{"id":270,"date":"2005-06-27T13:41:00","date_gmt":"2005-06-27T21:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/?p=270"},"modified":"2007-12-30T16:02:50","modified_gmt":"2007-12-31T00:02:50","slug":"the-fallacy-of-the-bible-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/?p=270","title":{"rendered":"The fallacy of the \"Bible Code\""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Famous skeptic Michael Shermer does a good job poking holes in Michael Drosnin's <em>Bible Code II<\/em> bestseller in Shermer's <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciam.com\/article.cfm?articleID=0005467F-2891-1EB7-BDC0809EC588EEDF\">12 May 2003 column<\/a> in Scientific American.  The column applies to these types of \"codes\" in general.<\/p>\n<p>I liked this part in particular:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> &#8230; in 1997 Drosnin proposed this test of his thesis [about bible codes]: \"When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in <em>Moby Dick<\/em>, I'll believe them.\"<\/p>\n<p>Australian mathematician Brendan McKay did just that, locating no fewer than nine political assassinations secreted in the great novel, along with additional discoveries in <em>War and Peace<\/em> and other tomes (see <a href=\"http:\/\/cs.anu.edu.au\/%7Ebdm\/dilugim\/moby.html\">http:\/\/cs.anu.edu.au\/~bdm\/dilugim\/moby.html<\/a>). 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 <em>Bible Code II<\/em> (see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nmsr.org\/biblecod.htm\">http:\/\/www.nmsr.org\/biblecod.htm<\/a>).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In addition to his <em>Moby Dick<\/em> and <em>War and Peace<\/em> analysis, Brendan McKay has <a href=\"http:\/\/cs.anu.edu.au\/%7Ebdm\/dilugim\/\">a nice collection of links<\/a> about these type of codes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Famous skeptic Michael Shermer does a good job poking holes in Michael Drosnin's Bible Code II bestseller in Shermer's 12 May 2003 column in Scientific American. The column applies to these types of \"codes\" in general. I liked this part in particular: &#8230; in 1997 <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/?p=270\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}