Either Cameron is doing a very shabby job of deceiving us or he is doing a very good job of deceiving himself.
Film director James Cameron made a pretty good movie when he filmed Titanic. He even recreated the interior of that great and tragic ship down to the last authentic detail, giving the movie an eerie authenticity. But even the best of Hollywood craftsmanship and the magic of digital imagery could not fool us into believing that we were watching actual events taking place on the real Titanic. Even the guy falling onto the ship's propeller was a fake. It was all an illusion of reality — nothing more than an expensive and incredibly profitable piece of historical fiction.…
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76 - Irene Wagner
Dr. Dreadful. Point taken about there being perhaps better things to be doing with a Saturday afternoon. But I've got one more card to put on the table before I fold 'em!
The link you're posting to discusses Drosnin's work, not Sherman's. Richard Sherman is NOT a professional code-seeker; he is a professional actuary. Comparing the skeptics findings in Moby Dick to Drosnin's findings in the Bible and assuming you've compared the Moby Dick findings to Sherman's Biblical findings, is like comparing Moby Dick to Nemo and assuming you've compared Moby Dick to...to...Leviathan. In short, Dr. D. it's looking like Sherman has matched the skeptics and raised the argument to the next level. Remember, Sherman wasn't impressed with Drosnin when he set out to debunk Drosnin's "The Bible Code," and he still isn't impressed with Drosnin's work, even though it's what motivated his own.
As for the spiritual benefit of being interested in Bible codes, I agree with part of what Ruvy said about them. They are to baffle, and catch the attention of, the Higher Critics whose approach to the Bible is somewhat less humble than it might be. As for the prophetic value of the codes, some descriptions of the End Times (Ezekiel, Revelation) won't be fully understood until future history has made prerequisites to their unwrapping clear. The Bible warns against setting dates. Bible prophecies can encourage people to stay hopeful about the future, no matter how bleak things look along the way. God knows how it will all turn out, and He is good.
And some thoughts about your last question. Wasting time contemplating the the codes, if God put them there, is like wasting time thinking about any of the other things God made: how the eye works, the beauty of the stars on a clear night, the surprising deep math/physics correlation I mentioned before. A sense of wonder is what makes life worth living.
77 - Dr Dreadful
Point taken about there being perhaps better things to be doing with a Saturday afternoon.
Irene, that wasn't meant to be a dig at you.
Yes, my link discusses Drosnin, but the point being made is the same.
I'm having a bit of a poke around some material on Sherman's long letter and word strings which he says are encoded in the Hebrew Bible, and it seems they may not be anything like as coherent or germane as he claims. More later.
78 - Dr Dreadful
BTW, his name's Ed Sherman, not Richard.
79 - Irene Wagner
Hi again Dr. D: His name is Richard Edwin Sherman. Richard Sherman is the name he uses as professional actuary. R. Edwin Sherman is the name he uses as the author of the book "Bible Code Bombshell." Here's the article in the "Actuarial Review" where these two alter egos are linked.
Dr. D, I haven't taken anything you've said in the last two years as a dig at me! I understood it as a dig at the endeavor of FULL TIME Bible code-searching, an activity in which I know you know I am not employed. (Now you know now Richard Ed Sherman isn't either.) Happy hunting.
* collects her winnings and scampers off, humming a Kenny Rogers tune *
80 - Irene Wagner
...PS Sherman probably claims the Bible in the standard left to right rendering is a lot more coherent and germane than you would, Dr. D., so I don't know that I'm really in for any surprises when I read the "more later!"
I probably will come back to this thread though, as you said there would be more later, but it might not be for a few days, and it won't be to argue, as I've said everything I know about Bible Codes, which admittedly isn't much.
81 - Dr Dreadful
I will make one further observation for now, Irene: which is that the Bible read in the conventional, left-to-right, one-letter-at-a-time manner is certainly more coherent and apparently more germane than the hidden messages Sherman claims to have discovered in it!
82 - Dr Dreadful
So he is a Richard, Irene.
There is another Richard Sherman - the celebrated Hollywood composer - which is presumably why the Bible Code guy uses his middle name when authorating.
83 - Bird of Paradise
Mark Twain used to observe how so many people were concerned with what they could not understand in the Bible. As for himself, Twain said, he was most concerned by what he DID understand in the Bible.
84 - Irene Wagner
Bird of Paradise and Dr. Dreadful. Dodginess of interpretation notwithstanding, some of the longer and more complex messages are written with consistent imagery throughout, reminding me of poetry interpreted by Literary Critics in very different ways.
I just don't know what to make of it all at this point, but lately I find myself checking the dashboard more frequently to see if I am "hurrying the thorn." That's probably a good thing.
Bird of Paradise -- ...I don't know if Mark Twain's agnosticism was in spite of that fact, or because of it. One other interesting thing about Mark Twain was his and his family's close friendship with George MacDonald (described as the literary grandfather of J.R.Tolkien and C.S.Lewis.) I would love to have listened to them talking.
Anyway, sorry for poking the corpse of your Tomb article so many times--I'll be giving it a rest for awhile. It was a good article, by the way!
85 - telson
Many syncretistic religions formed gnosticism. Gnosticism was rivaling against Christianity and gnosticism held itself better religion as Christianity was. Word gnosticism comes from Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge.
Gnosticism was various effects, for instance, some Gnostics taught that divinity can be achieved through unity of the man and woman. This thought led some Gnostics to reach for divinity through sexual intercourse between the man and woman. There existed also some Gnostics, who abstained from sexual intercourse.
When we know the fact that Gnostics held Christians as their enemies and that Gnostics held themselves better as Christians and that Gnostics wanted to show in every way that Gnosticism was better as Christianity, so Gnostics made so called gnostic gospels were they twisted, slandered and misrepresented the real gospels.
Gnostics went so far in this misrepresent that they wrote "new gospels" by faking the real gospels. In these faked gospels Gnostics wrote that Jesus Christ was an ordinary man who has a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene.