Making stuff up, Missler-style!

You may have all heard about the concept of 'Bible Codes', 'Torah Codes', or 'Koran Codes'.

Well, the fellows down at AE have stirred my statistically critical ire with their post analysing the problems with Bible Codes. I couldn't agree with them more.

I'm particularly annoyed at the way that I swallowed the concept of Bible Codes with total credulity when I was a child, particularly through the teachings of international business man, prophet, and former Branch Chief of the Dept. of Guided Missiles*, Chuck Missler.

Chuck Missler has an entire section of his website dedicated to elucidating the prophetic codes apparently hidden in scripture.

More specifically, the idea is that if one examines the hebrew Torah (the first five books of our 'Bible'), you can find words spelled out by picking a beginning letter and moving along equidistantly to spell out a word. The problem is, the equidistant letter system (ELS) is deeply flawed. For one thing, there are no rules as to how far along you have to move, nor where you must begin. In fact, ELS can pretty much be used to spell out all manner of nonsense.

Here to prove that particular point is Dr James D. Price and his website that uses ELS to produce negative bible codes.

Yes, you heard it correctly. Dr Price uses ELS to produce contradictory statements ("There is no Spirit. There is a Spirit"), anti-biblical messages ("God is not YHWH", "Jesus is not God"), and some just plain funny ones like, "Jehovah is dead" (go, Nietzsche!), and "Satan is Jehovah" (O rly? Srsly?).

Next time somebody tries to foist the totally uncritical and spiritually abusive practice of bible codes on you, or perform retroactive post-dictions of historical world events somehow 'hidden' in scripture, just look at their Bible and tell them: "There are signs. There are no signs."

[* if Missler really knows about this kind of stuff because of his professional career, then either he knows what statistical nonsense he is teaching and is therefore a dishonest liar, or he doesn't realise what he is doing because he has drunk too much of the koolade]