http://www.submission.org/math-ap1.html

One of the most interesting reads I have had in awhile. I've seen theological interpretations of mathematical systems in the Talmud, but never before in the Quran. Any thoughts? What is the probability that this could arise randomly?

Well it looks like this is based on a translation to English, and so is completely ridiculous.

For example, many people spell "Quran" as "Koran"---there's no "correct" way to spell it because it's not a word in English.

Also, there is no such thing as a "direct translation". One can only try to convey the same message in two languages. So in this sense this is complete bullshit:)

About the Talmud---are you talking about the "Bible Code"? I know some Jewish mathematicians basically put the Talmud in a matrix. As far as I understand it, you take some word, like "Osama bin Laden" and enter it into a computer, and the computer sifts through all of the possible matrices untill it finds one matrix that contains the word "Osama bin Laden". Then it basically becomes a word find: you look for other words diagonally and horizontally which supposedly tell you things about Osama bin Laden.

This, of course, can happen in any text of sufficient length, and a professor in Australia showed that one could do the same thing with Moby Dick. (This prompted some to believe that Herman Mellville was also inspired by God!)

Also, if you write "Al Gore" in ASCII characters (incl. the space) and add them up you get....

97+108+32+103+111+114+101=???

BenTheMan:
Well it looks like this is based on a translation to English, and so is completely ridiculous.

For example, many people spell "Quran" as "Koran"---there's no "correct" way to spell it because it's not a word in English.

Also, there is no such thing as a "direct translation". One can only try to convey the same message in two languages. So in this sense this is complete bullshit


This is just not true. If you actually read the article instead of posting your knee-jerk reaction, you will see that all of the additive functions he uses take the gematrical values of Arabic characters (i.e. numbers assigned to letters) as they were originally posed in the Quran. All languages in this part of the world (Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic) have a gematrical value system.

Someone actually please read the article instead of writing this off as religious bullshit?? I am a skeptical reader, and not a religious, let alone Muslim, person. It seems that the probability this could arise randomly is quite low.

Sorry if I miscounted. I thought (for some reason) that Q was the nineteenth letter of the alphabet. Now you know my weakness...

For the first time in history we have a scripture with built-in proof of divine authorship - a superhuman mathematical composition.

How can I NOT write it off as religous bullshit???

Are the verse numbers in the Quran universal? They were added by hand in the Bible.

I used a time-share terminal, connected by telephone to a giant computer. To test my hypothesis, I decided to look at the single - lettered Quranic Initials -"Q" (Qaaf) of Suras 42 and 50, "S" (Saad) of Suras 7, 19, and 38, and "N" (Noon) of Sura 68. As detailed in my first book MIRACLE OF THE QURAN: SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MYSTERIOUS ALPHABETS (Islamic Productions, 1973), many previous attempts to unravel the mystery had failed.

Sigh. This explicitly states that he used a translation. There is not a direct map from Arabic to English.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_code

Or, if you think that any book of sufficient length won't have some numerical coincidences:

http://www.nmsr.org/code19.htm

Clearly Allah thinks highly of the Declaration of Independance.

Also check this thread:

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=64328

It seems that the probability this could arise randomly is quite low. That's one of those famous sentences, along with "what could possibly go wrong?" and "hey guys, watch this" and a couple of others.

There's a useful counter-phrase: "Once is luck, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action." Now, identify your enemy and you've got it sussed.

Aid to identification: http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html

BenTheMan:
Sigh. This explicitly states that he used a translation. There is not a direct map from Arabic to English.

you're just plain wrong. I took a year of Arabic in college. the characters in parentheses are the Arabic letters (most of which have English equivalents that have been used in the article because it is written in English.) If he used the names of the Arabic letters, people who don't know Arabic, like yourself, would be confused.

iceaura:

Aid to identification: http://cs.anu.edu.au/~bdm/dilugim/moby.html
what is this crap? I never mentioned the Bible Code. I don't think that it's a unique or even impressive mathematical exposition of the qualities inherent to a text. I did mention that I have seen theological interpretations of math in the Talmud. but that was referring to this:

http://www.math.umd.edu/~jmr/MathTalmud.html

i wasn't asking for an opinion of hermeneutics applied to religious texts, just the probability that this could arise naturally.

apparently, one article i saw states that the probability of the sum of any combination (n choose k where k goes from 1 to n) being a multiple of 19 is around 89% when n = 5.

I took a year of Arabic in college. the characters in parentheses are the Arabic letters (most of which have English equivalents that have been used in the article because it is written in English.)

Fine I will concede this point.

i wasn't asking for an opinion of hermeneutics applied to religious texts, just the probability that this could arise naturally.

And I thought I more than proved that such seemingly "random" occurences happen in multiple places. People always seem to take this as a sign that their creator is sending them messages. Some Jews believe in the Bible code and some Muslims, aparently, believe in the "19" code.

I also provided a link that shows where the same logic was applied to the Declaration of Independance, and a similar code was found.

What else do you want?

The point is this---you can always find some seemingly "unrandom" correlation if you want to.

apparently, one article i saw states that the probability of the sum of any combination (n choose k where k goes from 1 to n) being a multiple of 19 is around 89% when n = 5.

This should be easy enough to work out. Hang on.

Well, you get (in English) something like 1381380 combinations of five letters. Now you have to figure out how to assign A=1, etc., and calculate the total of the comvinations.

Hmm. Maybe someone smarter than me should be trying this. I wonder if you can write a computer code to generate all of these things. I dunno...

I'll think about it some more.

http://www.submission.org/math-ap1.html

One of the most interesting reads I have had in awhile. I've seen theological interpretations of mathematical systems in the Talmud, but never before in the Quran. Any thoughts? What is the probability that this could arise randomly?

here is an ayat 30 from surah 74 in Quran:

" 30. Over it are Nineteen."
that can be seen at
http://www.islamicity.com/mosque/QURAN/74.htm
it is interesting that it also mentions 19 in Quran itself

I've heard that there are meaningful constructions of words based on the numerical values of letters in the Talmud, though I don't know what they are.

It makes some sense that the authors would encrypt certain parts of the bible in such a manner. For instance, the Torah was first written without vowels. Everywhere you see LORD, in caps, in the bible, they were using the tetragrammaton, or four unpronouncable consonants. In english, they correspond to YHWH, from which we get Yahweh.

No, wait, I'm wrong.

In english, they correspond to YHWH, from which we get Yahweh.

I had a religion professor who said that it should probably be pronounced as Yahwooh.

can you people keep this stuff in the religion forum, please.

God Bless you Leopold.

Also, if you write "Al Gore" in ASCII characters (incl. the space) and add them up you get....

97+108+32+103+111+114+101=???

Aren't these biblical numbers?

Aren't these biblical numbers?

If by biblical you mean ASCII, then yes.

I can honestly say "I did not know that".

You learn something new everyday.

According to the OP link, it says ;

Any reader of this book can easily verify the Quran's mathematical miracle. The word "God" (Allah) is written in bold capital letters throughout the text. The cumulative frequency of occurrence of the word "God" is noted at the bottom of each page in the left hand corner. The number in the right hand corner is the cumulative total of the numbers for verses containing the word "God." The last page of the text, Page 372, shows that the total occurrence of the word "God" is 2698, or 19x142. The total sum of verse numbers for all verses containing the word "God" is 118123, also a multiple of 19 (118123 = 19x6217).

At first glance this doesn't strike me as being all that difficult to do,especially if I planned it to come out this way from the beginning (assuming that I'm the author of course).

There are only 2 conditions ;

1) that the # of times(lets call it "N") in the book I use the proper name of the god must be a multiple of 19 (no remainder, such that N mod 19 = 0).

Pronouns would be very useful here. Accomplishing this trick alone would be simple. To get to a multiple of 19, I need only to add verses with the godly name or substitute pronouns in other places.(a combination of both would probably be required).

2) That the sum of the "verse numbers" that contain the godly name be a multiple of 19.

First question would be, how are verses numbers assigned ? If it is done like in the Bible, sometimes it's a sentence,sometimes a couple of them and verse numbers are reset to 1 for every new chapter or book.

If the numbers of words /sentences that make up a verse is also variable, then this becomes a much easier trick to duplicate. This also becomes dependent on how books/chapers are differentiated. if they can be of variable length, this trick becomes much much easier. And here is an indicator. if the relative sizes of books and chapters shows a good bit of statistical variation, then this trick would not be so very difficult.(and if that is so for the Qu'ran, then it's an indication that this is what they did)

If the definition of a verse is fixed, that is some hard and fast rule (a verse is exactly one sentance or x number of words, etc), it's more difficult, but not at all impossible.

And again, if, I , the author, plan this from the initial writing, I don't see this as all that difficult to just improvise.

This doesn't at all give me any indication of divine authorship. Quite the opposite, it shows that a human author planned and executed it. Why 19 ? Good question....But, if the author mentions this number in the text, it's even more an indicator of a human author.

I would bet that I could pull this off in an english text and without much trouble at all . Provided ;

1. verse # are reset for each book/chapter.
2. a verse can be variable within limits.(I don't need this one, but it would make it simpler)
3. Books and chapters can be of variable length.
4. I can use pronouns like "it was God's plan that", "it was His plan that..."

With these 4 conditions, no really difficult mathematics are even required. This could be fairly easily improvised.(I could do it in either of my 2 languages).

If I'm the author, think this through..................

Consider I can add a verse anywhere I want (with or sans the gldly name). Consider that I can do this specifically to resequence all the subsequent verses in a chapter.

Maybe I'll try it in the next post................just by simple improvisation.

I'll start with Bob River's parody of the Joan Osbornes "What if God was one of us". River's parody is "What if god smoked cannabis". And instead of 19
I'll use the prime number 7 instead of 19 (it should illustrate the principle). !9 would only be slightly more difficult and some Biblical and NT people think that 7 is some sort of magic value anyway !


The original

If God had long hair
And a goatee,
And if his eyes looked pretty glazed...
If He looked spaced out
Would you buy his story?
Would you believe he had an eye infection?
And yeah, yeah, God he looks baked
And yeah, yeah, God He smells good,
And yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah...
What if God smoked cannabis?
Hit the bung like some of us?
Drove a tie-dyed microbus,
And he subscribed to Rolling Stone?
When God made this place,
In the beginning,
Did He plant any seeds?
Or did he put them there for Adam and Eve,
So they'd be hungry for the apple that the snake
Was always offering?

Ther are 5 original occurences of the word "god" (I included possessive forms). I need 7, so I will subsitute the word "god" for a couple of the pronouns Rivers used. Done here ;

If God had long hair
And a goatee,
And if his eyes looked pretty glazed...
If God looked spaced out *
Would you buy his story?
Would you believe he had an eye infection?
And yeah, yeah, God he looks baked
And yeah, yeah, God He smells good,
And yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah...
What if God smoked cannabis?
Hit the bung like some of us?
Drove a tie-dyed microbus,
And he subscribed to Rolling Stone?
When God made this place,
In the beginning,
Did God plant any seeds? *
Or did he put them there for Adam and Eve,
So they'd be hungry for the apple that the snake
Was always offering?

Ok, I added 2 occurences(I put a "*" after the lines where I removed a pronoun and substituted god.

So, all I've got to do now is to get the sum of the verse #'s that contain the word "God" to be a multiple of 7. And I get to assign the verse numbers !


Let's start with just adding them more or less logically....and work with them


Chap 1

1 If God had long hair *
2 And a goatee,
3 And if his eyes looked pretty glazed...
4 If God looked spaced out *
5 Would you buy his story?
6 Would you believe he had an eye infection?
7 And yeah, yeah, God he looks baked *
8 And yeah, yeah, God He smells good, *
9 And yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah...
10 What if God smoked cannabis? *
11 Hit the bung like some of us?
12 Drove a tie-dyed microbus,
13 And he subscribed to Rolling Stone?
14 When God made this place, *
15 In the beginning,
16 Did God plant any seeds? *
17 Or did he put them there for Adam and Eve,
18 So they'd be hungry for the apple that the snake
19 Was always offering?


So, with this verse #ing we have "god" at 1,4,7,8,10,14,16. That totals up to
60. So, 60 mod 7 is 4. or (7 - 60 mod 7 = 3). So, it seems that all we need to do is to add an extra verse between 8 and 10. Since there aren't any hard and fast rules on verses ;


Chap 1

1 If God had long hair *
2 And a goatee,
3 And if his eyes looked pretty glazed...
4 If God looked spaced out *
5 Would you buy his story?
6 Would you believe he had an eye infection?
7 And yeah, yeah, God he looks baked *
8 And yeah, yeah, God He smells good, *
9 And yeah, yeah,
10 yeah yeah yeah...
11 What if God smoked cannabis? *
12 Hit the bung like some of us?
13 Drove a tie-dyed microbus,
14 And he subscribed to Rolling Stone?
15 When God made this place, *
16 In the beginning,
17 Did God plant any seeds? *
18 Or did he put them there for Adam and Eve,
19 So they'd be hungry for the apple that the snake
20 Was always offering?


So, Now I have 7 occurences of the word "God" ...

And the total of the verse #'s that have the word "god" is
1,4,7,8,11,15,17 added together we have 1+4+7+8+11+15+17 = 63 and
63 / 7 = 9 ! So.

We have 7 occurences of the word "God"..

And the sum of the verse #'s with God is 63, and

63 = (7) * 9......................


It's a miracle !

Bob River's was divinely inspired !
(with a little help from an editor)

First they add, than they multiply subtract a little. hope they dont have to divide. But somewhere in that equation I think they use exponential powers of Pie.

The number 72 of virgins in Islamic tradition is the number of the rate of precession, 72 years per 1 degree of 360 degrees, and there were 360 pre-Islamic Arab gods, so the ancient Arabs apparently knew the cycle of the slow wobble of the Earth's axis, once in 25,920 years.

lol.. this is all conjecture...

i am a muslim, and let me say, we do not believe in such a mathematical miracle...in math anyone can create anything... like one denomination of christians (one of those strange ones) believe that pope is the beast... and dr. kissinger was the beast due to some mathematical forumla they came up with and equating it to 666

quran is not a book of math or science, although many scientific things are written in it as is and there is no need for deep analysis on them (you can see most of them talked about in harunyahya.com

one of the biggest scientific miracles is the talk of birth of human being of which harun yahya talks in detail http://www.harunyahya.com/creation.php

and anyone can read his book

there is no need for conjecture when miracles are already there in great numbers...

so i as a muslim do not like people to put the book of quran through some math test because quran is not a book of math.. nor of science..

for example.. alcohol is forbidden for us.... and for centuries we have been saying alcohol is scientifically bad for you... but all scientist ought to know that science is only what is observable and in the case of alcohol in my opinion has political dimension as well.... now "science" (by that i mean an institution in edinborough...not sure how you spell that) has given verdict that a little bit of alcohol is actually good for you.......but alcohol is still forbidden for us just as it was 1400 years ago.....if tomorrow science claims a lot of alcohol is good for you... we would shrug our shoulders and say... its still forbidden for us....... if tomorrow the science rubbishes the previous claim and says that even a little alcohol is bad for you... we would be laughing and saying "we told you so"

we muslims we do not go out of our way to make these claims in line with science... and nor did arabs know of this before islam.. the arabs before islam were barbarians and all historians know this.


otherwise arabs would have accused mohammad of stealing and publishing their science,,, the simple fact is that at that time people didn't know the full meaning of some ayah regarding birth of a human being until now....

another example is a hadith (not the quran but saying of the prophet mohammad) that honey and black seed oil can cure all disease (or a lot of diseases)...or something like this......... no one knows the true meaning of this saying... and muslim researchers are always looking at how certain chemicals in black seed oil and honey can be used as medicine....... (a lot of the time they do use it in medicine) once we have fully utilised honey and black seed oil, we will say... "we told you so"...lol

but to put book through a math test is as redicilous as coming up with some random numbers and then finding a strange pattern that fits them (because there are limited number of numbers this can always be done)

as for 72 virgins...according to one alim (islamic scholar) 72 actually means many....... similar to number 7 as used in old text (also there are 7 grades heaven and hell according to our traditions)...

so the point is,,, as a muslim i believe that quran is miraculous book... and one of the miracles is that it lacks contradiction and is unchanged for 1400 years .... out of curiosity you can check this for yourself.....

but i don't like random math tests to be applied on any book.... i think even to christians's bible it must be slightly offensive.... i don't know but this is just my feeling....

OUT OUT I SAY!! This is fast becoming a religious topic in a PHYSICS forum. If I want to go and tell everyone what I cannot do in my religion i'll do it in the religious subsection of the forum not out here in an area meant for discussion of physics or math.

The article is religiously Biased and as such cannot be considered an analyzation of math in the Koran or whatever you want to call it

this is pretty ridiculous. this is worthless unexplainable perspectively insignificant math, I've heard of different math in the Koran, ways of calculating the speed of light from verses in it.