There are certain interesting characteristics of the phenomenon of the imaginary conspirative world, whether it has to do with ghosts and souls, or with aliens and flying saucers: Its rules and its habitants change slightly according to the belief and the cultural background of the addict. The rules by which that world functions, shall always complement each other, like pieces of a puzzle brought together in our mind. They will be somehow related to our basic fears. In any case, they will always be on the edge of clarity. The nature of such cosmic conspiracy is being incomplete and suffering missing pieces of data, in order to continue teasing the imagination. The so-called “proofs” integrated in it, will be, like the sayings of the famous oracle from Delphi, subject to interpretations both ways. Those who promote the conspiracy will always seek (and find) other people with certain scientific background, whose name is involved in believing similar things.

Our love of conspiracies and intrigues generates and nurtures them out of purely natural events: President Kennedy’s murder, the landing on the moon, Prime Minister Rabin’s assassination, the events of September 11. It’s very likely that some of our ancient mythologies were formed this way.

The connection to religion is pretty obvious. Some of these ancient myths found their way into our most popular books. The system itself teaches their stories. We’re thrilled by the mystical promise embedded in them. We swear on their printed version in the court of law.

In 1970, a somewhat strange story hit the media. Headlines told about a complex computer program used by NASA, to calculate planetary and lunar positions in the future and in the past. It appeared that the program was stuck at some point of the calculation – a problem that was interpreted by some as if a day was missing somewhere in the processing. Then (sparing you the gory details), a consultant named Harold Hill suggested that the missing day represented the time when Joshua made the Sun stand still (Joshua, chapter 10, verses 12-14). Some quick calculation done by the scientists indeed proved that the missing time matched the estimated delay of the Sun, as told by the Biblical story of Joshua!

This could have been a very exciting story, except for the minor issue that it never took place in real life. Still the tale became widespread, and even Mr. Hill himself – a real person – had an interesting time denying the world yet another myth.

It’s easy to believe when someone tells you what you want to hear. Carl Sagan wrote a lot about it in his wonderful book The Demon-Haunted World, where he made the distinction between science and pseudoscience.

We do not live in a dull world. There are plenty of interesting and exciting things to learn about it: From sub-atomic particles to pulsars and quasars, from chromosomes and genes to nerve cells and brains, from prime numbers to differential equations. It’s also quite all right to invent legends and tell myths – as long as we treat them as such.

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“The difference between physics and metaphysics is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory.” – Robert W. Wood

On a scale of 1 to 10 – how high do you rank the possibility that vampires are real?

If you answered anything higher than 1, it means you still give the old vampire myth a chance. Rationally, of-course, there’s no real chance for any talking creature to survive hundreds of years by drinking blood, and certainly no real vampire has ever been interviewed. Yet, knowing all that (hopefully), you still gave it a chance.

Why so? Is there something scientific in the old myth (some parts of which are actually not that old)? Not really, but still it’s much more exciting to believe in vampires than to resist this widespread story. This myth, like many others, has its own roots and origins, and has evolved during the years.

Not only it is more exciting for you, it’s also more exciting for others. This means that books and movies about vampires will sell much better than books and movies about carpentry during the French Revolution. Even better than books and movies and TV shows about the real history of the vampire myth. We actually grow up with virtual vampires around us.

We love the adrenalin. We adore watching scary movies. We prefer the mystical solution to the simple one. In many instances when there is a simple solution, we tend to reject it because it’s too boring. We seek supernatural reasons, and invent ones in our minds when it means more adrenalin. We’re addicted to believing in myths and legends.

So let’s try a short weaning process. Find a place where no one can hear you. Now repeat loudly after me:

There are no real vampires, nor were there ever any. This is a myth, largely based on ancient tales and false interpretations of old diseases, as well as some more recent books and films. Count Dracula is no different than any other imaginary hero, including Frodo the Hobbit, and Pinocchio.

The story of Frankenstein is a nice legend. There’s no way one can put life into a body that’s been dead for quite a while. There are no functioning organs to support life in a dead body.

There are no werewolves. People cannot turn into wolves nor can they turn into sheep, turkeys or cockroaches.

The continent of Atlantis never existed. Its story is based on old writings by the Greek philosopher Plato, which is probably based on even older stories about some disaster – maybe the volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Santorini (Thera).

Airplanes flying over the Bermuda Triangle and ships sailing through do not just disappear or move to some other dimension. Accidents, unfortunately, happen (and will happen) everywhere, including the area of the Bermuda Triangle.

There are no witches, and since there aren’t any – they also don’t fly on brooms, vacuum cleaners, or any other appliances.

There aren’t any moth men that predict the future. The closest thing to that legend may be ugly men who predict the past.

No flying saucers suck electricity from power lines. Companies sell the stuff that’s running in power lines, and would yell like hell if it was stolen from them.

Okay, by now you deserve a break. You probably get the picture and can keep practicing this method with the rest of your favorite demons, magicians, mummies, and Freddy Krugers.

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This method is most popular among Jewish players of the game, some of whom have turned it into a real art. Rabbi Zamir Cohen, for instance, has produced a booklet named Bible and Science, where he masters this game and allegedly exposes certain mysterious knowledge found in the Bible and in the Jewish Talmud.

In general, these so-called findings are nothing more than simple manipulations of old contents, combined with lack of knowledge and aimed at the young and the bewildered. Want an example? Sure you do!

The tractate of ‘Rosh Hashanah’ (in the Talmud) tells us of Rabban Gamliel, who is explaining to the other sages about the synodic month – the time between two consecutive conjunctions of the Moon and the Sun. In other words: The exact length of the Jewish (and also the Muslim) traditional month. Apparently Rabban Gamliel is quoted as specifying this period of time with precision that is equivalent to five decimal digits after the decimal point (i.e., 29.53059 days). Does it mean we should all start eating kosher and keeping the Sabbath?

An old Russian joke tells about a peasant named Ivan from the region of Smolensk. According to the news he won a prize for producing the largest amount of wheat during the last year. A commission of inquiry was established and found out that his real name was not Ivan, but rather it was Vladimir. He did not live in Smolensk, but in Moscow. It wasn’t wheat what he was growing, but rather it was corn, and the prize was for actually producing the smallest amount of it.

In our case, the story is similar. Research of the text and other related passages in ancient Jewish literature, demonstrates that some of Rabban Gamliel’s words were put there at a later time, and were probably associated with his name retroactively. Rabban Gamliel is himself quoted as saying some contradicting things later. Moreover, this amount of precision is nothing to be proud of, since it is the result of a simple calculation, which was known to the ancient Greeks as well as to the Babylonians. Similar results were found, in fact, in archaeological excavations such as those associated with the ancient astronomer Nabu-Rimanni, and dated more than half a millennium before Rabban Gamliel’s time.

Part of “The sages knew it all” game indeed tends to retroactively associate later masterpieces with earlier alleged authors. For example, we are used to link The Zohar book (that deals with the Jewish Kabbalah) with the name of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, from the Roman times, while in practice it was published in the 13th century in Spain, by a Jewish author named Moses De Leon.

(iv) Prophecy – a good example is the ‘She’ar Yashuv’ case mentioned above. There have been many similar attempts by followers of various religions to find clues in the Biblical text for their being on the right side. Muslim preachers, for example, may quote various uses of words similar to ‘Muhammad’, ignoring the fact that they simply mean “precious things” in Hebrew. Of-course, enthusiastic Christians find traces of Jesus there. Certain fragments of text from the book of Psalms were associated with names of Zionist leaders from the middle of the 20th century. The list of ridiculous manipulations does not seem to end.

Give yourself a task: Try and search for some current event of your choice in the text of the Bible. Given enough time and resources, you’ll be sure to find something. Some ancient clues (in the right state of mind) can easily be interpreted to predict your chosen event. Cute game!

A few additional remarks are worth mentioning:

First (and not very surprisingly), none of this funny hocus-pocus stuff has ever been used to actually predict the future. It has always been used to explain past events. As the famous saying of Niels Bohr (also quoted in the above mentioned Michael Shermer’s article): “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”

Second, the only real prophet we know about is the scientific approach. It can predict vast amount of things: Future weather, volcanic eruptions, the sex of an unborn child, the next lunar eclipse, and the odds of a sick person healing. None of our past mystical prophets ever came close to such ability.

Finally, even if we prove with high probability (which we didn’t) that some person in the 2nd century came to possess certain specific knowledge of our universe – why should we start praying to God or Jesus? Does this imply there’s a god who constantly keeps an eye on the deeds of our specific species on our specific planet?

It appears that once we really want to believe in something, nothing will stop us, including the truth.

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“Fools never die, they are merely replaced by others.” – Unknown

In February 1997, the Israeli Air Force suffered its worst disaster ever. Two transport helicopters carrying troops collided in mid-air over the village of She’ar Yashuv in northern Galilee, resulting in the death of 73 soldiers. The small country mourned, and a commission of inquiry was established to determine the cause of the disaster.

During the days that followed the disaster, several religious radio stations quoted Isaiah, chapter 7, verses 3-4:

“Then said the Lord unto Isaiah: ‘Go forth now to meet Ahaz, thou, and Shear-jashub thy son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, in the highway of the fullers’ field; and say unto him: Keep calm, and be quiet; fear not, neither let thy heart be faint, because of these two tails of smoking firebrands …”

The phrase ‘Shear-jashub’ (pronounced She’ar Yashuv) is mentioned several times in the book of Isaiah – sometimes as the name of Isaiah’s son. In fact, the northern Israeli village was named after this reference. Still, it was easy for some to make the association between the name ‘She’ar Yashuv’, the two burnt helicopters, the phrase ‘two tails of smoking firebrands’ and the fact that Isaiah is considered a prophet.

Six years later, in February 2003, the world watched in horror as the space shuttle Columbia broke into burning pieces high in the sky. During the week after, the righteous were busy again rummaging the Bible for clues. It eventually came out in the shape of some other claptrap called Bible code sometimes also referred to as letter skips. It appears that if you take the current Hebrew version of the Bible, start somewhere in the middle of the 7th verse of Genesis (that talks about the sky), and skip 1822 letters at a time, you reveal the phrase ‘Death to Columbia’. Of-course, the discovery is made with computers, courtesy of simple software that you can write at home over night.

In this game of hocus-pocus there are typically two sides – the instructor and the audience. They share the enthusiasm of finding mystical clues in allegedly God-given texts. They typically also share the lack of basic knowledge in statistics, or at least have the will to ignore it.

The game is most effective when the instructor possesses good presentation skills, and the student is a teenager at the age of “asking yourself questions” about important stuff, such as life in general and the world around us. The game is even more effective when there is a large and efficient organization or system backing up and supporting the instructor, perhaps even with some public funding. The background and environment of the students have strong relation to the expected outcome of the game. In a Jewish environment, the student may become an Orthodox Jewish believer. In a Christian atmosphere, he or she may eventually become a good Christian. In an Islamic environment, the game has been known to produce faithful Muslims.

The game itself has various flavors. They may be used separately or together. Let’s examine some of the most common approaches to this mind-blunting game:

(i) Bible Code (also known as Letter Skips or ‘Dilugim’ in Hebrew) – in this version of the game, we use a trick similar to the one explained above with the Columbia disaster. We scan the Biblical text and locate combinations of letters (that have a fixed distance from one another) which make some sense. Then (this is the tricky part) we tune our mind to believe that it cannot be a coincidence. It must be some secret message coded into the text by the Almighty – how else did it get there?

In practice, fooling around with the text enough time – with any sufficiently long text – will yield almost any desired result. You can probably locate your own name (if it’s not too long or complicated) as well as obvious hints to most famous disasters in human history. Just ask Michael Drosnin, the author of The Bible Code. If you proceed to read the Skeptic column of the Scientific American, June 2003 issue – you’ll find an outstanding article named Codified Claptrap by Michael Shermer. There you can discover in other masterpieces, such as Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, some interesting messages coded using this method. You can also read about the discovery of messages denying the method of the Bible Code, found in the book Bible Code II itself.

By the way, if you continue with the Columbia trick above and count two additional letters, you’ll get ‘No death to Columbia’. It’s also interesting to note that opposing religious trends have been known to find conflicting messages in the Bible. Jesus seems to be a major star of this scheme, for example, unless of-course you’re an Orthodox Jew. The other interesting thing to note is that the Biblical text itself – according to recent research – has changed quite a lot, especially (but not only) during the first millennium BC.

(ii) Numerology and Gimatria – these are other tricks to fool around with letters and numbers. Gimatria is a Hebrew version of numerology, where each letter is assigned a numeric value, based on the decimal method of counting.

The trick here is to sum up the values of all the letters in a certain word, name or phrase. Then to sum up the values of some other word, name or phrase. If by some coincidence the result is the same, it means, of-course, that God meant it to be that way. So – there must be some relationship between the two.

Example: During the first Gulf War in 1991, some wise guy found that Saddam Hussein is equal to Amalek in Gimatria. ‘Amalek’ is the ancient enemy nation that was allegedly defeated by the ancient Israelites with some help from God (see Exodus, chapter 17). Apparently, this brilliant finding did not help at the time with the total defeat of Saddam Hussein. It also did not help to defeat the use of this funny method by Israeli spiritual leaders, such as Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who discovered that Evil Haman (book of Esther) is equal to Yosef Sarid (a left-wing Israeli parliament member, hated by ultra-Orthodox Jews). Ovadia Yosef himself, by the way, is equal to Talks of Nonsense, using this same trick.

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Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did not escape the ancient deadly curse. Before implementing the Gaza Disengagement Plan in 2005, a group of religious activists were shown on Israeli TV, cursing him in what seemed to be a scene taken from ‘Charmed’ (you know, these three sister witches that practice magic and powerful spells while your kids are having lunch). Certain Kabbalah experts explained that either Mr. Sharon or the people involved in the act should have died within a month. In practice, the only thing that died within a month was the media’s treatment of this story. Major General Amir Drori, former head of the Israel Antiquities Authority, also enjoyed similar curses in his past. Certain Orthodox religious Jews hate archaeology, so it seems. Major General Drori died many years later (in the beginning of 2005) of old age. With or without ancient curses, we all die eventually!

And now for something completely different…

One of Monty Python’s most amusing scenes ever is the stoning scene from ‘Life of Brian’, where the old man is jumping up and down, waiting to be stoned, shouting “Jehova Jehova Jehova!” and then one of the stoners says “He said it again! He said Jehova!” and gets stoned himself.

And it’s all based on the traditional text of the third commandment (many consider it as the second commandment): “Thou shalt not take the name of the lord thy God in vain” (Exodus, chapter 20, verse 7). Modern study of the Bible talks about several different origins of its ancient text. Two of them are given the names ‘J’ and ‘E’ by the researchers, for using the names ‘Jehova’ and ‘Elohim’ appropriately as the name of ‘God’.

Historically, the old names are derived from even older names. ‘El’ used to be the chief god of the ancient Canaanite pantheon. The archaeological findings of Ugarit from around the 13th century BC contain lots of interesting data about El and his sons. Interestingly enough, some of these texts somehow found their way later into the book of Psalms. Elohim and Allah are considered to evolve from El. The name of the local god, Yahweh, has been archaeologically revealed in conjunction with the goddess Asherah, and the ancient Hebrews also adopted his name. It appears in the Bible, courtesy of the old ‘J’ source, spelled as Yehova.

Reading the last three paragraphs out loud would typically send an Orthodox religious Jew on a collision course with his or her friends and neighbors. We’re not talking about the era covered by ‘Life of Brian’. We’re talking about today, you know – flying rockets to the Moon and all that.

The various names of God are not only problematic to speak and write, but also to erase. In case you missed, there was a recent debate about the usage of God’s names in electronic documents. Rest assured, they’re okay to erase because the electronic text is made of pixels. Things that make you go hmmm.

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“All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

People who travel the old Jewish quarter of Prague (the capital of the Czech Republic) may be surprised to see shops with many little souvenirs in the shape of a strange and chubby human-like creature. The creature’s name is The Golem.

A well-known Jewish legend talks about Rabbi Yehuda Loew (also known as The Maharal), who lived in Prague in the 16th century. According to the legend, Rabbi Loew created the Golem from clay. Then he used some secret spells to put life into the body of the creature that became a servant of the community. Some versions of the legend talk about how the Golem later became a frightening figure for the people of Prague, and had to be shut down by its creator.

As for the spells used to convert our Golem into the world of the living, there are also several versions of the story. Some of them talk about quoting phrases or words from Jewish mythology, while others mention using the explicit name of God, whatever that may be. We’ll come back to this amazing issue soon.

The alleged power of the spoken or written word is probably as old as language itself. Mysterious texts designed to help or hurt may be found all over: In witchcraft stories, in Christian exorcism tradition and in Jewish Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), in Voodoo spells and in ancient Egyptian curses and blessings on the Pharaohs’ tombs.

Traces of this ancient perception are found aplenty within old scripts, such as the Bible itself. Jacob fights his brother, Esau, for getting the blessing of Isaac. God changes Balaam’s intention of cursing the people of Israel, into blessing them. Job’s wife advises him to curse God and die (blaspheme!).

If someone asked you to murmur certain unclear words and phrases in public, you would probably make sure to let that individual know what you think about his or her request. Yet, millions of people do exactly this on a daily basis, which seems perfectly okay as long as it carries the title “Prayer”. Praying – especially the parts that we understand – serves more than one purpose: While in trouble, we often express our deep desire for help, whether silently in our heart, or by actually speaking it. There’s nothing wrong with that. This is how we’re naturally programmed to behave in extreme situations (good ones as well). Ritual praying is also often used to help convincing ourselves of things that cannot be proven otherwise.

However, a great deal of praying – in all major religions – is done without the person engaged in the act really understanding what the hell is being spoken. The majority of Jews don’t know old Aramaic and the majority of Catholics and Eastern Orthodox haven’t got a clue about ancient Latin. Does it bother them to practice praying in these strange antiquated dialects? In a bizarre way, it may even contribute to the feeling of sacredness, the respect of the unknown. In many cases one should wonder if this respect would stay the same, given a better knowledge of the semantics and the history behind the text.

Does God really expect our praise three times a day or is once a week, enough? Does he prefer classical Arabic or ancient Hebrew? If it really doesn’t matter, then why stick precisely to the same old phrases? Is it important to quote the text exactly, or is the meaning of the text more important? According to the Jewish religion, a change of a single letter disqualifies a copy of the Bible from being sacred (though some researches show that much bigger modifications took place over the years).

Some variations of old religious texts followed intriguing paths into today’s known customs. Crying ‘Allahu Akbar’ (Arabic for “Allah is great”) almost became the identifying mark of a suicide bomber. Confused babies all over the world when being baptized hear traditional Christian phrases, and other well-known traditional Jewish phrases accompany the ceremony of painful religious circumcision.

The emotional text of ‘Shma Israel’ (Hebrew for “Listen, Israel”) has followed many Jews to their death, as the very last words spoken. It is also written on millions of Jewish doorposts all over the world. Many Jewish people physically touch it while entering the house, and afterwards kiss their fingers, as if the sacred words guard them. This is in spite of the fact that many of them – especially nowadays – don’t really know what’s written there. It’s even a tradition to replace the mezuzah (the small case containing the sacred words, together with its content), or check the letters for errors, if something goes wrong in the house – some sudden death, for example.

More than twenty people died, most of whom were children, in the Habonim disaster in Israel in 1985, when a train hit a school bus. Religious thinking dictates the necessity of a reason for such a terrible incident. It was Rabbi Itzhak Peretz, later the Israeli Minister of Interior, who infuriated the mourning country by suggesting that the tragedy was the result of certain improper mezuzoth (plural for mezuzah), and thus could have been prevented.

In practice, it appears that the Jewish nation that has kept this mezuzah tradition over the years is the one nation that has suffered the most, even when no letter was changed or missing in the protecting text.

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The real studies discuss several possible sources for this wonderful story (which appears in various versions in the ancient Middle Eastern cultures). Among other things they mention some seasonal floods in ancient Mesopotamia, and recently – the option of this story originating from the formation of the Black Sea, not too many thousands of years ago.

This way or the other, let’s stick literally for a moment to the original Biblical version – a flood annihilating the entire living kingdom, sort of, you know.

“And all the high mountains that were under the whole heaven were covered”, insists the text (Genesis, chapter 7, verse 19). Hmmm… let’s attempt performing a rough calculation: In order to cover Mount Everest (the highest mountain), the sea surface had to rise by about 9 km from its “normal” level.

In the same school we also learned (hopefully) how to calculate the volume of a sphere: We multiply 4/3 by Pi and by the sphere radius raised to the power of 3. This is more or less equivalent to 4.2 times the radius raised to the power of 3. Let’s apply this calculaion to our Biblical flood.

Earth radius is about 6,400 km. The radius in the peak of the flood had to be, of-course, 9 km larger, in order to cover “all the high mountains that were under the whole heaven”. Hence, the volume of the water was roughly the difference between the volumes of the two spheres: 4.2 times (6,409 raised to the power of 3 minus 6,400 raised to the power of 3). A simple pocket calculator will tell us that we’re talking about more than 4.5 billion cubic km of water.

Is it a lot? A little? Let’s see: If we were to bring all that water in a “ball of water”, what would be the volume of that water ball? The equation is simple: 4.2 times what radius raised to the power of 3 would give us such a result? Those of you who graduated school successfully will come up with the result quickly: We need a water ball with a radius bigger than 1,000 km. In other words, a small “water star” nearly the diameter of our moon.

We also need, obviously, to get rid of all this water afterwards.

The rate of our flood is also, how shall we put it, somewhat problematic. 40 days of rain, according to the same story. 9 km of height. What’s the average rate? Did the math? Here is the result: More than 9,000 mm (350 inches) of rain per hour. This is more than double the amount of rain falling on the rainiest places on Earth during a whole year… A meter of rain every 6 minutes, a foot of rain every 2 minutes, everywhere…

Such rain rate, or even rates that are many times smaller, are theoretically impossible, not to mention the calculation which demonstrates that no wooden “ark” would hold under such enormous water pressure. But that’s not all.

Each liter of sea water contains about 35 grams of salt. This is approximately 0.3 pound of salt per each gallon of water. In order not to kill the fish of the sea (which Noah, for obvious reasons, did not put in his ark), one needs to preserve more-or-less the same level of water salinity. Another quick calculation: 4.5 billion cubic km of new water mean roughly 150 million of billions of tons of salt, which are more than 100 million cubic km of salt, in its common shape. This is enough to cover the whole area of the USA with 10 km (6.2 miles) of salt, or to cover the whole area of the State of Israel with unimaginable 5,000 km (3,100 miles) of salt.

We also need, obviously, to get rid of all this salt afterwards. Furthermore, salty sea water would kill all the fresh water fish, from lakes and rivers which would be covered by that flood.

* * *

We can keep on discussing these strange topics, but what’s more important is the following: With a little bit of creativity, every difficult question described above can be answered. Where did the water come from? An asteroid made of ice came in touch with our atmosphere. Where did the water go to afterwards? Lightnings decomposed it into oxygen and hydrogen, which evaporated into space. And so on and so forth – try to compile some similar additional excuses yourself – it’s quite an amusing game.

And when these excuses become too difficult or too ridiculous, we can always summon our Lord to help: God generated a miracle and flattened the mountains, so they would be covered sooner, or created the water from nothing. After all he is almighty… Since the Biblical story categorizes the event as a sort of miracle under God’s supervision, then why bother explaining at all? Actually, why bother researching anything if we assume in advance that the world does not have clear rules and all things can happen at anytime? Who needs science when you can walk on water?

* * *

Or maybe (just like in many other cases) we have here an ancient story blown out of proportions – what do you say?

Along the same lines, people often show their wonder of life on Earth. How come the Sun is exactly at the right distance or the atmosphere is exactly at the proper thickness? Everything is sort of built especially for us, to survive in here – what better proof does one need for the existence of God? Switching to rational thinking, we are simply one lucky planet of 128 (actually many more).

It should be noted that life on Earth, as far as humans and animals are concerned, is far from perfect. Almost each and every living creature completes his or her lifetime with great pain, being served as food to some other creature, whether a lion or a virus. The bottom line is that everything is coincidence, and nothing is “from God”, except in our imagination, which has evolved to think that way by the same coincidence.

Anyway, if you enjoy such examples, then consider the following question: When tossing a coin several times, we sometimes get heads and sometimes get tails. Let’s mark them by ‘H’ and ‘T’. So, which of the following sequences is more likely to occur when a coin is tossed ten times: ‘HHHHHTTTTT’ or ‘HHTHTHTTTH’? Actually, both of them stand exactly the same chance, but our mind is in love with patterns that make some sense to us, and tends to think more irrationally about them. Furthermore, psychological evidence indicates that people have different perspective of their initial thinking about a probability of an event, after it occurs.

Miracles play a major role in various religions and traditions, probably due to the fact that the stories about them tease our mind. As strange as it may sound, the formal declaration of a Catholic saint involves several stages, where in a few of them the candidate has to generate miracles. An example of such miracle may be curing a patient without doctors having a scientific explanation for the cure. Hence, there are probably hundreds of undeclared potential Catholic saints walking among us. Besides, what’s the connection between miracles and believing in God? Suppose you see the cup of coffee on your desk suddenly lifting itself up in the air, singing ‘Hava Nagila’. Should you start praying now on a daily basis? Should you now stick to kosher food? Perhaps a better way to tackle this would be to explore the phenomenon and/or the human mind?

Now, if you think we’re done with miracles, you’re wrong.

We already discussed the wealth of excuses and explanations that are available to bridge the gap between what’s dictated by the religious mode and what’s known by the reality mode. Come to think of it, why should any excuse be made when miracles – whatever they are – are possible?

Let’s take Noah’s ark and the great flood story for example. There have been many miserable attempts to scientifically (or pseudo scientifically) explain the Biblical story. It does require some explanation: There is not enough water on our planet to cover all the land. Where did all the water come from? Where did it go after? Still, since the Biblical story categorizes the event as a sort of miracle under God’s supervision, then why bother explaining at all? Actually, why bother researching anything if we assume in advance that the world does not have clear rules and all things can happen at anytime? Who needs science when you can walk on water?

Maybe we do bother because we actually have two different definitions for miracle. We’ll call the first one a natural miracle – this is where God supposedly interferes and changes the course of events, however the events themselves remain natural. The second type of miracle’s definition is the super-natural miracle. This is where God appears in a multimedia show, lightning and thunder come out from nowhere, objects appear or disappear, cups of coffee start singing and the rules of physics are seemingly bent.

It seems that somehow we prefer miracles to reside under the natural definition. Perhaps it makes us feel easier with our worldview and consequently, we need to invent all those explanations and excuses. However, let’s try to examine these definitions further.

The definition of the natural miracle lacks something very important: Since the ingredients of the miracle are purely natural, and the course of events does not contradict anything we know, then we humans have no means of checking whether it is a miracle or not by definition. So, there is no point in discussing whether a miracle actually took place. The events, irregular as they may seem, fall within the known statistic distribution, which also includes extremely good events and extremely bad events. If it doesn’t, then it’s not a natural miracle. If someone chooses to proclaim it a miracle, then it’s his or her business. It’s nothing more than assigning a new title to something that exists already, without this title.

The definition of the super-natural miracle, on the other hand, includes some internal contradiction. If something happened, then by the sheer event of happening, it became part of nature. Therefore, the ‘super-natural’ adjective should perhaps be replaced by ‘not yet understood by us’. Science has never pretended to fully understand the universe, for if it did, all scientific research would stop.

Science does, however, recognize the fact that most of the miracles we discussed so far did not take place exactly as described in the Holy Scriptures (what’s holy?) – literally, the world was not created in six days, water never covered the entire Earth – at least not in the era of humans, Moses did not turn water into blood, Jesus did not walk on water, and Muhammad did not travel from Mecca to Jerusalem over night.

And the rest is history.

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“One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor.” – Paul Simon

Did Jesus really walk on water? While you may think it’s a simple yes or no statement, let’s suggest three different alternatives to answer this somewhat strange question:

1. God Almighty – what a question! With the help of the divine intervention, the miracle of Jesus walking on water took place some two thousand years ago.
2. C’mon let’s be sensible here… There is probably some good scientific explanation for all this. Perhaps he was wearing special shoes, or maybe there was something under the water. Did you ever see some of Houdini’s tricks?
3. Let’s compare this to many other developed false rumors: It was probably good propaganda at the time. Most likely, certain people were standing too far away from the scene and, you know, exaggerated a bit.

So – which option do you think it is? Which one would you put your money on? Hey, I saw you smiling back there. If you’re more Jewish oriented, you may translate ‘Jesus’ into ‘Moses’ and “walking on water” into “extracting water from the rock”. If you’re into Islam… well… some other time perhaps. After you grant Salman Rushdie a formal and total pardon.

Actually, in the Jewish case, option 3 has an interesting variant – let’s name it ‘3a’ – which states that the very existence of Moses himself is a myth. You see, the more ancient a Biblical story is, the less historically factual it is. Don’t get me wrong here: Of-course it is possible that a person with a similar name and of some historic importance did once live, however, ancient stories evolve over time, tending to become less accurate and to produce more local variants and versions. Think of Noah’s ark and the Babylonian story of Gilgamesh. Think of the American Indian Hiawatha sent by the great spirit to guide the people. Think of Adam and Eve, and the poor snake.

But let’s get back to miracles.

Robert Green Ingersoll was born in Dresden, New York in 1833, and later became known as one of the greatest anti-religious minds of his time. He protested for freedom of ideas and against the very notion of heresy. When asked to help in the reconstruction of the blown-away Baptist Church in De Leon, Texas, Ingersoll wrote: “If the ‘Lord God of Israel’ wants a Baptist Church at De Leon, let him change the wind, and blow the old one back.”

Following the Columbia space shuttle disaster in February 2003, there were numerous messages spread over the Internet, discussing mystical aspects of the tragedy. One of them contained a picture of an American flag taken somewhere in Arizona, in which the Sun’s rays formed some cross-like image. “For those that prefer to think that God is not watching over us… go ahead and delete this,” said the attached comforting description. Actually, if the ‘Lord God of Israel’ was really watching over us, he could direct his efforts into stopping the space shuttle from breaking apart, rather than playing with flags and photos. In a way, this reminds us of Anne Graham’s observation (Billy Graham’s daughter), following the attacks on September 11: “I believe God is deeply saddened by this…”

The beginning of our new millennium was not happy for a number of us. In some parts of the world, wars and other acts of terror caused many to lose loved ones. Countless others were injured or hurt in a myriad of ways. Nevertheless, people must be optimistic in nature. The phrase ‘miracle’ has been mentioned many times in the context of such tragedies. A bomb exploded and only three people got killed? It’s a miracle that the explosion occurred just before a large group of people intended to arrive at the same place! Many more could have been killed and injured!

Of-course, the poor families of those three people who died probably have a different view of how miraculous the whole situation was. Furthermore, if some almighty super power did interfere and prevent the blast from happening at a worse time, it (he / she / whatever) did a lousy job. To begin with, it could have stopped the bomb from detonating in the first place. For an even better so-called miracle, it could have stopped the people who carried the bomb from getting to that location altogether. Not to mention some more spectacular miracles that I’m sure you can think of on your own.

Miracles are often associated with tragedies not necessarily caused by man. In August 1999, there was a terrible earthquake in Turkey. Many thousands were killed and many more were injured or lost their homes. The media spent extended time transmitting terrible pictures: Ruined buildings, many bodies, and devastated families. From all the stories, one story became pretty famous – the miracle of a young girl who was rescued alive from the remains of a building that collapsed, after being trapped there for several days.

We will not repeat the explanation above, of how ironic it is to characterize this story as a miracle, and how a truer miracle could prevent this earthquake from hurting so many people altogether. Considering the amount of rescue teams and high-tech equipment involved in the rescue efforts, perhaps it should have been titled a bad miracle if nobody was rescued alive at that time.

For a person who survives a tragedy, it is quite reasonable to feel something went too well. In fact, Judaism includes a formal prayer devoted uniquely for such occasions – in Hebrew it is named ‘Birkat Ha-Gomel’ (blessing of thanks), in which the person thanks God for rewarding him good things. Perhaps another prayer should be devised to rebuke God on behalf of those people not surviving the tragedy. Somehow it seems it would be used more often.

Statistics and luck are often mixed in our minds. We prefer to perceive events as luck because it makes us feel special. Many casino games and lotteries take advantage of this. Statistics belong to the mind, to the reality mode. Luck’s place is more in our hearts, where the religious mode is well established. For example, a religious preacher hearing this may reply with, “But in your heart you know it’s true”. That’s a direct address to feelings rather than thought – a thing that usually works, being aligned with both one’s education and desire… Hey, we already talked about that!

It should be noted, however, that the heart discussed above, actually resides in our brain as well. This internal conflict between the modes represents no more than a conflict between different areas of the brain.

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