From: Michael Roberts (michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk)
Date: Mon Mar 10 2003 - 05:39:14 EST
I will put this in my church magazine and get my Sunday school teachers to explain to 5 year olds.
I think it is so crystal clear that even the most intellectually-impaired person will grasp immediately and will promptly be converted
Michael
----- Original Message -----
From: Vernon Jenkins
To: asa@calvin.edu
Sent: Monday, March 10, 2003 8:11 AM
Subject: Re: By Design
Dear All,
Herewith a short paper which brings together my principal reasons for believing Genesis 1:1 - as currently found in any Hebrew Bible - to be an intricately designed artefact - well deserving of 'case study' status in the field of non-biological ID.
Sincerely,
Vernon
PS To Wayne, John, David and George: I shall shortly be responding to each of your mailings.
V
Creation's Complement
Some observations concerning
the numerical structure of Genesis 1:1
Introduction - On the basis of empirical evidence gathered over the past 25 or so years (currently available for viewing at http://www.otherbiblecode.com) the author claims the opening verse of the Judaeo-Christian Scriptures to be the most remarkable combination of words ever written, and a standing miracle. Others, typically, see the evidence as ".too weak to consider seriously." - though it remains unclear whether or not such opinion is founded upon a proper assessment of the facts. Our principal purposes here are, (1) to refute the suggestion that these phenomena may reasonably be attributed to chance and, (2) to support the alternative view that they speak powerfully of having been intelligently designed.
Preliminary considerations - A natural number (or positive integer) is normally encountered either, (a) as an attribute of some group of similar objects - to be determined by a process of counting or, (b) as a string of symbols to be interpreted.
Situations of the first kind may be readily idealised by establishing a one-to-one correspondence between the objects concerned and a set of uniform counters - typically spheres. It is then sometimes the case that the counters representing a particular number may be packed/stacked to form a simple symmetrical 2D or 3D shape - as, for example, an equilateral triangle, or a cube. Such numbers are said to be figurate (specifically, triangular and cubic, in the examples given) - and their study, numerical geometry. Thus defined, there are some 513 figurate numbers in the range 1 - 10, 000 of which 34 are bifigurate (as, for example, 64 - the square of 8 and the cube of 4). Only 2 are trifigurate, viz 37 and 91* - the first also being the difference between the cubes of 4 and 3 (i.e. 64 - 27), and the second, their sum. It is important to observe that over the wider range, (1) no examples of numbers possessing a higher order of figuracy have been encountered and, (2) no other examples of trifiguracy have been found.
We therefore conclude that as a pair of numero-geometrical absolutes, 37 and 91 possess the highest profile of all known natural numbers.
Turning now to the symbolic representation of numbers: today, these usually appear as groups of characters drawn from the set of ten, {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9} - which represent the coefficients of successive powers of ten, read from right to left and beginning 10^0 . Clearly, 10 (itself a triangular number) is an essential (though hidden) feature of all numbers represented in this way; it is referred to as the base or radix of this, the denary system. But, of course, any natural number (excluding 1) may be called upon to function as radix. For example, the binary system has 2 as radix, octal has 8, and hexadecimal, 16 - these particularly relevant to the fields of computing and communications. However, for anatomical and other reasons it appears that 10 was always destined to be the favoured radix for general use. But before the universal adoption of these elegant positional systems - involving the use of the zero character to indicate empty powers of the radix - history records the many alternatives that have been tried and subsequently discarded. Included among these are the Greek and Hebrew alphabetic numbering systems in which each letter was assigned a fixed value - a string of letters then being used to represent a given number, reckoned as the sum of its constituent letters. These systems are significant in the present context for they justify the reading of copies of the original scriptural texts as sets of numbers.
Just as certain numbers are absolutely associated with the symmetries of numerical geometry, so these, or others, may reveal eye-catching patterns that are radix -dependent.
For example, 666 - that uniquely triangular multiple of 37 - loses much of its visual appeal when expressed in octal as 1232. Further, only as a denary object does it reveal the related triangular numbers 6 (first perfect number) and 66 as substrings of itself. This admirably illustrates the fact that, provided he has knowledge of the number system in current use, the would-be designer of eye-catching word/number phenomena has at his disposal a rich palette of possibilities upon which to build an impressive foundational structure.
The Genesis 1:1 phenomena - Some time ago the author prepared an illustrated introductory page outlining the salient features of these phenomena. This may be found at http://homepage.virgin.net/vernon.jenkins/Evidences.htm; it provides the necessary basis for understanding the subsequent discussion.
The argument in focus - Of the many reasons for believing the OBC (Other Bible Code) phenomena to be intelligently designed, the following independent features are particularly significant:
a.. Both trifigurate numbers (37 and 91) together with the numbers formed by reversing their digits (73 and 19) are involved in the factorisations of the 3 triangles that occur as sums of word sequences within the first 8 of Scripture. Thus: words 1 - 7 yield 2701, or 37x73; words 1 - 8, 3003, or 91x33; and words 6 - 7, 703, or 37x19.
a.. The Genesis 1:1 triangles, 2701 and 703, together with 1801 - the hexagon represented by the sum of the word sequence 4 - 8 - are precisely coordinated. In other words, the smaller triangle perfectly inscribes the hexagon and, together, they perfectly inscribe the larger triangle. Further, this interaction of the triangles generates a triplet of 666s - the pattern 6.6.6 (found as the cubic outline of the larger triangle) providing a significant visual match with what is found inside!
a.. The first 5 significant figures of pi appear when the numerical attributes of Genesis 1:1 are inserted in the formula
(Product of letters x No of letters) / (Product of words x No of words)
[The same formula applied to the Greek of John 1:1 yields Euler's e]
Conclusions - The Hebrew and Greek words which form the basis of all our Bible translations are particularly attractive to those who, for some reason or other, might wish to lay the writing of a meaningful passage of text upon an impressive numerical foundation; in which case, what better principles can be imagined than those outlined above, involving the numerical absolutes of figuracy combined with related radix-dependent patterns?
Thus, on the basis of the evidence presented here, I submit that the numerical structure underlying Genesis 1:1 is no miracle of chance, but rather the outcome of a purposeful act involving the fusion of a meaningful and fundamental plaintext with an equally-informative ciphertext. In modern parlance, what we have here is undoubtedly an instance of non-biological ID.
Vernon Jenkins MSc
2003-03-09
*37 may exist as hexagon, hexagram or truncated square (or octagon); 91, as triangle, hexagon or pyramid.
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