Review by E.C. McMullen Jr.
SHOULD YOU? TIP JAR THE OMEGA CODE MOVIE REVIEW MEGIDDO: OMEGA CODE 2 MOVIE REVIEW THE OMEGA CODE / THE BIBLE CODE

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This whole idea of a "Bible Code" (term coined after the fact by Michael Drosnin) was a long standing myth without credence until a group of Israeli mathematicians (Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips and Yoav Rosenberg) published an article in the journal Statistical Science (1994 Vol. 9, No. 3) claiming to have found a workable method of "breaking the Torah code".

The Torah Code myth was possibly originated by the "occult" sect of Jews who refer to the Qabbalah / Kabbalah, which is supposed to contain 84 coding schemes when properly interpreted. Witzum, Rips, and Rosenberg came up with the Equidistant Letter Sequences or ELS, in combination with an arrangement of two-dimensional text read as three dimensional.

Ahem.

Statistical Science journal soon debunked the method in 1995 through the work of Dror Bar-Natan, Maya Bar-Hillel and Gil Kalai; professors at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, and Brendan McKay; Australian National University.

The Bible (Torah) is made up of many books and stories compiled into one, and the theory that the code reveals God as the ultimate author of the Bible means that some of the books within, like the entire New Testament, are false. Because the ELS matrices combo (according to Witzum, Rips, and Rosenberg) only works with the books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

Even Doron Witzum's students quickly realized that their teacher's math was wrong and his results highly overstated. Doron was soon making claims like; the Bible revealed the sub-camps of Auschwitz are in . . . Auschwitz (!). Really Doron? No shit?

The Torah Code of Witztum, Rips, and Rosenberg promotes Judaisim and refutes Christianity (the method appears to work best in Genesis and not at all with the New testament. So Jesus ... never existed?), and that's why... writer Michael Drosnin, like Hal Lindsey, accepts it as a proof of a Christan God.

Drosnin claims that all modern human history, from Hitler to the Kennedy assassinations, were / are all foretold in the Bible.

With THE BIBLE CODE, Michael utterly missed world changing events like September 11, 2001, which began the launch of what some historians have called a world war. In fact, he failed to accurately predict anything except the one thing that everyone else involved saw as clear as day: The assassination of Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzak Rabin.

Many were predicting the PM's death because Hammas made it clear that they would stop at nothing to kill him. This was compounded by Yitzak openly mocking terrorist threats by being flagrantly careless in public about his personal security. Even as he knew there was a "target" on his back, he spent his last few years taunting would be assassins. Michael got this one right, just as nearly every "Oracle" without a Bible Code.

Naturally, Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times fell all over themselves lauding Michael Drosnin's THE BIBLE CODE.

In THE BIBLE CODE II, Michael updates everything he said in the first book, since he was embarrassingly caught with his pants down over the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

THE BIBLE CODE II has its own problems, in that it utterly failed to predict:
The world-wide economic disaster,
The election of the first non-white U.S. president,
The Columbia Shuttle tragedy,
The devastating tsunami that wiped through the countries of the Indian Ocean, killing thousands;
Hurricane Katrina which wiped through the U.S., and more. No accurate predictions beyond obvious chance.

So it's worthless at predicting the future but great at telling us what we already know!

Yet the Baltimore Sun lavished praise upon it and it became a NYT bestseller.

Look for corrective updates in THE BIBLE CODE III. Michael Drosnin is such a massive failure as a person with any ability to validate the "Bible Code" he claims to believe, that he actually does a better job of debunking it than anyone else out there. Michael is incapable of using the illusionary "Bible Code" to predict anything until after it happens. Then Michael sees it everywhere.

Meanwhile:

Retired DOD cryptologist, Harold Gans, who corroborated the work of Witztum, Rips, and Rosenberg, refutes Drosnin's claims.

Well what are you going to do when you are trying to ride upon the backs of those you deem as experts, and your own experts refute you? What do you do when your only sources of verification are calling you a liar?

Drosnin denounced him. Without offering a shred of evidence to support his claim, Drosnin denounced him.

Next, one of the original writers of the Code method, Dr. Eliyahu Rips, joined Gans in publicly denouncing the hack work of Michael Drosnin. What's more, Rips recanted the idea that the Bible can be used to foretell the future (which is blasphemous anyway according to the Bible, as anyone who actually reads the Bible would know!).

Drosnin denounced Rips. Understand, Michael is knee-jerk denouncing the very guys that he elevated to the level of world genius in his book, THE BIBLE CODE.

The main problem with the usage of ELS is how arbitrary it is: You can use it to say anything. For example, when his back was against the wall, Michael Drosnin said,
"When my critics find a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them."

In 1999, Statistician Brendan McKay, did just that! He accurately produced an ELS analysis of Moby Dick that predicted Indira Ghandi's assassination, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, and Yitzhak Rabin, and even the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

As many skeptics accurately predicted (without a Bible Code) Drosnin refused to make good on his word and instead, denounced McKay.

As every statistician knows, you really can use statistics to prove or disprove anything. Statistics are a mathematician's parlor game and enjoyable mental exercise. It is a credible field, but can also be abused by those who understand it against those who don't.

Mathematician David Thomas, accurately using the ELS system on Genesis, found 60 different instances of the phrase "the code is bogus". The biggest "Code Cluster" ever found by proponents of the Bible Code ELS method was 53, in Isaiah.

Without a shred of contrary evidence, Drosnin denounced him.

Harvard mathematics professor (and Orthodox rabbi) Shlomo Sternberg exposed major fallacies in the original work (of Witztum, Rips, and Rosenberg) by pointing out that "One of the oldest complete texts of the Bible, the Leningrad codex (1009) differs from the Koran version used by Rips and Witztum in forty-one places in Deuteronomy alone."

Without a shred of contrary evidence, Drosnin denounced Sternberg for denouncing the people Michael denounced!

So mathematicians, statisticians, Biblical scholars, rabbis, and even the people who created the original method for unveiling the Torah code, refute Michael Drosnin. Still, with no credentials and lots of book sales, Drosnin, with nothing to refute their evidence against him, calls them all liars. And remember, he calls them liars Even While he holds up their genius at discovering and mapping out the Bible Code in the first place (!).

But never take my word for it: Go to your local library and read.

Hal Lindsey
Who also served as Biblical advisor for THE OMEGA CODE. Why would a company like TBN, created by born again Christian televangelist ministers, need a guy who calls himself an "Oracle" (after the pagan Greek and Roman Oracles) to tell them what the Bible means?

Hal Lindsey, on his own site (not a fan site), calls himself an Oracle! Does anyone remember what Jesus said about those who claim to see into the future? Is ANY ONE of his followers ever bothering to READ their Bible?

CRACKING THE BIBLE CODE
by Psychiatrist
Dr. Jeffery Santinover

THE GENESIS FACTOR: The Amazing Mysteries Of The Bible Code
by Yakov Rambsel

etc.

As you can see, there is plenty money to be made in fraud and the promotion of fraud, but little in the debunking of fraud. Hoax is good money! Go invent one of your own!

Here are some other links that may interest you:

Cretinism or Evilution?

csicop.org

onthenet.com

Skepdic.com

e-Skeptic.de

BibleCodeDigest.com

This article copyright 2002 & 2010 by E.C.McMullen Jr.

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