Matthew,
First of all I would like to thank you for this really inspiring post. You raise far reaching questions and address fittingly weak points in my formulations.
In the following I start giving answers that will be completed with successive posts taking account of your possible replies.
My statement
“I have to understand today Jesus’ teaching in these verses exactly the same way as I would have understood if I were listening to Jesus 2000 years ago.”
refers to Matthew 5:27-30, it is not meant to be a universal statement:
Mervin referred to Matthew 5:27-30 to justify that “we today can understand Jesus words about the Flood in in Matthew 24; 25: 31-46, and Luke 17: 20-37 as Hyperbole”.
To this I objected that from the content of Matthew 5:27-30 it is clear that “I have to understand these verses today as I would have understood them if I were listening Jesus 2000 years ago.”
Accordingly Mervin’s reference to Matthew 5:27-30 would imply that I have to understand Matthew 24; 25: 31-46, and Luke 17: 20-37 today as I would have understood them if I were listening Jesus 2000 years ago”, and this means to consider the Flood is real history.
This is for me the most important point in your post: Apparently you do not reject my interpretation of the Flood as a miracle, but simply highlight that the likelihood of such a “miracle” would be mindbogglingly small.
Your idea to link the Jim Carrey YouTube is brilliant! This video perfectly reflects my thinking about what a miracle is:
All possible events happening in the world are contained in God’s mind. These events are of two types: ordinary phenomena and extraordinary ones.
Ordinarily God shapes the physical reality according to regularities we can grasp with mathematical equations. This is the reason why we can calculate the world, predict it and develop technologies. So for instance if I enter your mobile-number in my smartphone yours will ring, no matter whether I am righteous or sinner, accompany my calling with a prayer or not.
Nonetheless God can also bring about extraordinary events or “miracles”, which cannot be grasped or predicted by any mathematical equation. How probable such events are, only God can tell; the probability may be tiny little (even much less than “one in a million”) but not zero: “there’s a chance”. “Miracles” do not transgress any “inexorable and immutable law of nature” because there is no such a “law”. However, “miracles” are beyond our operational capabilities: I cannot resurrect a dead or let the sun dance at 2 pm by corporal operations like those I use to phone you; quantum physics does not support developing “miracles technologies” for the market (as supporters of esoteric and paranormal phenomena seem to dream). By contrast God can let such events happen in the follow of our prayers, as plenty of religious traditions all over the world attest.
This seems to me an excellent point. If I understand well you claim:
Today I (Antoine) am interpreting Pentecost in terms of a “quantum Multiverse”, whereas if I had been present at the event 2000 years ago I would not claim I was watching something demonstrating “the Multiverse”.
I obviously agree. Your objection shows the necessity of explaining better what I mean by “Multiverse” in this context:
Quantum physics, as any experimental science, is based on observations (experimental evidence). But observations require observers. For the science we know and do the observers are we, human experimenters. So “we find ourselves unavoidably playing a role at the deepest level of the structure of physical reality” (in David Deutsch’s wording): There is no physical reality without free human choices. The physical reality is defined with relation to the observers.
In Pentecost there was Peter speaking supposedly Aramaic and different groups of observers listen him speaking their own languages. This means: for each linguistic group applied partially different “physical principles” and in this sense one can say that these different groups of “observers” formed a cluster of parallel worlds, a Multiverse. At the end of the miracle these worlds merged together again into one world where Cretans, Arabs, Egyptians, and the other groups heard Peter speaking Aramaic without understanding him. The only remains of the miracle are the reports of many eyewitnesses, as recorded in Acts 2: 7-12.
The “Miracle of the Sun” in Fatima on October 13th, 1917 can be compared to Pentecost: The “speech” of God (the appearing Sun) was understood in two different ways by two different groups of observers. For 70,000 gathered at Cova da Iria God “spoke” in an extraordinary amazing way they had never “heard” before. For 2 billion people around the world outside Fatima God “spoke” as usual. At the end the two parallel worlds merged together and the only sign of the miracle are the reports of the eyewitnesses.
A similar explanation in terms of two parallel worlds can be applied to Noah’s Flood, as stated in previous posts.
I am elaborating answers to other thought-provoking points you have raised and hope posting them soon. For today I would like to conclude with this final remark:
The exciting discussion we are sharing here shows that one should not reject “miracle” as an explanation for Noah’s Flood before serious study. A clear advantage of the option “miracle” is that it refers to a real historic event. One should not forget that skeptics of all times have tried to downgrade “miracles” by explaining them through “hyperbole” of usual events; for instance at Pentecost some witnesses said scoffing, “they have had too much new wine” (Acts 2: 13). So the option “hyperbole” as explanation for the Flood can be tricky, especially if one considers that the magnitude of the documented floods in Ancient Near East is in no way proportionate to the superb “hyperbole” Genesis 6-9 displays. Thereby one risks downgrading Jesus’ and Peter’s prophecies about the End Times and the Final Judgement to “hyperbole” as well and in the end say: “They had had too much new wine”.