Magnificent!
This is the kind of statement I was waiting for.
My main premise is the following:
If we believe in the teaching of Jesus Christ, St. Peter, and the letter to the Hebrews, we have to believe in the historicity of the Flood in Genesis 6-9.
In other words, if we give up the historicity of the Flood, we will end giving up the credibility of the New Testament.
So, my line of reasoning is as follows:
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If an event of the magnitude of the Flood described in Genesis 6-9 had happened in the ordinary space-time, there would today have observable vestiges in the space-time evidencing it, similarly as the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation demonstrates the Big-Bang.
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As a matter of fact, there is no available evidence demonstrating a catastrophic event like the Genesis’ Flood.
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Consequently, either the Flood was not a real historic event at all, or it was real and historic in a different way as ordinary events are, that is, it was an extraordinary physical event outside the ordinary space-time, a miracle.
Now regarding miracles, you state:
So “my attempt to equate the Genesis’ Flood with part of the spiritual aspect of reality” is nothing “strange”: I am merely using your words!
In fact, I mean:
The Flood is miraculous event, belonging to an extraordinary physical reality. You could also say the Flood is in “a part of the superposition” we cannot access by direct observation. We know about the event only because the author of Genesis was assisted by divine inspiration to write what he wrote also on the basis of reports going back to those who were involved (Noah and his family), and likely because of a universal revelation of God to other non-Hebrew peoples on earth.
I explain a bit more. You state:
Superb statements!
Here my counterpart:
There is only one ordinary physical reality (the algorithmic reality) and there is the extraordinary non-algorithmic physical reality (your “spiritual reality”) which can be different depending on the observers.
In my interpretation superposition encompasses observers and thus you can get that an observer is ordinarily in the measurable part of the superposition, but can extraordinarily be in the non-measurable one. While we are in the measurable part of superposition all observers we can talk to agree completely on what we observe as the results of measurements. But suppose we are witnesses of a miracle and dwell for a time in the non-measurable part of superposition. When we come back to the ordinary world we will tell the others around us what we have seen. Since before the miracle we did not hallucinate and after the miracle we agree completely on what the other observers around us see, we may be considered trustworthy and the others may believe what we tell them.
As you very well state:
In whichever way you look at it, by this claim you are referring to a “physical reality” that is inaccessible in principle to our measuring devices. Such a “reality” is what I call an “extraordinary reality” outside our ordinary space-time.
Absolutely! It is the collapse in the measuring device what defines the ordinary physical reality. Quantum superposition clearly highlights the possibility of superposition of observers, and thereby the possibility that a same physical event is differently perceived by different observers (my “extraordinary physical reality”). But this possibility is excluded from the ordinary macroscopic world we live in because the collapse hinders quantum superposition to happen in it.
No problem!
I apologize if my post looked as if “I were playing some weird game”. It was not my intention at all.
My “black and white” treatment of the subject comes rather from the desire to get an interpretation of the Flood that is consistent with what we are taught about by the New Testament.
I am getting more and more the impression we are stating the same but using different words. I am sure that with a bit patience we will understand each other well and come to interesting results!