verifies and overturns as necessary. Science isn’t a statement of reality, its a process by which best guesses are forumlated and tested.
The Big Bang, or at least some kind of explosion, projecting everything outwards, is the best fit for the currently favoured model of the universe. Everything is moving outwards, which implies everything used to be in one place. Evidence for this exists in radiation born at that start. To the best of our understanding, that is what the world around us tells us.
Yes, it’s a theory, and yes, it only goes up to a certain point. There’s a threshold where the ruleset stops making sense. It’s proposed that before that point some weird shit happened, the rules of physics didn’t apply, an infinite amount of everything was in an infinitely small space, something happened that stopped that being a stable state, and caused a big bang.
It doesn’t make sense to science yet, but the examination of the evidence will keep on nibbling outwards.
It’s complicated, because we’re talking about our present assumptions not adding up. And you can only extrapolate into the past like that assuming that assumptions are steady.
So we can’t go all the way back. Science doesn’t ask for a miracle though, it just asks ‘what happened?’ Then it goes hunting for evidence. People start making guesses, and because everyone’s curious, the guesses get published.
The thing is, there’s always going to be a limit to what science can explain. Not only that, but there’s the potential for everything currently known to be overthrown overnight. That’s actually the best thing about science. As soon as something doesn’t fit the model, the model has to be changed. All the evidence has to fit in.
But there will always be holes.
If you choose to believe in God, then science leaves plenty of very convenient spaces for you to find him in. The big bang/first cause, is just one of these. Then people call a theoretical particle a ‘God particle’, as if that will explain everything.
Belief is simpler than that. There is enough wonder to go around. Some people explain it, others marvel. Some people use their minds to take it apart and see how it works. Others just rely on it working.
Science throws up weirdness, it uncovers it, and looks at it. It tries not to call it miracles, because that’s loaded.
It doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
It just means some of them make sense.
Which I think is the more wonderful wonder, by far.
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Illustration by Helen
I’ve been sent a link, and some background to this question here.
