Numerology problem.

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by Igor Trip, Apr 11, 2009.

  1. Igor Trip Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    137
    I'm stuck in a debate with a muslim guy and his numerology concerning the Quran, and I need some help.:shrug:
    http://www.topix.net/forum/religion/islam/TQIT43NLGJFBFP1SH

    His numerology concerns the numbers for chromosomes in our bodies 23 and 46 and the chapter 76 Al-ansn 'The Human'.

    My problem is he is finding far more occurrences of 23 and 46 than I would expect and in better places.

    I've had to resort to attacking the Quran's inheritance laws (which he can't explain).

    So any help would be welcome.
     
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  3. phlogistician Banned Banned

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    10,342
    Numerology is a load of horse shit for significance junkies, and this post should have been made in parapsychology, or pseudoscience, where we dissect such bunkum.
     
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  5. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

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    11,888
    It's woo woo-ism - a variation on the so-called "Bible Code"..
    If a pattern doesn't exist the human mind constructs one.
    You're correct to call it "numerology" as it has the same scientific validity as that practise - none whatsoever.
     
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  7. Igor Trip Registered Senior Member

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    137
    I would have but I need some help disproving it and that requires statistics hence the maths forum.
     
  8. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    11,888
    First the guy has to PROVE that he's right.
    Just because it happens does not mean that his conclusions are correct.
    Didn't the link you gave have someone say that it had already been debunked?
    Was there no link to that debunking?
    Googling may help, or failing that try looking for something along the lines of ["Bible Code" debunked] and then show that the crackpot is merely repeating the same errors and wishful thinking.
     
  9. Igor Trip Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    137
    I posted that numerology has been debunked, but then it got better and now I

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    'm stumped.
     
  10. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    11,888
    IIRC the debunking of the Bible Code got quite technical - it should help.
    Or you could use the method I picked when a couple of woo-woos at work fell for it: grab the first (large) piece of text you want, from any source, and apply your own spur-of-the-moment search pattern.
    I guarantee that within three or four tries you'll find that that text contains some fascinating "secret of the universe".
    I found a retro-active "prediction" about the moon landings in an engineering manual on chain-and-sprocket power transmission...

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  11. phlogistician Banned Banned

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    10,342
    He's making the claim, so it's up to him to prove it using statistics.

    It should still be in pseudoscience, as it's esoteric bullshit we can disembowel using the scientific method.
     
  12. geistkiesel Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,471
    NIUmerology isnot an alogous to astrology. The nutumber appearing in umerology liteature. 12 months in year,smembers of riling panels are frequesntly formed frequently in groups of twelve. one 12 id a fwelber lovcks of 12 - the twelve deciples.12 AND 16 are miumbers frequesntly found in the literature. Perhaps the scoffers can explain that the ration of female to male honey bees is 1.6, which is alson
     
  13. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    11,888
    Numerology and astrology have the same basis in reality: - nothing.
     
  14. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    Well, gee whiz! Ain't it amazing.

    Ask him where the word "chromosome" is mentioned in the Qur'an.

    I mean, the word "cow" is mentioned a certain number of times in the Qur'an, too, and I'm sure that if you tell me exactly how many, I can dig up some vague numerical fact about cows that will be equally as convincing as this chromosome thing.
     
  15. Igor Trip Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    137
    Here are some of his claims that I am having trouble with.
    More here. http://en.i3gaz.com/node/3
    Individually they of course mean nothing but combined I'm running out of excuses.


    I'm debating Yosuf.
    Original thread.
    http://www.topix.net/forum/religion/islam/TQIT43NLGJFBFP1SH
    New thread.
    http://www.topix.net/forum/religion/islam/T3UHE8HIL0S33ECDR

     
  16. stereologist Escapee from Dr Moreau Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    685
    This reminds of a part of the book "A Mathematician's Apology" by Hardy. In it Hardy goes to visit a dying friend in the hospital. Not knowing what to say he blurts out something along the lines of, "I road in a cab with xxxx for a license number. I rather boring number isn't it?"

    His friend props himself up to state, "That's the smallest number that can be uniquely expressed as the sum of cubes in two different ways."

    These claims of patterns in books are random chance as was the cab number. One person saw something interesting and another did not.

    I was wondering are vowels written in Arabic?
     
  17. Crunchy Cat F-in' *meow* baby!!! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,423
    The statement:

    "If you figure out how many times each letter of word "The Man" (Al Insan) occurs (is repeated) among these openings and add the letter occurrences up, you would get 46."

    is incorrect. The person you are arguing with needs to perform a recount of the arabic equivalent of "Al Insan" in the oldest known version of the Quran. Additionally, there is no mention of the word "Chromosome" nor mention of it being equated to various word counts in the Quran.
     
  18. Igor Trip Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    137
    I checked it myself.
    There are odd letters at the start of some verses. These he counted and then applied to Al-ansn (the missing A is a quirk of arabic script).

    He doesn't need the word chromosome to believe his numerology, just plenty of coincidences of the same number.
    I have complained whenever he tried to add a new number so he has stuck to 23/46.
    So far he hasn't broken his own rules.
     
  19. Crunchy Cat F-in' *meow* baby!!! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,423
    I'm not quite sure what you mean, can you expand further on this?

    He does however need the word chromosome to assert it's equality to some number in a "holy" book. Without he, he is just making things up (at best) and that should be pointed out to him.

    Why are you playing by his rules? He is making an assertion about objective reality. He has to demonstrate it's correct but he cannot because it is demonstrably incorrect.
     
  20. Igor Trip Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    137
    Some chapters start with letters like this one.
    2.1 A.L.M.
    2.2 This is the Book...
    There are 29 such letters.
    When counted and then applied to 'The Human/man' (Al-ansn) you get this:

    A = 13 Alef
    L = 13 Alef
    A = 13 Alef
    N = 1 Noon
    S = 5 Sin
    N = 1 Noon
    =46

    No one knows why these letters exist but Muslims believe they must be some sort of code.

    No he just needs to find a number that can be applied to some important part of Islam/Quran and then find more than the expected occurrences of it and he's happy.

    46 + 'The human' is pretty good. I don't know what other number can be applied to people.

    To prove he's wrong I need to prove the number of 23/46's he's finding is not well outside the laws of probability.

    I make sure he sticks to 23/46 and that his coincidences have some relevance.
    I need to demonstrate to him that he hasn't demonstrated it.
     
  21. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    6,460
    You seem to be missing the point. It should be up to your numerologist friends to prove that they or their sources didn't just cook up a bunch of schemes until they found one which works in a vague way on a very small subset of the Quran. Essentially they need to prove that you can't do what they did by any other means, no matter how many schemes you try. One way would be to rigorously define the rules of their scheme and then show that it works throughout the Quran and consistently produces striking coincidences throughout, in a way that you could manifestly see, without them needing to put their own spin on it and tell you how to interpret the results.

    I don't need to tell you that there's stars out there, you can see them for yourself. In the same way, if this numerology stuff is true and easily proved, then it should be manifestly obvious without people needing to suggest ideas such as chromosome counts to you. Once someone tells you how to interpret an ambiguous result and you take them seriously, it means you've accepted a bias and can no longer view the result through an objective lens. This is what's happened with the chromosome thing- the numbers 23 and 46 pop up a few times, so what? Can the people making these arguments prove that were other numbers to pop up, they couldn't be connected to the relevant subject matter of the Quran in the same way?

    While your friends are running around trying to connect the dots in pretty much the same way as others have successfully done with the Bible, Moby Dick and several other large texts, and the evidence they present is ambiguous and open to a wide range of interpretations, there are much more glaring and obvious problems that can be readily exposed from the other side. I'm pretty sure a large variety of serious errors in the Quran have already been exposed, as has been the case with just about every other religious text that's ever attempted to give a comprehensive description of our world. So on the one hand you have vague interpretations based on seemingly arbitrary numerical schemes and nothing conclusive like a smoking gun, whereas if you simply take the Quran at face value, you get a wealth of factual errors.

    Once again, why are you doing all the work? If I throw 100 pages of numerical data at you and claim I have experimental proof of God, you need to ascertain whether I'm someone whose work merits a serious look in the first place before you even bother going into details. If these guys can't give you the slam dunk proof that their conclusions are inescapable, then you need to stop losing so much sleep over these dreamers.
     
  22. Igor Trip Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    137
    I don't need to prove to mathematicians that his numerology is wrong, I need to prove to him and all those following the thread that he is wrong.

    And it's his numerology not someone elses that has to be disproved.

    He's happy with his rules and is convinced he is still finding far more coincidences than he should.

    I've pointed out some flaws but still really need more help to nail this.

    Latest posts:
    http://www.topix.net/forum/religion/islam/T3UHE8HIL0S33ECDR/p5
     
  23. CptBork Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,460
    Why do you need to prove to this guy that his numerology is wrong? There are lots of people out there who will believe whatever they want to believe, no matter how much evidence to the contrary you throw in their face. This is especially true when dealing with the sacred cow that is religion, or you'd see far less diversity in the varying religious beliefs we find around the world. To put it simply, there's no way for you to conclusively prove this guy wrong, and that's the biggest problem with his argument in the first place- a good argument which seeks to prove something must also provide reasonable means by which the same argument can be tested and falsified.

    Notice how often cranks with no real physics or math background drop by to present their "revolutionary theories". They whine and complain about all the criticism and ridicule they receive, and compare their treatment to that received by Einstein and Galileo when they first presented their ideas. The difference is, Einstein and Galileo demonstrated that their ideas could explain, predict and account for an enormous variety of known phenomena that noone has been able to do by any other means, rendering their conclusions seemingly inescapable.

    In the end, instead of accepting criticism and attempting to address it, cranks will go on for eternity bleating their theories out to anyone who will listen, but the true measure of their success, progress, will never come in any discernible form- they'll be perpetually stuck at the first stage, unable to convert their fanciful ideas into testable scientific theories. Your muslim numerologist friend will succumb to the same fallacy- no matter how many years they work at it, they will never be able to present a testable, falsifiable theory, and will thus never be able to prove anything of interest. Hence there's no reason for you to try and disprove anything, because you haven't been given anything falsifiable to disprove, and there is no reason to try convincing your friend on any other grounds, because your friend's beliefs are a matter of personal opinion instead of demonstrable facts. If they want to waste their life on a fruitless endeavour, that's their prerogative, but you shouldn't let them waste your time on it as well.
     

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