Bible code theory

[Skeptic Guy]

"Not to mention that whether anything at all, significant or otherwise, is happening has yet to be proven. But I bet the author glossed over that."

I took out the book to check, and while the author writes from a sympathetic viewpoint--he clearly believes
that the phenomenon exists--he also writes at length on the many criticisms and objections to the research, and states over and over that the question remains open. Satinover is an advocate, of course--otherwise, why would he write the book--but he is also fair and accurate.

"Quantum Theory? Great, I know that. So, where's the math? You mean there isn't any math in this book. That's odd, as all quantum theory work must be backed up by math. Or is he simply using the "Quantum theory is weird, and most people don't understand it well, so I can claim it means whatever I want it to" that most quacks using the term do?"

I mentioned "higher mathematics" in my initial post.

"So, even if it exists, it doesn't exist? Cause if it existed; if, indeed, information was encoded in the bible relating to events yet to happen; then that information would be able to be decoded for us to know it was there. By pure chance, some of it would be decoded before the events being related happened, and that would be prediction. So if it can't predict, then either the information must not be able to be decoded (in which case we wouldn't know about the code), or isn't encoded there in the first place."

As I said, the nature of the phenomenon is more complex than has been presented in the popular press. I can't post an entire chapter here. If you really want to see why the codes prohibit predictions, you're just going to have to read the book. Sorry.

"It's only hard to see for you, as you lack understanding of what a "respected, well-established, and strictly peer-reviewed scientific journal" is. No "bible code" has never been published in such a journal."

Statistical Science, Volume 9, Number 3, August 1994.

"If the Moby Dick demonstrations were faulty, then, please, tell us exactly how they were so. Any faulty experiment can be exposed. It's been published how they ran the experiments, and no person has actually pointed out the flaws, though many people clinging to the false hope of the 'bible code' have claimed it was flawed."

Again, I'll decline to type in an entire chapter here. A number of critical studies and objections are addressed in the book, fairly and in detail.

"The Jury" is not out on this phenomenon. It has been shown to be indistinguishable from random chance."

If you wish to dismiss the research a priori, without examining the evidence, that is your privilege, of course. But don't tell yourself you're being "rational". The word that applies is "prejudiced", as in "pre-judged".

Quantum Theory cannot, in any shape or form, be applied to a "bible code". It applies to really, really, tiny things. That's it. And if you hang out here long enough, you will find that when anyone starts referring to "Quantum Theory" when discussing anything larger than a Quark, they're pretty much full of BS.

And you don't have to quote the entire chapter. Paraphrase. Summarize the author's "theories".

Here's a blisteringly simple test: Just point to a sufficiently detailed prediction before it comes true.

Humans are pattern recognizers. We think we're engaged in logical thouht but much of the time, we're just matching patterns. Our brains like patterns so much that we tend to see then even when they're not there. This has been proven experimentally in all sorts of ways.

So, if the predictions are in there, it should be no problem to find one before it happens. If the predictions can only be found after the fact, though, you'll have to explain how that differs from the natural human desire to see order where none exists.

And Loss Leader beat me to it. The fact is that no bible code has ever predicted anything. Period. It's pattern hunting, plain and simple.

Loss Leader: With all due respect, you aren't listening. The Codes, if they exist, cannot be used for prediction. That is not their significance, if they have any.

KarmicSerenade: the mere presence of encoded words is insignificant. Such can be found in any text whatever. The peculiarity of the Torah Codes (properly so called--I know of no claims for the rest of the Bible) is that they appear to show the presence of RELATED encoded words, at their SHORTEST intervals, appearing in the same PLACE; and that rather long lists of such words, chosen in advance--in the initial experiment, the names of various rabbis and their birth and death dates (IIRC)--seem to repeat this phenomenon at a rate exceeding that predicted by chance, and by a very wide margin. Whether or not the thing is, in fact, a matter of chance is the subject of the scientific debate. Since it's easier to simply accuse the researchers of deliberately rigging the results, that is the tack taken by most of their critics to date.

Don't worry--I believe some goofy things, too. The Torah Codes just aren't among them--at least, not yet.

Highlights, mine.

1) Codes exist, if they exist? They have some unknow significance, if they have significance? This is hardly a scientific hypothesis.

2) They found a list of Rabbis in the OT? I believe they did and you could do so in any written work if you were given the names before hand.

3) I don't think anyone is accusing anyone of "rigging results". I think we are saying that there are NO results.

4) Yup.

 

[Loss Leader]

Loss Leader: With all due respect, you aren't listening. The Codes, if they exist, cannot be used for prediction. That is not their significance, if they have any.

So the codes are not predictive but:

and that rather long lists of such words, chosen in advance--in the initial experiment, the names of various rabbis and their birth and death dates (IIRC)--seem to repeat this phenomenon at a rate exceeding that predicted by chance, and by a very wide margin.

Which is it? Are the codes making predictions or not? It sounds like part of your professed proof that the codes are real is that they predicted the names and birthdates of later-born rabbis. And yet, these names and dates came true before the codes were deciphered.

Sounds like utter nonsense to me.

 

[Malachi151]

Wouldn't you rather learn something real about the world that you live in rather than waste your life on bible-code nonsense?

Exactly, which is why I'm pissed off the the "History Channel" wasted so much time on this nonsense and Nostradamus, etc.

BTW, all of this stupid "Bible Code" nonsense started by in the earliest days of the Roman adoption of Christianity. The Romans were already obsessed with prophecy business, and they believed that the "Old Testament" texts were literally prophetic because they believed that they predicted the events of the life of Jesus (Of course based on stories of the life of Jesus that were based on the Old Testament texts).

I talk about this a little in my article on Jesus:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm#3

Towards the end of this section "Virtually every detail of the life of Jesus comes from "Old Testament" scriptures", it talks about this issue.

 

[Gregoire]

Exactly, which is why I'm pissed off the the "History Channel" wasted so much time on this nonsense and Nostradamus, etc.

BTW, all of this stupid "Bible Code" nonsense started by in the earliest days of the Roman adoption of Christianity. The Romans were already obsessed with prophecy business, and they believed that the "Old Testament" texts were literally prophetic because they believed that they predicted the events of the life of Jesus (Of course based on stories of the life of Jesus that were based on the Old Testament texts).

I talk about this a little in my article on Jesus:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm#3

Towards the end of this section "Virtually every detail of the life of Jesus comes from "Old Testament" scriptures", it talks about this issue.

Thanks for the link. I have been reading a lot about the myth hypothesis lately and have found the whole subject very interesting.

Regarding the "Bible Code", even if someone thinks there is a Bible code in the original writings, or even if they think the original writings are "the inspired word of God", the point is no one actually knows what the originals actually said. All we have are copies of copies of copies.....etc. And as Bart Ehrman has shown with regard to the New Testament in his book Misquoting Jesus, it is very clear to scholars that over time there have been a multitude of errors.

Some copies had errors in them because the person copying the text simply lost his place. Some of them have to do with the wrong word being entered. And some have been shown to be blatant changes to suit the particular theology of the one who was doing the copying. Every time an independent early copy is found, it has differences from all the others. And the earliest copies we have now were still copied long after the original texts had disappeared.

Since the Old Testament is so much older, one can only wonder what how far away from the original are the texts we have now? And how could a code work, if you don't have the originals?

 

[triadboy]

Some copies had errors in them because the person copying the text simply lost his place. Some of them have to do with the wrong word being entered. And some have been shown to be blatant changes to suit the particular theology of the one who was doing the copying. Every time an independent early copy is found, it has differences from all the others. And the earliest copies we have now were still copied long after the original texts had disappeared.

<talking off the top of my head>

I believe Ehrman also said in Misquoting Jesus - the copyists for the first ~100 years were not trained copyists. They were literate people in the congregations pushed into service.

 

[Malachi151]

The whole business about it not being copied or translated correctly is a total red herring. To be honest, I've never been very impressed by Ehrman. He's a scholar, but I totally don't think he gets it at all.

Talking about copying or translating problems totally misses the point first of all, and second of all, in fact these works are actually very well preserved.

Talking about errors in copying is making an argument that the "word of God" has been lost, but this is a stupid thing to talk about, because the more important issue us that it was never the word of God in the first place, which can easily be shown by the content of what we do have.

What is remarkable are the still very clear parallels between the Epic of Gilgamesh flood scene and the Genesis flood with Noah, for example.

There are word-for-word phrases that are almost exactly the same between these two stories, and instead of talking about how we can't be sure about "the word of God" because its been lost in translation, he should be talking about how we are able to determine that these are stories which are based on other earlier stories from other religions, and that the Jewish scripture are really commentaries on earlier stories, and how the characters in the Jewish stories are based on "pagan" heroes, "pagan" gods, etc.

We have plenty of good information in the scriptures to go on, and all of that information shows that the earliest scriptures are based on pagan myths, that the early Jews didn't believe in a soul, life after death, or the devil, that the Hebrews (as well as others) commonly wrote "prophetic" stories long after the events had taken place, that the Hebrews commonly wrote new stories that were based on old stories where they explicitly framed the new stories as prophetic fulfillment of the old stories, etc.

The reason that this whole "Bible Code" thing even came up is explained in my article. The reason is that the writers of the Gospels were using literary allusion. They would base scenes in the Gospels on scenes in the Hebrew scritpures, but the scenes in the Hebrew scritpures that they were basing their scenes on were not prophecies, they were things like, for example, Psalm 22, passages in Kings about Elisha, or some seemingly random passage in Hosea, etc.

What the early Christians noticed was that all or most of the scenes in the Gospels related back to "OT" passages, but the passages that they related back to weren't anything that could clearly be picked out as a prophecy on its own merits.

Thus they came up with the idea that the Hebrew scritpures were "secretly encoded".

They had to be secretly encoded because there was no way that anyone could read through them and be able to pick out the "prophecies" for Jesus before hand.

So, in the eyes of these people, all of the events in the life of Jesus were predicted before hand by the scriptures, but there wasn't any clear way to pick out those predictions before hand.

Thus they launched into a centuries long effort to try and figure out the "secret code" to be able to predict the future using the scriptures.

Meanwhile, all along this "phenomenon" existed because the writer of the Gospel of Mark completely "fabricated" his story based on scritpures that had nothing to do with Jesus (because there was no Jesus) The scritpures that this author used were scriptures that talked about the destruction of Judea.

The reason that he used those scriptures is because he wrote this story AFTER the destruction of Judea, and he was writing an allegorical story ABOUT the destruction of Judea.

This is why the scriptures used in the Gospels don't necessarily seem to have anything to do with being prophecies for the coming of Jesus, because they aren't, they are scriptures about the destruction of Israel.

But that's something that would have been hard to figure out by Greeks and Romans 2,000 years ago, and with no cultural understanding of the Jews.

The whole thing is ridiculous and absurd, but it has nothing to do with the scriptures being poorly translated or preserved, in fact the good quality of the preservation is what has made it possible to figure all this out.

The fact that the Roman founders of Christianity were so stupid as to actually preserve all four Gospels, each of which was intentionally written because the writers disagreed with the one that they COPIED from, is the only thing that makes it possible to figure out the total lack of historical value in the Gospels.

The quality of preservation is what makes it possible to figure out that these stories have zero historical basis.

 

[cnorman18]

Just a bit more

A couple of responses, and then I think I'm done.

In Satinover's book, quantum theory is said to be analogous to the codes phenomenon, not an explanation for it.

Complex and unusual ideas can be difficult to summarize. My own posts tend to be rather long, because I prefer to be precise and to make my meaning clear. If an idea can be explained clearly in just a few words, it would hardly be necessary to write an entire chapter, not to mention a book, in order to explain it. If you're interested enough in the codes to consider the nature of the phenomenon as presented by the researchers, which is essential to explaining why some, at least, of the "debunking" experiments were flawed, then hie thee to a library and check out the book. If you're not, then don't. I decline to conduct a detailed seminar for a clearly hostile audience that is apparently, occasionally inclined to twist my remarks to suit their own purposes.

For a convenient example, the idea of "prediction". I thought my remarks were clear enough, but perhaps not; if I am wrong on that point, I apologize.

A "prediction", as I am using the term, would be finding a matrix in the codes that indicates an event's occurrence before it happens. That is to say, FINDING the matrix before the event. If one finds such a matrix after the fact of the event, that would not constitute "using the codes to predict events", because it's not. Is it finding evidence of a "prediction" that occurred in the past? IMO, no, it isn't, because no one knew of it till after it happened.

If your crystal ball doesn't tell you about anything till after it happens, it isn't predicting anything; even if you could prove that it "knew" about the event in advance, no prediction has occurred.

In a sense, though, you are quite right, and the question you ask remains perhaps the most questionable aspect of the phenomenon and calls it most into doubt, even if one accepts (as I do) the good faith and integrity of the researchers: a genuine, detailed PREDICTION of an event, in present time, before its occurrence--or better, a whole string of such predictions--MIGHT constitute a kind of proof of its authenticity. Absent that, the truth of the phenomenon will remain in doubt.

The fact that the researchers say that such predictions are impossible leads me to suspect that the codes phenomenon will remain, or become, merely another matter of faith; that is to say, some will accept it as real, and some will reject it as false, and both sides will accept or reject evidence more on the basis of their previous inclinations than upon any real weighing of the facts--and unavoidably so, because the facts will remain obstinately equivocal.

I have no great emotional investment in the codes myself; since I have a variety of high-functioning autism, I have no great emotional investment in anything or anyone. If the codes were conclusively proven or disproven tomorrow, it would neither trouble nor inspire me at all. I entered this thread because I felt the code phenomenon was being misrepresented in a simplistic manner and unfairly dismissed as just another Jesus-appeared-in-my-French-toast bit of tabloid nonsense, and I felt--and still feel--that there is much more to it than that.

I don't appear to have convinced anyone to even consider for an instant that there might be anything here even worth trying to understand, so I'm done. This horse may not actually be dead, but I've been beating it for a while, and it's not moving.

Call it a parting shot if you like, but the conversation here has reminded me of talking to a group of "Creationists" who had read an outdated and oversimplified pamphlet about Darwin and were unwilling to even consider reading anything about current biological science. Their minds were made up, and no evidence could shake their convictions--and just to make sure none ever would, they refused to look at any. I've heard it said that atheists, in spite of their claims of supreme rationality, have their own unquestioned dogmas and unexamined axioms of faith. I have seen nothing here to disprove that.

Whatever. Peace to all, and for the record, you're probably right anyway. I just thought the research interesting, but then it doesn't challenge my convictions as directly as it apparently does those of others.

 

[Glen.Nogami]

Okay, makes sense. I do hope you stop back by at some point.

I'm sorry if this was in your earlier posts and I missed it, but if they aren't predictive, what, precisely was it about them that there was "something to"? I mean, what do they do if not predict?

Anyway, I can't find myself terribly interested in the bible code, but I would appreciate a clarification.

 

[cnorman18]

Thank you!

Okay, makes sense. I do hope you stop back by at some point.

I'm sorry if this was in your earlier posts and I missed it, but if they aren't predictive, what, precisely was it about them that there was "something to"? I mean, what do they do if not predict?

Anyway, I can't find myself terribly interested in the bible code, but I would appreciate a clarification.

A sincere, intelligent question without a trace of condescension or hostility. I thank you, and I'll try to answer.

The original researchers, unlike the tabloid-minded Michael Drosnin, never hoped to find a method of divination or fortunetelling in the Torah. Such things are forbidden to observant Jews anyway (for the record, the term "prophet", in Jewish tradition, has nothing to do with foretelling the future; it denotes one who speaks for God. Some Biblical prophets predicted future events as proof that they actually did speak for God, but that was of minor importance in the context of their larger messages, which usually boiled down to "Knock it off, people!").

Finding information encoded in the Torah about events that occurred hundreds or thousands of years after it was written, or, if you like, after it reached its present form, is, first, an obvious anomaly; such information shouldn't be there. It's rather like those Fortean reports one sees about machined metal parts found embedded in lumps of coal. Such things simply shouldn't be.

In my opinion, before considering the significance or implications of such a discovery, it should first be determined that it actually exists; but because of the nature of this phenomenon, the possible implications have already become part of the debate and have confused the issue enormously.

Some Jews have already seized on the most obvious possible implication of the codes, and have taken them as conclusive proof that the Torah actually was, as stated in the oldest Jewish traditions, literally written by God. This is the apparent position, or more properly, the hope, of both Satinover and at least some of the researchers. That is not a good thing.

Some Christians have used an enormously simplified (and thus inauthentic) version of the phenomenon and claimed the codes prove the truth of their beliefs about Jesus. "End times" believers have used similar methods to find references to apocalyptic wars and disasters in the near future. I have even seen at least one article by a UFO fanatic that claims that the codes prove that God is or was a space alien; a similar speculation surfaced on the History Channel, though it was a bit less manic in its tone. And, of course, some nonbelievers have set about trying to prove that the phenomenon is either a matter of chance, a misunderstanding, a simple error, or a deliberate falsehood, since they too have jumped to the conclusion that the existence of the codes would somehow prove the existence of God--and since that idea is (to them) clearly false, the codes must necessarily be false as well.

All of this begs the question; does the phenomenon exist, or not?

Assumptions are being made in both directions that are clearly affecting the way the research is being conducted and judged, and that is not good. Agendas have a way of distorting science, and that's why I think this whole endeavor will, in the end, lead nowhere.

The implications, if the phenomenon is finally proven out, would be staggering--but I don't think anyone has considered just what those implications might be beyond a mere "proof" of the existence of God. They might be much more, or much less, depending on how you look at it.

For my money--since we don't yet know just how this thing works, even assuming it's real--it's as likely that the codes might prove that we don't yet understand the nature of time; or that reality itself, as many have speculated, is a good deal more flexible and subjectively determined than we generally think. Maybe there is something about the human mind, some capability of finding patterns and imposing meaning upon them, that's never occurred to anyone before. Maybe this sort of thing occurs in other ways; maybe, if we really knew how to do it, patterns in tea leaves or animal guts really CAN foretell the future, because reality sends echoes of itself through the dimension of time in ways we've never understood or noticed.

Or maybe God wrote the Torah.

My point is, it's too soon to tell. We've heard a rustle in the bushes; is it a burglar, a bear, or just the wind?

Before we either fire a shotgun at it or go back to sleep, maybe we ought to find out what it is.

Let's look. That's all I'm saying.

 

[Dancing David]

The bible code exists it is called the Kabbalah, it is the oral tradition that goes along side the written tradition. Some of it is 600 years old, like the Lilith story (although there are some similarities to Lillitu), some is much older.

the old testament as it stands is a redacted text, the rabbinical tradition removed all the polytheistic text. Some of the dead sea scrolls are sort of not talked about, because they were Saducee and they had some extra gods and things like that.

 

[cnorman18]

Huh?

The bible code exists it is called the Kabbalah, it is the oral tradition that goes along side the written tradition. Some of it is 600 years old, like the Lilith story (although there are some similarities to Lillitu), some is much older.

the old testament as it stands is a redacted text, the rabbinical tradition removed all the polytheistic text. Some of the dead sea scrolls are sort of not talked about, because they were Saducee and they had some extra gods and things like that.

Uh, dude, I'm pretty well read, and ALL of that is new to me. You have a source?

The Torah codes are not related to Kabbalah, at least not directly. The Oral Torah traditionally goes back to Sinai, which was about 3,500 years ago, not 600. Best guess I've seen on the origin of Kabbalah is that it was the esoteric teaching of the Temple priests, who continued to pass it on orally after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, but no one really knows. The "rabbinical" (sic) tradition didn't remove anything from Tanakh, because "rabbis" did not exist until after that date. Since Abraham's initial innovation was that there was only One God, I doubt very much that there were ever any "polytheistic texts" in the Bible. The Lilith story is a midrashic legend and was never in the Bible.

(I thought the Weekly World News had gone belly up...)

 

[Malachi151]

Uh, dude, I'm pretty well read, and ALL of that is new to me. You have a source?

The Torah codes are not related to Kabbalah, at least not directly. The Oral Torah traditionally goes back to Sinai, which was about 3,500 years ago, not 600. Best guess I've seen on the origin of Kabbalah is that it was the esoteric teaching of the Temple priests, who continued to pass it on orally after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, but no one really knows. The "rabbinical" (sic) tradition didn't remove anything from Tanakh, because "rabbis" did not exist until after that date. Since Abraham's initial innovation was that there was only One God, I doubt very much that there were ever any "polytheistic texts" in the Bible. The Lilith story is a midrashic legend and was never in the Bible.

(I thought the Weekly World News had gone belly up...)

Dude, "Abraham" is a mythical character, who never existed, and certainly didn't "innovate" anything. That's like saying that Hercules innovation was that gods and men could have children together.

Secondly, there is a lot of scholarship which shows that the Torah any many other texts of the "Old Testament" are no where near as old as they are claimed to be. Genesis 1, for example, was probably written around 600-400 BCE, not the 2,000+ BCE that it is traditionally beliefs to have been written, and of course the Torah was certainly not written by "Moses", who also almost certainly never existed and is also a mythical character.

 

[MRC_Hans]

For a convenient example, the idea of "prediction". I thought my remarks were clear enough, but perhaps not; if I am wrong on that point, I apologize.

A "prediction", as I am using the term, would be finding a matrix in the codes that indicates an event's occurrence before it happens. That is to say, FINDING the matrix before the event. If one finds such a matrix after the fact of the event, that would not constitute "using the codes to predict events", because it's not. Is it finding evidence of a "prediction" that occurred in the past? IMO, no, it isn't, because no one knew of it till after it happened.

Ahh, but no. If the code, and thus the prediction was written before the events it predicts, then it IS a prediction, no matter when (if ever) we find out.

And if the bible code can predict past events (but events happening after the code was created), then why shouldn't it be able to predict future events?

The trouble with finding predictions of past events is that the interpretation and ways to find the patterns is flexible. Therefore, if you have a sufficiently large body of essentially random data, you can always dig up a predetermined pattern.[/quote]

If your crystal ball doesn't tell you about anything till after it happens, it isn't predicting anything; even if you could prove that it "knew" about the event in advance, no prediction has occurred.

Wrong. If I could actually prove that the information existed before the event, then it would be a bona-fide prediction. For example, if I find a sealed container, provably sealed in 1930, and untouched since then, and a piece of paper inside predicts, say, Sept 11 2001, then it is a bona-fide prediction, even if I don't open the container till 2007. The crucial point is whether the information was available before the event, not whether it was found.

Hans

 

[Bri]

Finding information encoded in the Torah about events that occurred hundreds or thousands of years after it was written, or, if you like, after it reached its present form, is, first, an obvious anomaly; such information shouldn't be there. It's rather like those Fortean reports one sees about machined metal parts found embedded in lumps of coal. Such things simply shouldn't be.

Can you tell us why such things shouldn't be? The same kind of information is also embedded in Moby Dick, and any other large body of text. They are expected to occur by random chance, and it would be an anomaly if you couldn't find such things embedded in any text.

In my opinion, before considering the significance or implications of such a discovery, it should first be determined that it actually exists; but because of the nature of this phenomenon, the possible implications have already become part of the debate and have confused the issue enormously.

Of course the phenomenon exists. Even the skeptics who refute that it is anything interesting admit that it exists, but also point out that it would be expected to exist by chance in any large body of text.

Imagine creating a "word find" puzzle by creating a random 10 x 10 grid of letters. If words are defined as vertical or horizontal consecutive letters, you will more than likely find some words in there. If we change the "rules" to allow diagonals, you will find even more. Either way, you would expect there to be fewer longer words than shorter words. Finding a word that is 7 or 8 letters long would be improbable in any such puzzle. But what if you generated lots of these puzzles? Eventually you will hit on one that contains a 10-letter word! Would you then claim that this puzzle contains some sort of strange anomaly that shouldn't be there? Would you then calculate the odds of that particular word existing in a random set of letters and claim that something strange is going on? No, you would expect this sort of result to occur by chance if you generate enough puzzles.

It seems that the original authors are doing something similar with their lists of words. They try one list and find that it would normally occur in that configuration by chance. Nothing particularly interesting. So they modify the list and see if the results are any better. If nothing works, all hope is not lost. They just modify the procedure (the "rules") a bit and try again. Eventually, they hit on a particular combination of words that seems to have a one in a million chance of occurring in that text. Then for fun they start to add new words to the list to see if they can lower the odds even more, being careful only to add words that lower the odds rather than raise it.

It's quite obvious that's what's going on. Just look at the list of rabbis you mentioned earlier. Why did they only use the month and day of their births rather than the year, which would have made a lot more sense? The answer is obvious: when you do the same procedure using the year, you get nothing "unusual."

So, yes, the phenomenon exists such as it is. Nobody disputes that. It is expected to exist in any large body of text.

All of this begs the question; does the phenomenon exist, or not?

As far as I can tell, you are the only one who is begging the question. Even the skeptics who disproved the claim admit that the "phenomenon" exists -- they just showed that it's nothing unusual.

The implications, if the phenomenon is finally proven out, would be staggering--but I don't think anyone has considered just what those implications might be beyond a mere "proof" of the existence of God.

Is the fact that the same codes are found in Moby Dick proof of the existence of whales?

They might be much more, or much less, depending on how you look at it.

It appears that the implications (beyond a mere "proof" of the existence of God) are "much less" any way you look at it.

For my money--since we don't yet know just how this thing works, even assuming it's real--it's as likely that the codes might prove that we don't yet understand the nature of time; or that reality itself, as many have speculated, is a good deal more flexible and subjectively determined than we generally think. Maybe there is something about the human mind, some capability of finding patterns and imposing meaning upon them, that's never occurred to anyone before. Maybe this sort of thing occurs in other ways; maybe, if we really knew how to do it, patterns in tea leaves or animal guts really CAN foretell the future, because reality sends echoes of itself through the dimension of time in ways we've never understood or noticed.

Or maybe God wrote the Torah.

Or...maybe it just means that lists of words are expected to appear in large bodies of text by chance.

My point is, it's too soon to tell. We've heard a rustle in the bushes; is it a burglar, a bear, or just the wind?

Before we either fire a shotgun at it or go back to sleep, maybe we ought to find out what it is.

Let's look. That's all I'm saying.

Good luck with your search. That's all I'm saying.

-Bri

 

[Bri]

Ahh, but no. If the code, and thus the prediction was written before the events it predicts, then it IS a prediction, no matter when (if ever) we find out.

And if the bible code can predict past events (but events happening after the code was created), then why shouldn't it be able to predict future events?

Yes, but the hunting expedition used to find the "codes" can only occur after the event has occurred. You have to start with a list of words, then calculate the probability of those words appearing exactly as they do in the text. If the probability isn't high enough, you modify your list of words and try again until you get a result you like. Hardly useful for predicting anything since you have to have the list of words to start with.

Wrong. If I could actually prove that the information existed before the event, then it would be a bona-fide prediction. For example, if I find a sealed container, provably sealed in 1930, and untouched since then, and a piece of paper inside predicts, say, Sept 11 2001, then it is a bona-fide prediction, even if I don't open the container till 2007. The crucial point is whether the information was available before the event, not whether it was found.

Oh, the information exists before the event occurs, of course. But only because the list of words you chose happens to pertain to an event that occurred after the text was written. You can get the results you want using words associated with any event (or anything else you want) if you're willing to spend the time to modify the list and/or the procedure until you get the results you want.

-Bri

 

[cnorman18]

OK

Ahh, but no. If the code, and thus the prediction was written before the events it predicts, then it IS a prediction, no matter when (if ever) we find out.

And if the bible code can predict past events (but events happening after the code was created), then why shouldn't it be able to predict future events?

The trouble with finding predictions of past events is that the interpretation and ways to find the patterns is flexible. Therefore, if you have a sufficiently large body of essentially random data, you can always dig up a predetermined pattern.

Wrong. If I could actually prove that the information existed before the event, then it would be a bona-fide prediction. For example, if I find a sealed container, provably sealed in 1930, and untouched since then, and a piece of paper inside predicts, say, Sept 11 2001, then it is a bona-fide prediction, even if I don't open the container till 2007. The crucial point is whether the information was available before the event, not whether it was found.

Hans[/QUOTE]

OK, that's reasonable; perhaps I should have said "PRACTICAL prediction," or some such.

In any case, you're saying pretty much what I did; the best proof of the codes would be a detailed prediction of an event that is found before it happens, and even that might not make the cut. For some, there will NEVER be sufficient proof, and some have even said as much in print. That strikes me as just as much of a "faith-based" position as that of someone who maintains that nothing could DISPROVE their beliefs; neither is rational.

 

[Bri]

Torah codes -- or even Moby Dick codes -- can predict the future. Simply make two different predictions (say "an earthquake larger than 6.5 will occur in California in 2008" and "an earthquake larger than 6.5 will not occur in California in 2008"), find both of them in the text, document both of them, then after the event occurs "forget" about one of them.

-Bri

 

[cnorman18]

Hmmm...

Dude, "Abraham" is a mythical character, who never existed, and certainly didn't "innovate" anything. That's like saying that Hercules innovation was that gods and men could have children together.

Secondly, there is a lot of scholarship which shows that the Torah any many other texts of the "Old Testament" are no where near as old as they are claimed to be. Genesis 1, for example, was probably written around 600-400 BCE, not the 2,000+ BCE that it is traditionally beliefs to have been written, and of course the Torah was certainly not written by "Moses", who also almost certainly never existed and is also a mythical character.

Your conviction that Abraham and Moses were mythical characters is just as much a statement of faith as my own belief that they probably weren't. In fact, since it's exceedingly hard to logically prove a negative, perhaps even more so.

At one time it was confidently asserted that the Iliad was entirely fictional, that the Trojan war never happened, and that Troy itself never existed. Later finds have proven that that assertion was false. In any case, who cares? It's still a cracking good story and a classic of world literature, either way.

Which is more to the point. In Jewish teaching, it doesn't matter. My own rabbi often says, "The Torah is true, and some of it may even have happened." Jews have never maintained that the Bible is a history book, nor (as some fundamentalist Christians do) that it is a book of biological or geological
science. It is about moral and spiritual lessons, not about literal events--or at least not necessarily. We draw perfectly valid lessons from Orwell's "Animal Farm", but no one finds it necessary to claim that Snowball the pig was an actual historical person.

If you attend a Torah study at your local Reform or Conservative synagogue and ask, "Do you think Abraham actually existed?" many, if not most, will respond, "Who cares?"

Jews are not, by and large, fundamentalists. When studying Torah, the origins and provenance of the documents aren't often a subject for discussion--but when they are, you will find that we acknowledge the probable (at least) truth of what you are saying. Most current commentaries say that the origins of the Torah are much later than the tradition says, that it was compiled and edited from other documents by a late redactor, and so on. None of that matters very much in Torah study, any more than wondering if William Shakespeare actually wrote "King Lear" ought to interfere with one's enjoyment of the play.

 

[lightcreatedlife@hom]

Loss Leader: With all due respect, you aren't listening. The Codes, if they exist, cannot be used for prediction. That is not their significance, if they have any.

They are being used to keep that subject alive. The bible is a book of riddles used by the "organization of religion," to keep the religion alive.

 

[cnorman18]

An old trick

Torah codes -- or even Moby Dick codes -- can predict the future. Simply make two different predictions (say "an earthquake larger than 6.5 will occur in California in 2008" and "an earthquake larger than 6.5 will not occur in California in 2008"), find both of them in the text, document both of them, then after the event occurs "forget" about one of them.

-Bri

That method has actually been used for decades by fake "psychics". The on-staff "seer" at a tabloid will write down a few thousand random predictions--"Michael Jackson will become a Mormon", "George Clooney will be killed by a mugger", and "Britney Spears will lose custody of her children"--have the list notarized, lock it in a safety deposit box, and open it at the end of the year. Throw away the 9,993 that went nowhere, keep the 7 that did, and voila! Seven genuine, notarized, and proven predictions!

Funny and interesting, but of course irrelevant to the actual research on the Torah codes.

This is getting boring again. There are actual problems with this research, but this kind of blatant deception isn't one of them.

If you have proof that actual, deliberate deception was involved in the research by Rips, Witztum et. al., please post it. To my knowledge, even their most vehement critics have not made THAT claim, and it surely hasn't been proven.

The fact that one doesn't LIKE an allegation is not proof that it is false, let alone fraudulent.