Hi,
I'm new to this group, so I hope you all won't mind a longish
"debut post". I'm a computer scientist, with a specialist interest
in biologically inspired algorithms; principally neural networks, and
I have also dabbled, with varying degrees of success with genetic
algorithms in the past. Neural networks are a branch of "statistical
pattern recognition", so looking for patterns in data is part and parcel
of what I do.
I'd like to offer a tentative response to the "Muslim numerology"
posting that Vernon Jenkins has drawn my attention to. I and a
colleague who is a keen amateur astronomer (also a Christian)
have looked into this, and here are our tentative conclusions.
I think it's important to look into things that potentially challenge
our beliefs, and assess them scientifically, rather than shrug them
off as obviously untrue.
The web-site mentioned claims to offer evidence for the Divine
Inspiration of the Quran by computing a value of the speed of
light that is in agreement with the measured value to around 7
significant figures, based on two verses from the Quran; notably
the equivalence of 1000 years in the sight of God to a single
day. This is also linked to a verse stating that the moon was
put there as a method of reckoning the years.
The conclusions are:
(1) The first thing to note is that if the calculation
is valid, it could just as easily be put forward as evidence of
Divine Inspiration of the Bible, which of course pre-dates the
Quran (based on Gen 1:14-16, Psalm 90:4 and 2Pet 3:8).
(2) We don't believe the calculation is valid; one step appears to be
completely indefensible.
(3) We are still puzzled by the degree of agreement to the measured
value of C.
I'll skip all the details of which convention is used to define "day" and "year";
anyone interest can check up again at
http://www.geocities.com/starpakistan/astronomy.html
But essentially if we plug the figures in in a straightforward way (12,000 lunar
orbits divided by the number of seconds in a day
then the "predicted" value of C comes
out too high, though in the right ball park (3.35x10^5 km/s).
Then the author magically multiplies by a "cos alpha" term, where alpha
is the average angular distance covered by the earth in a lunar
month. This, it is said, is to compensate for the distance
travelled by the earth round the sun; though the original calculation appears
to be in earth's frame of reference anyway, so this step appears suspect.
The author dresses
this up in impressive sounding language about Special and General
Relativity, yet no relativistic equations are apparent in the
calculation. It is clear that the multiplication by cos(alpha)
cannot be a correct formula; otherwise it should work for any
value of alpha; so if alpha happened to be 90 degrees, then the
resultant speed of light would be zero.
However, what is puzzling is that clearly alpha is not just an
arbitrary fiddle factor that has been put in to make the final
value match with C; it is a valid piece of astronomical data,
apparently relevant to the subject, but applied in a manner for
which we can't see the justification. If the author has indeed
been "retro-fitting" the data to match his pet theory, then he has
indeed been extremely fortunate in finding a plausible sounding
fiddle factor that fits so well.
So what is puzzling is that given a limited number of choices
(e.g. whether to use siderial or solar conventions; what other
figures to put in, and so forth) , that we can come to an
agreement for which the probability is around 1 in a million.
Several possibilities suggest themselves:
(1) It really is a colossal coincidence. (Though 1 in a million
makes it look unlikely; at this level, it at least deserves
further investigation).
However, it could be a coincidence; for a long time in
physics, I believe there was puzzlement as to how close the fine
structure constant was to the exact value 1/137; if it really was
that integer then interesting ramifications could ensue over
fundamental symmetries and so forth. It is in fact now known to
be around 1% off this figure (1/137.011) and the error estimates
make it extremely unlikely to have the integer value.
(2) The author of the paper really wanted to prove divine
inspiration of the Quran and spent 20 years looking at this and
other implicit relationships that could be derived from the text,
then making physics calculations; this one happened to be the lucky one
that matched. Again, I think this is rather unlikely; even if
1000 such calculations were made, the odds still come down to 1
in 1000, which is still highly suggestive of a real effect.
(3) That maybe there really is such an integer relationship;
even given the spurious nature of the calculation. It is
possible this is a bit of physics we don't yet know about; the
equation written down is not the one the author thinks it is, but
is still a valid relationship. In this case, I think the
relationship with the scriptural verse (Bible or Quran) cannot be
said to be more than entirely fortuitous.
---- By contrast, I would like to say that I believe the numerical observations on the patterns in Genesis 1:1 given in Vernon Jenkins' web site are worthy of more investigation than this.I would not go as far as Vernon in suggesting that this in some way can be said to validate the YEC position, but nonetheless, it seems to me that it's a phenomenon that can't be dismissed that easily. As someone on the list pointed out, it is "evidence" but evidence for what?
Of course, it is always possible to say why a particular number is "interesting", with a little ingenuity; that's one of the pleasures of "recreational mathematics" that numbers can be played with in this way. However, given N different numbers, in general there will be order N different reasons given as to why they are "interesting" (roughly one for each number).
But if the same number or the same reason keeps on cropping up over and over again, one begins to smell a rat. It has been said (by one of the people on the IEEE floating point standards committee) that the difference between a numerologist and a numerical analyst, is that the latter is an "equal opportunities" employer. To put it another way, as a numerical analyst, if one of my random number generators started behaving in a similar way, then I'd suspect something was wrong with it.
In fact the phenomenon of the number 37 was first drawn to my attention not by a Bible numericist, but by a quite distinguished maths professor, whose specialist fields are logic and the history of mathematics. My own interest stemmed from the tendency of classical composers to use number symbolism; this professor had published articles on Mozart and Beethoven, and I had published articles on the 20th Century Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
While this maths history professor is extremely dismissive of the notorious bible numericist Ivan Panin, whom he described to me as a "gullible jerk", he has read alternative texts on the widespread use of multiples of 37 in New Testament gematria, and he considers these to be valid scholarship. Example after example has been given, until you can't ignore the fact that this is significant. The most famous is the Greek name for "Jesus Christ" (Iesous Cristos), for which both components are multiples of 37 (888 + 1480).
His line of argument (and I've seen this argued elsewhere) is that this means that the Bible was _not_ written by God, but by human beings messing about with numbers, which human beings have done since time immemorial (and there is plenty of evidence that for example the composers Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Debussy, Bartok and Shostakovich did so).
His explanation for this is that humans have always believed that numbers and arithmetic are the only things that represent certainty; one can contest a scientific law, but not an arithmetical relationship.
Naturally, as a Christian who believes the bible is divinely inspired, I disagree totally with the above, as regards the origin of the biblical patterns; but the data then demands a response, which could be either:
(1) Cognitive dissonance. "I don't believe it's true; it must be a coincidence" etc.
(2) Let's look into this; see if we can find if it really is statistically significant, and if so, what is our explanation of it?
I think it is worthwhile drawing the list's attention to this, because, naturally a Christians, we believe the Word of God _is_ divinely inspired, numerical patterns or not. As people other than bible numericists have noted that this is a phenomenon of the data, we ought at least to take it seriously and start to think what the explanation could be.
I really don't think straight dismissal is an option; the idea that the name of Jesus Christ could have been dreamt up by a human messing about with numbers is something that surely strikes at the core of what we believe.
Or to put it another way; people are more than happy to argue Human Intelligent Design when something appears designed like that; we must either get together a cast iron case that it's a pure coincidence, or concede that there might just be an element of Divine Intelligent Design.
I personally don't think it's a coincidence, given the overwhelming amount of evidence Vernon and others have accumulated.
Sincerely hope the above wasn't too long and rambling for a newcomer!
In Christ, Iain Strachan.
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