Bible Codes (yet again) on History Channel

kuroyume0161

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Oy vay! :rolleyes:

Although it was heartening to at least get a glimpse of the counterargument to this tripe, I've never heard a bunch of bull so well rationalized in my life.

Did these nuttos actually listen to themselves spewing their stupidity?

First of all, the Torah is a large text which makes for an effervescent amount of chances to find anything.

Second, the Hebrew alphabet is very flexible, including the alphabet doubling as numbers (which is very convenient).

Third, add on that the "coded" text can be forward, backward, horizontal, vertical, diagonal, have varying spacing, has no specific syntax, can be words, names, strings of text, sentences, numbers, and other factors.

What do you get? Whatever you want to find!

The one code that requires a backhand slap is the 'Gore' 'President' one. Then, when he doesn't win, they search hard and find 'Thinks Maybe'. Ummm, hmmm, is this GOD speaking or the imbecile who was twiddling the dials of the program?

And finally, the end of the show was a particulary idiotic gem of horse manure. According to their 'predictions', there is a chance of (in chronological order):

1. A civilization ending asteroid impact.
2. Followed by terrorists use of nuclear weapons.
3. Followed by smallpox epidemic.

Well, if 1 happens, 2 and 3 are basically moot, now aren't they. A large enough impact wouldn't leave much of a civilization to nuke. There'd be no reason. And smallpox would be a minor infection compared to the plagues that would follow the impact.

Total insanity like this just makes me want to devastate it completely and methodically, to the point where they look as stupid as they appear.

Robert - done ranting... :mad:
 
Someone really needs to find "bible codes are rubbish" in there. It won't change anyone's minds, but it'll be a fun thing to throw around.
 
I watched for about 5 minutes, and I heard some variation of "some people believe [insert goofball hypothesis here]" so many times that I started to wonder if The History Channel would give credence to the falling sky based on the beliefs of Chicken Little.
 
I remember the first time I heard about the Bible Code. My religious mother was telling me about it on the phone. She was very excited about it. To her, this was proof of God. I had never heard of it, and thought she had accidentally picked up a copy of the Weekly World News thinking it was a real newspaper. Before even doing any research, I scolded her for believing such nonsense. Then after doing research, I sent her pages of information de-bunking it. She never spoke of it again.
 
But why is this BS a #1 best seller? Why are people not told about all of the fallacies, inaccuracies, and problems with this concept of 'Bible Codes'?

For instance, the interviewees consistently made statements about the improbability of such occurences, how statistically large the chances were, and so on. Total bull! I am quite certain that a proper statistical analysis that includes the factors that I mentioned in the initiating post, among others, would move the probabilities to nearly 1.0.

Also, another idea surfaced to me. Have they tried finding 'codes' using Greek, German, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Phoenecian, or any other non-English alphanumeric system? If they have, did they find the same codes in the same places or were the codes, as one would expect from a delusory parlor trick, redistributed and of differing content? Has noone mentioned that English isn't the only language and only alphanumerics? (whether or not they use the Hebrew phonetics, names, places, and other words change dramatically, even phonetically, from language to language). In other words, is God Anglo-centric?

So many questions, so little brains critically analyzing this.

Any good sites with information debunking this (thatguywhojuggles!)?

ETA: After having found that I have the March/April 2003 Edition of "Skeptical Inquirer" (I donot have them going back to 1997, sorrily), I have found the article by Dave E. Thomas reviewing "Bible Codes II" and links to website information such as McKay's website which confirms many of my suspicions on statistics, data-mining, and such. :)

Robert
 
kuroyume0161 said:
ETA: After having found that I have the March/April 2003 Edition of "Skeptical Inquirer" (I donot have them going back to 1997, sorrily), I have found the article by Dave E. Thomas reviewing "Bible Codes II" and links to website information such as McKay's website which confirms many of my suspicions on statistics, data-mining, and such. :)


Yeah, Brendan did a terrific job there. Pointing people at the Assassinations foretold in Moby Dick page has always done the trick for me.
 

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