Re: Numerics

I would like to point out that having taken the time to look in to Vernon's
work on the numerics, it is my opinion that there is much more to it than
either Glenn's parody, or much of Panin's work.

No-one so far has responded to Vernon's comment about coordinated
geometries. This is far more difficult IMO to write off as coincidence than
the accumulation of many multiples of 7 (or 5 in Glenn's case).

I realise that this may not be most peoples' cup of tea, and I have spent
some time myself looking into it before coming to my conclusions. I think
there may be principled scientific ways of explaining it (possibly using
Kolmogorov complexity theory), but I can't give a definitive statement as
yet.

I will state here, as Vernon already knows, that I do _not_ accept that his
discoveries in any way support a literal/historical interpretation of
Genesis Ch 1. Nor do I say it "proves" Divine Inspiration of the Bible. That
is one possible conclusion (that it's a watermark), but it could be a human
contrivance ( mathematician Ivor Grattann-Guinness believes this to be the
case).

This would be easier to discuss if one could first ask the question as to
whether it is deliberate design & then leave till later the nature of the
designer (who might or might not have a capital D).

Iain.

On 6/4/05, Randy Isaac <rmisaac@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
>
> With the recent exchange between Glenn and Vernon fresh in my mind, I was
> intrigued when I read the following paragraphs in Alton Everest's history of
> the ASA. Peter Stoner is one of the five founders of the ASA. He was a
> mathematician and an astronomer.
> "Peter Stoner's background in mathematics caused him to be incensed at a
> book on Bible numerics he encountered. It was a popularization of Canadian
> Ivan Panin's work entitled "Astounding New Discoveries" written by Karl G.
> Sabiers. Stoner was able to confer with both Sabiers and his financial
> backer, chemist Albert Nobell in the Los Angeles area.
> "Panin's work claimed to prove the Bible inspired by assigning
> conventionally accepted numeric values to the letters in the original
> languages then demonstrating inspiration by an exceptional number of
> additive combinations divisible by 7. Each such number was called a
> "feature". Many combinations were considered: the number of words in a
> passage, number of letters in a word, the value of each individual letter in
> a word, etc. The number of features Panin found were far below the number
> that should exist if taken at random. Panin had not considered the random
> requirement.
> "Stoner's careful dealing with Sabiers and Nobell undoubtedly contributed
> to Sabiers work fading from the scene. Who can forget Stoner telling, with a
> twinkle in his eye, that by Panin's calculations he had computed that "The
> Prologue to Evangeline" is more inspired than Genesis!"
> The references cited are:
> Letter, Peter W. Stoner to H. Harold Hartzler, 7 June 1947
> Stoner, Peter W. "Dr. Ivan Panin's Work on Bible Numerics", Yearbook of
> the American Scientific Affiliation, 1947.
> Randy
>

-- 
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There are 3 types of people in the world.
Those who can count and those who can't.
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