A New Look into the Fascinating Future of Miracles
(and Murphy’s Law)
The future of miracles looks bleak.
Possibly non-existent.
Since the scientific method was popularized over three centuries ago, we have been consumed with solving life’s mysteries. With that, much of the so-called “miracles” in life no longer seem as miraculous. In fact, our day-to-day lives seem much more prone to curses than miracles!
For instance, we’ve all had days like this:
You wake up and stub your toe on your night stand.
OUCH
While brushing your teeth, you drop your toothbrush on the floor, and, after uttering some colorful language, you bend down to pick it up only to bonk your head on the bathroom counter on your way back up.
As if your morning couldn’t get any worse, you’re sitting on the couch enjoying your cereal when you fumble your spoon watching helplessly as it drops to the floor in slow motion.
You reach down to retrieve the spoon but can’t seem to find it.
You drop to your knees to look under the couch, and to your vexation, the spoon—defying all known laws of physics—has slid all the way to the wall at the back of the couch beyond your reach.
And where the heck is that blasted remote?!
Murphy’s Law (reverse miracles)
Such a series of unfortunate events— in spite of evidence spanning the entirety of our lives disputing the notion— might lead us to believe inanimate objects are conspiring against us and are somehow responding to our continually spiraling thoughts, dogpiling and kicking us while we’re down.
It sounds silly when you say it out loud, doesn’t it? Go ‘head. Say, “I live in the world of Toy Story and lifeless objects are conspiring to ruin my life.” It’s okay. We’ve all believed it.
Luckily, for the downtrodden hoping to find some source to blame or reason behind their misfortune and mystical maladies alike, there is a law…
Murphy’s Law: whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
Whatever-can-go-wrong going wrong breeds mistrust and awe in us. But what about whatever-can-go-right going right?
What about Miracles?
We’ve all heard the stories:
Tales of a mother imbued with sudden superhuman strength lifting a car off her child. Such a story inspired comic artist Jack Kirby to create the Incredible Hulk.
The book “Lone Survivor” describes the impossible yet true survival story of a US SEAL surrounded by the Taliban.
In 1848, Phineas Gage, a railroad foreman, was using a tamping iron to pack explosive powder when the powder detonated. It shot the 43 inch, 13 lb rod through his cheek and out of his skull. Not only did Phineas survive, but he remained conscious and spoke coherently to the doctor.
Phineas Gage circa 1849, credit to Jack and Beverly Wilgus (2009)
On a more relatable note, we’ve seen a seemingly impossible shot in a basketball game; the ball bounces in, defying all odds. We witnessed David take on Goliath with a hockey stick and called it, “Miracle on Ice.”
Each one of us has overcome unbelievable odds ourselves, things we once thought were impossible.
All of these can leave us with an unignorable feeling there is “something greater than us” at work.
But are these incredible events actually miracles: welcome events that are not explicable by natural or scientific laws? Or just plain ol’ math?
Making Heads or Tails of Miracles
While replicating biologist Buffon’s coin-tossing experiment, British mathematician and logician Augustus De Morgan observed a coin landing on tails 15 times in a row on two separate occasions. Now, we would never bet even one dollar on a coin landing tails 15x in a row. In fact, many of us would bet a fortune that it does not do so!
Photo by Jordan Rowland on Unsplash
So, upon witnessing this phenomenon, did De Morgan remark,
“This is a miracle!”
No, of course not.
He said the experiment illustrates a well-confirmed truth, “whatever can happen will happen if we make trials enough.”
- Augustus De Morgan, A Budget of Paradoxes, 1872
In other words, if people shoot a basketball, battle an overpowered foe, or perform a harrowing act enough times, the lower probability results we deem miracles are inevitable.
Whatever can happen will happen: this is an older and truer variation of Murphy’s Law. We might be tempted to call it De Morgan’s Law, but there’s already plenty of those! So we’ll stick to Murphy’s Law but with a small tweak.
The tweak addresses the favorable, unfavorable, and neutral outcomes chance presents.
This variation of Murphy’s law is useful for at least 2 reasons:
- It can help us dispel notions of evil forces working against us and help prepare us for the “unexpected” setbacks we will inevitably experience in life. The fear, anxiety, and pain of losing a job, a break up, or stubbing your toe—while inevitable—can be mitigated by
- expecting those hardships at some point and
- being prepared to the best of our abilities when the time comes
In this light, Murphy’s Law is not an ominous curse we all are victim to but a helpful “heads-up” for things to come.
- Accepting Murphy’s Law demystifies some miracles, and that can open our minds to new kinds of miracles our universe has to offer.
So Do Miracles Exist?
I assure you I am not weaponizing science to make the world more boring.
Einstein said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
With all due respect, Einstein sir, I disagree. Miracles don’t have to exist in this proposed binary.
Regarding the past, present, and future of miracles, I offer a third possibility: a cycle of the miraculous and the mundane, an evolution of miracles so to speak.
I would like to believe miracles still exist!
But if they do, we must discover new ones.
Consider this:
At birth, the ability to walk is quite the mystery. A baby, moreover, might consider things such as walking or even a game of peek-a-boo as quite unexplainable i.e. miracles!
“How in the world does mother keep disappearing and reappearing?” the baby says in not so many words.
The baby hasn’t the cognitive faculties nor the knowledge to consider such things mundane. But one day they will. One day the baby will walk without a second thought and lose all excitement and surprise in peek-a-boo once they grasp object permanence, revealing the trick. But the baby doesn’t lament what it’s lost. They don’t dwell on the fact walking was once miraculous and now is rather mundane and sometimes quite a chore.
By gaining more knowledge of the world and more cognitive and physical capabilities, the baby turned child gains access to many more astounding discoveries and a new set of “miracles.” Like how Santa visits every home in one night, pulling a rabbit out of a hat, or what some call the “miracle of birth.” As the child grows, new things shock and amaze them.
So, too, as we grow up as a species, humanity must no longer consider things even as amazing as walking on the moon or playing an atomic game of peek-a-boo with Schrödinger’s cat as miracles.
We should remain grateful for and marvel at the wonders of our world, but what we consider a miracle should evolve.
The Future of Miracles
It is in miracle’s definition that, once we understand a phenomenon and can predict, wield, or reproduce it, said phenomenon is no longer a miracle.
Miracles don’t have to go away, but they do have to grow alongside us and our technological advances.
For instance, we have harnessed electricity. Although it was once miraculous, today, we’re rarely ever in awe of the lightbulb. We’ve wielded electricity to the point of mundanity in our everyday lives. But the lightbulb has helped create a flashlight that can be shone into the unilluminated future of humanity, lighting the way for new discoveries and miracles to astound us.
As technology—alongside humanity—marches forth, demystifying the universe, I believe it will be accompanied by new mysteries that boggle the mind and give us goosebumps.
Solutions we never knew we had, numbers we never knew existed, phenomena we’ve never had to explain, laws we’ve never broken, limits we’ve never surpassed, worlds we’ve never braved, dimensions we’ve never measured, all of which have the opportunity to birth a new understanding of the miraculous.
I, for one, am excited for the future of miracles.
