home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
The California Collection
/
TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr
/
his126
/
bibl02c.arj
/
BIBL02C.TXT
Wrap
Text File
|
1989-03-10
|
5KB
|
90 lines
Comments on "Computer Proof" article.
. One thing I've always wondered about that "computer analysis":
which version of the Greek and Hebrew does it use? While the
mathematical arguments as presented might be valid (not that I grant
the validity of the approach) for a particular text in, say,
manuscript A, those same arguments would collapse completely if
applied to a variant reading in manuscript B.
. Let's look, for example, at the arguments the paper (called by
the way something to the effect of "Computer Proof that the Bible Was
Written By God") uses for the text of Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth". The paper starts out by
demonstrating that the original Hebrew for this had exactly seven
words (having already pointed out that in the Bible seven is clearly
the number of God, a "fact" which itself is highly suspect). In
addition, it continues, these seven words contain 28 (4x7) letters, of
which the first three words have 14 and the last four 14. Of these
latter four, the fourth and fifth have a total of seven letters, and
the sixth and seventh together also contain seven letters. And the
three "leading words" "God", "heaven" and "earth" have an aggregate of
14 letters. In addition, the first, middle and last letters of the
sentence total 133 (19x7), and the first and last letters of each word
together have a value of 1393 (199x7). The paper goes on and on in
like manner for first this verse and then for the entirety of the
Bible, but this should be sufficient for my purposes.
. The problems of this approach are too numerous to cover in
detail. I'll point out just a few. First of all, the paper never
gets around to explaining just why it should be so significant that
all these multiples of seven can be found in Scripture. It claims
this proves that God wrote the Bible, but it never demonstrates just
how it is the argument supports such a conclusion. What possible
motivation would God have had for sticking all these sevens into
Scripture in the first place? Why should he care?
. In addition, while the paper goes to great pains to point out all
these seven-combinations, what is equally significant -- and this the
paper fails to realize -- is all the combinations that don't aggregate
to seven. For example, while it is true that the first three words of
Genesis 1:1 when grouped together contain a number of letters which is
divisible by seven, it is equally true that the first FOUR words of
the sentence together do NOT. Why should God have chosen to make the
first three words total seven but not the first four? And while the
first, middle and last letters of the sentence total a multiple of
seven, the first, middle and last letters of each word do not. And,
as the paper points out, it is true that the aggregate of the 2nd
through 6th words is 896, which is 128x7, that is two to the SEVENth
power times seven. However, if it's so significant that the
multiplier 128 here is the seventh power of two, why is it not equally
significant that other multipliers (such as the 19 in 19x7, the 58 in
58x7 or the 199 in 199x7) which the paper "discovers" are NOT seventh
powers of 2 (or of any other number for that matter)? And why stop
with the the aggregate of the first through seventh words, or of the
second through sixth? What about the third through fifth? Why don't
they total a multiple of seven? The fact is, for every combination of
seven the paper presents, one could easily find six which don't divide
by seven.
. The problem with the approach is that it fails to take into count
basic probabilities. If one starts with a group of letters, or words,
and starts pulling out combinations at random, the chances are 100
percent, for example, that the total of each combination so examined
is a multiple of 1 (since all numbers are multiples of one). The
chances are 50 percent that the total is a multiple of 2, 33 percent
that it is a multiple of three, and 25 percent that it is evenly
divisible by 4. Similarly, 1 in five -- or 20 percent -- of the
combinations will divide evenly by 5, and about 17 percent -- one in
six -- will be a multiple of six. Thus, by sheer random chance one
seventh of all combinations found will be an even multiple of 7.
. The laws of probability tell us that of the 28 letters in Genesis
1:1 268,435,455 -- more than a quarter of a billion -- combinations
may be made. Of these 268 million combinations, statistically, 1 in
7, or 14 percent, will be divisible by 7. Thus, there are over 37
million combinations of 7 in the first verse of Genesis alone! Surely
proof that God wrote the Bible, right? On the other hand, there are
nearly 45 million multiples of six, 53 million multiples of 5, 67
million multiples of 4, 89 million multiples of 3, and 134 million
multiples of 2.
. For the arguments in "Computer Proofs That the Bible is the
Infallible Word of God" to have any validity, then, the authors must
first prove that the number of seven combinations they have found
significantly exceeds the 37 million which random chance says may be
found in Genesis 1:1 alone. Frankly, I don't think they can do it.
. Calvin Culver