******
From: Jerry Goodenough, J.Goodenough@uea.ac.uk
Reply-To: skeptic@listproc.hcf.jhu.edu
To: skeptic@listproc.hcf.jhu.edu
Michael Drosnin's book, 'The Bible Code', has been selling like the
proverbial
hot cakes here in the UK, mainly due to the enormous splash it got in
last
week's 'Daily Mail' over three days. (The 'Daily Mail' [for foreign
listmembers]
is not a supermarket tabloid a la WWN but rather the newspaper of the
politically and socially conservative ageing middle classes. And, as its
health
pages show, it never met a brand of loopiness or newagery it wasn't
prepared
to peddle endlessly) I'm almost tempted to hunt out a copy myself (not
BUY it,
you understand, just read it in the bookshop) since Drosnin claims that
the
Bible predicts, inter alia, the plays of William Shakespeare, and it
would be
good to have this disagreement with Philip Haldeman resolved one way or
another
with a few (lightly encoded) words from the man upstairs.....
However, today's paper carries a statement from Professors Eli Rips
himself,
repudiating the bestseller and its author:
"I have seen Michael Drosnin's book The Bible Code. I do not support Mr
Drosnin's work on the codes, or the conclusions he derives. The book
gives the
impression that I have done joint work with Mr Drosnin. This is not true.
There
is an impression that I was involved in finding the code relating of
Prime
Minister Rabin's assassination. This is also not true. I did witness in
1994 Mr
Drosnin 'predict' the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin. For me, it
was a
catalyst to ask whether we can, from a scientific point of view, attempt
to use
the codes to predict future events. After much thought, my categorical
answer is
no. All attempts to extract messages from Torah codes, or to make
predictions
based on them, are futile and of no value. This is not only my opinion,
but the
opinion of every scientist who has involved in serious codes research."
Professor Rips' opinions here will no doubt come as a great relief to the
inhabitants of Jerusalem. One of the few concrete predictions about the
future
that Drosnin was prepared to make (in the extracts I read) was that some
of the
Armageddon passages in the Bible refer to a terrorist detonation of a
nuclear
device in Jerusalem in 2006. Or possibly 2009. And much consequent death
and
destruction. This is the kind of clear, determinate and falsifiable
prediction
that I welcome from seers into the future, and I for one will be watching
to see
if it comes true. (Though from a safe distance......)
Jerry Goodenough
University of East Anglia
-------------------------
*****************
Wade T. Smith
morbius@us1.channel1.com | "There ain't nothin' you
wade_smith@harvard.edu | shouldn't do to a god."
morbius@cyberwarped.com |
********* http://www.channel1.com/users/morbius/ ********