[Avodah] Bible Codes: a Lie That Won’t Die

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 01:33:33PM -0400, Prof. Levine forwarded to Areivim:
> From http://tinyurl.com/7x2aza7
> Some Still Comforted by Making Faith Irrefutable as Physics

"Lie" is different than "false". It implies an intentional act of
misleading. The title is wrong.

> One reason that Bible Codes have gone out of fashion is that  
> mathematicians and statisticians have thoroughly, completely and  
> convincingly disproved them. For example,  
> <http://www.khunwoody.com/biblecodes/>Barry Simon of the Caltech  
> mathematics department has shown that any sufficiently large text will 
> have similar letter patterns in it. Famously, the same algorithms used in 
> the Bible Codes yielded similarly "prophetic" results when used on Hebrew 
> translations of "War and Peace."

Neither really did what the original code work claims. Yes, you can pick
pairs of words whose pairing (or 3, or 4) is semantically signficant
and find them as a "code" any large text. So, find one word, and then
repeatedly try different words as possible pairs and thirds until you get
a match. It's like saying a medication is effective by throwing out most
of the members of the clinical trial that fail to respond to the drug.

So, Drosnin's "prophecy" silliness was disproven by McKay. "Prophecy"
requires hunting for matching words, so of course it was found to fit
the above description.

But neither McKay or Simon actually addressed the original claim, that
prechosen pairings (or triplets or...) picked without an eye to what is
in the text are found abnormally often, and abnormally often they are
in relevent stretches of the chumash.

WRT the original claim, it boils down to whether we trust the authors
that the word pairs listed were chosen without any knowledge of which
would work. Did they really pick 32 random lab rats, or pick 32 successes
out of a pool of hundreds?

Simon writes:
    When mathematicians began to seriously look at the details, many
    questions were raised -- for example, it turns out that for 12
    of the 32 Rabbis, Prof. Havlin didn't use the Responsa database
    [42]. In response to a list of queries, Prof. Havlin provided a
    statement with various details about his construction of the list
    [43]. Prof. Havlin's testimony makes it clear that the list is not
    objective. That is, two well-meaning scholars starting from scratch
    and working independently would arrive at very different lists. He
    calls a large section of his document "Professional Judgements" and
    says he had to use discretion in making choices. Not even in Alice
    in Wonderland would a list that required judgements on the part of
    the list maker be called objective. Indeed, since he says in several
    places that he can't recall why he didn't include certain names,
    it is clear that not only wouldn't the list be the same if another
    scholar produced it, it wouldn't be the same if the same scholar
    produced it ten years later.

Notice he doesn't say Prof SZ Havlin admitted to knowing what would fit
an ELS before picking them. Just that there is enough "wiggle room", the
hundreds of possible lab rats do exist, whether or not they went to
the lab. Ironically, when Witztum and Rips went back with a cleaner list,
the effect was MORE pronounced.

As I posted a while back, my primary problem with the codes is not whether
or not they defy statistics. Frankly, few of us could assess that for
ourselves, and it will boil down to which subject authority we choose
to believe. My primary problem is that this is bad religion. R' Yochanan
reduced a talmid to a pile of bones because the student wouldn't believe
his statement about the pasuq until he saw it for himself. (BB 75a)
"Reiqa! Ilmalei ra'isa, lo he'emanta?! Melagleig al divrei chakhamim
atah!"

Mesorah has to have epistemic weight. It is a source of postulates,
no less sure than the postulates we collect through our senses (or in
this case, near-prophetic experience?). Somene who makes their Yahadus
depend on some outside proof missed the boat, and can't ever really
become a maamin.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Fortunate indeed, is the man who takes
micha at aishdas.org        exactly the right measure of himself,  and
http://www.aishdas.org   holds a just balance between what he can
Fax: (270) 514-1507      acquire and what he can use." - Peter Latham