Tuesday, November 20, 2007

This Just In: Herman Melville is God

It's true. I didn't want to believe it either, but the Moby Dick codes have proven it conclusively.




Via an anonymous commentator at DovBear's.
Posted by Jewish Atheist at 2:53 PM
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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. A new religion is born.

"Mobianity," which recounts that great navi, Captain Ahab, who sacrifices himself to "Moby," the sefira of the G-d "Melville," a sacrifice done as atonement for the sin of being obsessive.

In commemoration of this act, Mobians worldwide reenact that scene, outfitting authentic replicas of 19th century whaling ships, sailing to various whale-watching venues and throwing themselves into the sea in the company of the great beasts. In this way, they aim to achieve balance in their life and balance in nature.

Blubber and 19th-century style naval rum is served for kiddush afterwards.

The World headquarters of the Faith should be in Memphis, TN, where Dr. King was shot, as predicted in the Holy Book.

A Mobian relgious fraternal order called the "whalers" will cross the land and make sure that a copy of "Moby Dick" is found in every hotel room.

Is this a great idea for a religion, or what?

4:15 PM, November 20, 2007
CyberKitten said...

I've heard of this before.

Strangly though people who were adamant that The Bible Code was the 'real deal' where *very* dismissive when Moby Dick and the Phone Book gave similarly 'accurate' predictions of upcoming events!

Also.... Apparently MLK spoke up about the hiring practices of Coca-Cola just 2 days before he was killed.......

10:52 AM, November 21, 2007
Rich said...

Along the same lines, Barry Simon (a noted OJ mathematician who is against bible codes) has a great thing where he shows the standard block of letter which you see with code stuff. He then shows the words that are all in close proximity that relate to Chanukah. Then he tells you that the block of letters is from a hebrew translated copy of "War and Peace".

I remember I once asked an OJ Bible code believer how sure they were of the codes. When he replied that it was clear this was the work of God, I asked what he does with the codes that Christians found about Jesus using the same methodology. He was like a deer in headlights.

4:22 PM, November 21, 2007
Holy Hyrax said...

From Jewish action:

JA: I remember reading an article about that [codes found in moby dick and war and peace] in the mid-1990s, in Jewish Action. It convinced me that there is no such thing as Torah Codes.

Harold Gans: The article you are referring to established in the minds of many in the Orthodox community that Torah Codes do not exist. The impression remains among the Orthodox public that “codes” similar to Torah Codes werediscovered in non-Torah texts.

While the mathematical issues are difficult for non mathematicians to comprehend, I can summarize as follows: Professor McKay and his colleagues never claimed to have discovered
real codes in those non-Torah texts. Their only “successful” results were obtained by deliberately rigging the experiment in such a way that the layman wouldn’t recognize the mathematical flaws.

To their minds, there is no other possibility, because they took it as a given that the Torah is not a Divine document, and that therefore the whole idea of Torah Codes is intrinsically absurd. The “discovery” of “codes” in Moby Dick
or War and Peace to them is no more absurd a claim than the “discovery” of “codes” in the Torah.

The public does not understand that these critics openly admitted that their research did not result in the discovery of even a single valid code in any text other than the Torah.

http://www.ou.org/pdf/ja/5768/fall68/28_35.pdf

5:43 PM, November 21, 2007
Anonymous said...

The wikipedia article on the bible codes is pretty informative. Information theory doesn't preclude noise from being meaningful. A lot of people fall into this trap in Aish Hatorah, Ohr Someach and other outreach organizations. Religion is opium for the masses, but opium is an effective pain reliever. Comfort vs awareness that is the question, or no question at all.

2:50 PM, November 25, 2007
Anonymous said...

you might be interested in this parody of the Fundamentalist "Left Behind" books

it's a book called:

Raptured: The final Daze of the Late, Great Planet Earth.

http://www.amazon.com/Raptured-Final-Great-Planet-Behind/dp/1884365426

4:38 PM, November 25, 2007
Anonymous said...

Left behind is most interesting when it belongs to a pretty female.

3:32 PM, November 26, 2007

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