Why not both? Have you no faith?

Lol at the poll results ratio. ?

A miracle suggests something out of nowhere will save us all and we know that just isnt the case in scenario after scenario happening right here and now in this point in history. We know our world has faced extinction level events before and logic as well as statistics back up the hypothesis it will happen yet again. We can save ourselves if we are willing to do what it takes to spread our species out in the Universe. We have the ability to install a base on first Luna and then Mars where we can make the bases into working experiments in and of themselves. Using what we learn to improve the facilities and maybe even turn them into full blown cities, hopefully self sustaining in the future. Then if Earth does get his with an extinction level event there willl be some of us out of harms way that can maybe return someday and rebuild. All of this takes planning, hard work and dedication, things a miracle does not require.

All things come to an end

At the moment humanity is racing to cataclysm, there is still hope that we can advert at least some of the potential fates but this will require effort and a change in how we think, not miracles. As for the ultimate fate of the Earth it will be destroyed by the expanding dying sun in billions of years

Miracle ?,,,,,if mankind hasn't the brains, good sense enough to recognize and attack the issues before they eat us up, then oh well ? What can be done ?

No Vote.

We are breeding and taking resources at an unbelievable rate in fact infinitely but the earth's resources are not infinite.

I think a third option os "scientific breakthrough" woudl at leasst have given the optimists on this site a second choice.

Well given that miracles don't happen, a cataclysm is more likely. However, there are many other possibilities to consider, including some form of business as usual.

Society is a complex system, and complex systems tend to be remarkably resilient and self-healing. They will take a lickin' and keep on tickin' -- until, of course, they don't. One must always be careful of tipping-points.

Right now for example the most likely outcome of the missiles we're raining down on Syria is the death of some civilians we make a pretense of caring about but don't really ... but it's possible that Russia could make good on its threat to shoot at the shooters which could plausibly end up in nuclear conflict.

The other likely outcome of this attack on Syria is that it will serve as a distraction from some form of Saturday Night Massacre in the justice department, which has already been narrowly averted twice -- last summer, and this past December. This would precipitate a constitutional crisis, the most likely outcome of which is enough Republicans finally turning on Trump to further corner and marginalize him, which will further enrage him. At any point along the way to Trump's irrelevance and/or removal from office, he and his allies could destroy anything from themselves, to what's left of the GOP, to the entire country as we know it, to, in extremis, the entire fucking planet.

So ... unless someone can show me where a miracle will make its first appearance in the history of mankind, I think either we will continue our slow slide to irrelevance as a force for good in the world, or have some form of calamity as icing on that particular cake.

Unless an asteroid or comet hit the earth in the next few years none of us alive today will live long enough to see what happns. The weather might get a little worse and the sea level might come up a few more inches but that is all we are going to live long enough to see.

Neither. We won't be around when and if something happens.