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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