Contra the Code
Published May 24, 2003
Michael Drosnin's Bible Code books are given an amusing drubbing by Scientific American here:
Just like the prophecies of soothsayers past and present, all such predictions are actually postdictions (note that not one psychic or astrologer forewarned us about 9/11). To be tested scientifically, Bible codes would need to predict events before they happen. They won't, because they can't--as Danish physicist Niels Bohr averred, predictions are difficult, especially about the future. Instead, in 1997 Drosnin proposed this test of his thesis: "When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them."
Australian mathematician Brendan McKay did just that, locating no fewer than nine political assassinations secreted in the great novel, along with additional discoveries in War and Peace and other tomes (see cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html). American physicist David E. Thomas predicted the Chicago Bulls's NBA championship in 1998 from his code search of Leo Tolstoy's novel. He also recently unearthed "the Bible code is a silly, dumb, fake, false, evil, nasty, dismal fraud and snake-oil hoax" from Bible Code II (see www.nmsr.org/biblecod.htm).
- Contra the Code
- Published: May 24, 2003
- Type:
- Section: Books
- Writer: James Russell
- James Russell's BC Writer page
- James Russell's personal site
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"The Bible Code is one of the top-ten most ridiculous things I've heard in my lifetime, and I say that as a Christian who actually believes in the Bible as divinely inspired!"
ditto.
I saw the author of that book on Oprah a few years ago. He is even stupider in person...
peace.
The only books more ridiculous, but unfortunately also much more harmful, are all those pro-war Iraq books, like:
"Why Our Cause Is Just And We Care Deeply About the Iraqi People, Although We Have Yet to Say Anything About the Horrors of Post-War Baghdad, But, Hey, At Least We Got the Oil and Likud's Happy, So I Guess It All Worked Out," by George W Bush, writing under the nickname "Ariel Sharon's Bitch."
^yes.
peace.
Mike:
Gee, that was the worst attempt at making antiwar gibberish on-topic that I have ever seen. The only thing that ties your hypothetical pro-war books to the Bible Code books is that... they're all books.
I can just imagine Mike's Amazon reviews:
"This is a terrible can opener, but at least it's not as bad as the war crime-enabling can openers (made in Israel--coincidence?) that the Amerikkkan killbots used in Operation Iraqi Oil Grab."
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I picked up a copy of the Bible Code software on a lark and started doing random searches to see what it was all about. I was amazed at some of the information that I found in this software!! I am no longer a skeptic. There was information in this program that no other person in the world would know, but me. It creeped me out so much, that I use it very discriminantly now, not like a ouija board.
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The Bible Code is one of the top-ten most ridiculous things I've heard in my lifetime, and I say that as a Christian who actually believes in the Bible as divinely inspired!
People search for meaning everywhere. I believe that the foundation of knowledge and intelligence is pattern recognition. However, the human tendency to categorize things into patterns leads many of us to find patterns where none exist.
Most of all I'm amused that people get all bent out of shape about things supposedly shoehorned into nooks and crannies of the Bible which cannot possible have any bearing on our actions or choices, while ignoring the plain and simple truth found for anybody to see in English, right there on the page. Escapism at its worst.
Thanks for the update.