"By 'miracle' I mean a supernatural intervention in the natural order to cause things to happen that would not happen naturally. I argue belief in miracles in this sense tend to make it impossible to investigate nature: how do we distinguish natural events from supernatural interventions without assuming that we already know the course of nature? From a scientific viewpoint unexplained phenomena are just that - unexplained. If we suppose that they are explained by miraculous intervention, we are less likely to look for natural causes where we do not now find them, but the process of looking for undiscovered causes is helpful to scientific and medical progress."
Paul Gomberg
"Section II: Uncertainty and Scrutiny in Science - Introduction"
What Should I Believe: Philosophical Essays for Critical Thinking
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