Thread: Bible Numerics holds mathematical proof of Bibles validity

Christians often claim that the book "Bible Numerics" by Russian author Ivan Panin,
holds the mathematical evidence for the Bible.
I have read the book, and it really does seem convincing.
I need your opinion on the book, and why it ultimately fails.
They also claim that book has never been discredited or disproved, yet no church propagates this book or mentions it.
Any thoughts?

There are always claims like this. A little research (wikipedia) shows that his work has frequently been criticised and discredited.

A relevant passage:

One review of his work on the Gospel of Mark [1] suggests that he freely picked and chose from various alternative readings of manuscripts, and that many patterns that he claimed to have found were in fact his own creation. Panin used the edition of Westcott and Hort of the the New Testament, as the basis for his work, but very often made use of the many alternative readings that those authors suggested.[2] Another criticism is that the same kind of numeric patterns can be found from any text.[3]

Various "Bible Codes" have been sugested over the years, and the simple way of discrediting them is by showing that the methods used to 'discover' these codes work just as well if applied to the Declaration of Independence, or even Gone with the Wind, though few if any (bar perhaps the KKK) claim that Mitchell's book was divinely inspired.

I've read some quotes from Numerics, but I don't remember them. I probably should own a copy of Ivan Panin's book. I've been studying numerical references in the Bible since I first read it at age 8 (I'm now 50). I've made some big discoveries! I just joined this forum this morning and attempted to post: A Simple(74) Proof of God's Existence: GOD=7_4. The combination of 7 & 4 and '74' is encoded all over the Bible (and Qur'an) and there is definitely a connection with several fields of science. This incomplete version of my post ended up in the 'trash can'. I was quite insulted and promptly deleted it. I'll try again.

There's a misconception that by finding a 'Bible Code' in another work, i.e. Moby Dick, that now the code in the Bible is disproved. This is incorrect. What this proves is that the same code, i.e. equidistant-letter-sequence is also found in Moby Dick and perhaps elsewhere. I don't believe that anyone, i.e. Michael Drosnin and other proponents of ELS have ever stated that this method of encoding messages is only found in the Bible! For ELS to be disproved, there would have to be a false prophesy like: "John Kennedy drowned" or "Franklin Roosevelt assassinated". As far as I know, none of the expert 'debunkers' have found a phrase similar to this in either the Bible or Moby Dick. If anyone knows any contrary information, please relate it.

This incomplete version of my post ended up in the 'trash can'. I was quite insulted and promptly deleted it. I'll try again.

I can empathize with your feeling insulted. I was, likewise, insulted when I read your post before I trashed it. Perhaps a review by yourself of the guidelines for posting in this subforum stickied at the top of the list of threads will reduce the probability that either of us will be insulted in the future. Thank you.

Originally Posted by SkinWalker

This incomplete version of my post ended up in the 'trash can'. I was quite insulted and promptly deleted it. I'll try again.

I can empathize with your feeling insulted. I was, likewise, insulted when I read your post before I trashed it. Perhaps a review by yourself of the guidelines for posting in this subforum stickied at the top of the list of threads will reduce the probability that either of us will be insulted in the future. Thank you.

Hey SkinWalker,

I will read the guidelines of posting in this sub-forum - I only skimmed through them. It appeared that a multi-disciplinary proof of God's existence through GOD=7_4 (Simple English Gematria) would be perfect for this forum. Apparently you made the decision on your own that it did not! How were you insulted? You didn't write anything and receive an undignified response from me. Is it because, possibly, I've proven your personal beliefs wrong? This is supposed to be good science practiced on this forum, is it not? Or is it just very arbitrary? And for historic clarification, you did not successfully 'trash it'. You rudely placed it in the 'trash bin' and I retrieved it and deleted it. I, of course, made a copy of it first. There is a historic record. That's important because we ARE making history here - whether you wanted to or not.

A principle in statistics is the concept of random clumping. This means that random events still product 'patterns', even though they are patterns that mean exactly nothing.

Here is a simple experiment.
Draw up a graph with both x and y axis labelled 2, 3, 4 etc up to 12.
Now take two dice and throw them, Note the result. Throw them a second time. That gives two numbers, both between 2 and 12, and both numbers random. Now use the first number as a position on the x axis and the second for a position on the y, and make a dot at the resulting location.

Repeat this about 100 times. Now look at the graph and see if you can see any patterns. You will be surprised by the fact that you can. These patterns arose totally at random.

If a monkey wrote a novel by hitting a typewriter keyboard enough times for a novel length outcome, and a person with moderate maths training studied the result uncritically, he could find patterns.

Any written material can be analysed and found to contain patterns, as long as the person doing the analyses is somewhat uncritical, and knows relatively little about the true nature of randomness.

There have been a number of attempts to 'prove' the bible by digging into it for numerical patterns. These 'proofs' last until someone who is genuinely expert in maths takes a look!

Originally Posted by Brad Watson

I've read some quotes from Numerics, but I don't remember them. I probably should own a copy of Ivan Panin's book. I've been studying numerical references in the Bible since I first read it at age 8 (I'm now 50). I've made some big discoveries! I just joined this forum this morning and attempted to post: A Simple(74) Proof of God's Existence: GOD=7_4. The combination of 7 & 4 and '74' is encoded all over the Bible (and Qur'an) and there is definitely a connection with several fields of science. This incomplete version of my post ended up in the 'trash can'. I was quite insulted and promptly deleted it. I'll try again.

There's a misconception that by finding a 'Bible Code' in another work, i.e. Moby Dick, that now the code in the Bible is disproved. This is incorrect. What this proves is that the same code, i.e. equidistant-letter-sequence is also found in Moby Dick and perhaps elsewhere. I don't believe that anyone, i.e. Michael Drosnin and other proponents of ELS have ever stated that this method of encoding messages is only found in the Bible! For ELS to be disproved, there would have to be a false prophesy like: "John Kennedy drowned" or "Franklin Roosevelt assassinated". As far as I know, none of the expert 'debunkers' have found a phrase similar to this in either the Bible or Moby Dick. If anyone knows any contrary information, please relate it.

Perhaps I am mistaken but from what I have read about the bible code and watched about the bible code, they do say specifically that codes like these don't exist in other books. I have never read or seen anything that is talking about the bible code, that claims they can be found in other books as well. In fact they say that the chance of those letters showing up equidistant from each other and blah blah blah is some incredibly low number to try and prove their point.

These shows and readings also have mentioned the fact that it might be neat, but it's pretty much pointless, as you only find codes about things after the fact. You wont know what to look for until something happens, and once something happens it's too late to do anything about it.

http://www.nmsr.org/biblecod.htm

That's an interesting site that has fun with the methodology they use to find the "bible codes."

Originally Posted by Haasum

Perhaps I am mistaken but from what I have read about the bible code and watched about the bible code, they do say specifically that codes like these don't exist in other books.

You are not mistaken, but you are badly wrong. You have read and heard correctly, however you have been listening to charlatans, the misinformed and members of the entertainment industry.

Here is a telling paragraph from a web article on the subject.

Drosnin once said, "When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby-Dick, I'll believe them." McKay promptly produced an ELS analysis of Moby-Dick predicting not only Indira Ghandi's assassination, but the assassinations of Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, and Yitzhak Rabin, as well as the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Mathematician David Thomas did an ELS on Genesis and found the words "code" and "bogus" close together not once but 60 times. What are the odds of that happening? Thomas also did an ELS analysis on Drosnin's Bible Code II: The Countdown (2002) and found the message "The Bible Code is a silly, dumb, fake, false, evil, nasty, dismal fraud and snake-oil hoax."* Does this mean that God put in a code to reveal that there is no code?

Go here for the original.

Originally Posted by Brad Watson

I just joined this forum this morning and attempted to post: A Simple(74) Proof of God's Existence: GOD=7_4.

The various books of the Bible were written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. None of them used the Latin alphabet. The English word "God", or the English language itself, did not even exist at the time.

So are you trying to say that the authors built a code into their text in such an ingenious way that it would remain (or become) valid when the text is translated into a future language? Does it also work in the original version, and in the countless translations into other languages? Did you try using your math with the French "Dieu", the German "Gott", or Italian "Dio"? How about the Latin "Deus"? Not to mention the original sacred Hebrew tetragram...

Wake up. There are better and more relevant things to be found in the Bible than number games - even if you are not a believer.

Originally Posted by Ophiolite

Originally Posted by Haasum

Perhaps I am mistaken but from what I have read about the bible code and watched about the bible code, they do say specifically that codes like these don't exist in other books.

You are not mistaken, but you are badly wrong. You have read and heard correctly, however you have been listening to charlatans, the misinformed and members of the entertainment industry.

I had to read carefully, but I eventually took his meaning thus: those that defend bible codes often assert that these codes do not actually exist in other literary works and are exclusive to biblical works. I don't think he was defending the superstition of bible codes but countering brad's claim: "I don't believe that anyone, i.e. Michael Drosnin and other proponents of ELS have ever stated that this method of encoding messages is only found in the Bible!"

@brad: it was I that moved your thread to the trash. Appropriately so.

I think Ophiolite may have misinterpreted what I wrote, as what he quote later backs up what I was saying. I was not saying that I believe the bible code or think it is real, quite the opposite in fact, I have never thought it was even remotely true.

Skinwalker has the right of what I meant, I apologize if it was not clear.

I agree with your answer ... but it is not the solution friend! anyone else?
_______________

Disregarding the dome, the essential flatness of the earth's surface is required by verses like Daniel 4:10-11. In Daniel, the king “saw a tree of great height at the centre of the earth...reaching with its top to the sky and visible to the earth's farthest bounds.” If the earth were flat, a sufficiently tall tree would be visible to “the earth's farthest bounds,” but this is impossible on a spherical earth. Likewise, in describing the temptation of Jesus by Satan, Matthew 4:8 says, “Once again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world [cosmos] in their glory.” Obviously, this would be possible only if the earth were flat. The same is true of Revelation 1:7: “Behold, he is coming with the clouds! Every eye shall see him...”

Originally Posted by basim

Disregarding the dome, the essential flatness of the earth's surface is required by verses like Daniel 4:10-11. In Daniel, the king “saw a tree of great height at the centre of the earth...reaching with its top to the sky and visible to the earth's farthest bounds.” If the earth were flat, a sufficiently tall tree would be visible to “the earth's farthest bounds,” but this is impossible on a spherical earth. Likewise, in describing the temptation of Jesus by Satan, Matthew 4:8 says, “Once again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world [cosmos] in their glory.” Obviously, this would be possible only if the earth were flat. The same is true of Revelation 1:7: “Behold, he is coming with the clouds! Every eye shall see him...”

Are you trying to argue for the notion of a flat earth with this post?

Originally Posted by skeptic

A principle in statistics is the concept of random clumping. This means that random events still produce 'patterns', even though they are patterns that mean exactly nothing....both numbers random... You will be surprised by the fact that you can (see patterns). These patterns arose totally at random... If a monkey wrote a novel... Any written material can be analysed and found to contain patterns, as long as the person doing the analyses is somewhat uncritical, and knows relatively little about the true nature of randomness. There have been a number of attempts to 'prove' the bible by digging into it for umerical patterns. These 'proofs' last until someone who is genuinely expert in maths takes a look!

skeptic,

"If a monkey wrote a novel'?! Please. You're quite wrong about everything you said. Have you studied chaos theory? How about the latest in noetic science? Are you familiar with the discovery by MIT professor Seth Lloyd that this universe behaves as a 'quantum computer'?* Have you read my unified string (u21s19) theory and 'theory of everything': GOD=7_4 or FOD=6_4? Any of these alone debunk the concept of 'randomness', and combined, they definitely demand that statistical probability 'experts' rewrite their concepts.

*Wikipedia: "In his book, Programming the Universe, Lloyd contends that the universe itself is one big quantum computer producing what we see around us, and ourselves, as it runs a cosmic program."

I've moved this thread to pseudoscience not because the origional poster was advocating or supporting a pseudoscientific idea but because the topic of numerology, which is what "bible numerics" is, is a pseudoscience and this is a discussion about a pseudoscience.

Not to mention there is at least on supporter of pseudoscientific thought in the thread.

Basim, have you considered that there are other gods then me? Surely there must be... one other? Even if I am made of Godium, a truely knowing material?