The Power/Reality Of Demons And Supernatural Evil.

Rrhain, Nah, I just wanted you to beg, so it wouldn't look like I was blowing my own horn....Princeton Univ Press, Monographs in Population Ecology.Acta Biotheoretica, 1969, (with HL Lucas and others). Territorial behavior and habitat selection in birds.American Naturalist, 1974, with CC Smith, Optimal size and number of offspring; 1982, with Oksanen, Food Chain dynamics.Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 1977. The regulation of plant communities by the food chains exploiting them.Oikos, 1987, Food Chain Dynamics, the Central Theory of Ecology.Current Ornithology, 1986. Population Regulation in the Dickcissel.These are approximate. I actually like a paper in Am Nat, 1978, on rich and poor communities, and one on Junco populations, Bird Banding, 1972 (?).Thanks for asking. You're just saying that!We should discuss applied epistemology sometime. See how you arrive at conclusions....Or maybe, as we used to say on other playgrounds, "Oh, yeah? Well it takes one to know one!"Or how about,"You wish!" or "But for the grace of God,..."

Hey, Phatboy,I first wanted to thank you for your reports, and to affirm to you, as a professional epistemologist, anecdotes are useful in the process of getting to the truth.Second, the Bible Codes studies by Witztum and his colleagues, best summarized in a book by Satinover, prove scientifically beyond a reasonable doubt that Genesis was written by some person who was not human. The devil is discussed there, and basically proved beyond reasonable doubt to be the best explanation for your experience. You should learn from the experience, to study diligently how to minimize the influence of the demonic in your life.You will also need to "receive the love of the truth" since the sorts of demonic manifestations you observed are unusual. It's more likely that demons of doubt will stir up skeptics to "darken counsel." You are supposed to be learning how "answer" them.Do you know about the book, "Pigs in the Parlor?" You'll like it.Stephen

Stephen ben Yeshua responds to me:

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Second, the Bible Codes studies by Witztum and his colleagues, best summarized in a book by Satinover, prove scientifically beyond a reasonable doubt that Genesis was written by some person who was not human.

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Incorrect. On the contrary, they merely show a mathematical necessity. Any sufficiently long text will show the exact same thing. Do you really need us to post the link to assassinations predicted in Moby Dick found in the exact same way as those found in the Bible?Are you claiming Melville wasn't human? That Moby Dick was inspired by god?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Well done, Stephen.Now, is there a particular reason you were behaving like a jerk rather than just coming out with it when asked?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Rrhain,First, the discussion of Moby Dick re Witztum's Bible codes is, as Jehovah put it in the codes, a darkening of council. I regard it as a straw man, since it comes from some reporter's discussion of the Codes, and was never reviewed by Witztum himself as an acceptable form of rebuttal.Second, the "codes" in Moby Dick are not (very) implausible. The ones in Genesis are. If you scramble the letters in Moby Dick, you still get "codes" largely as found in the original writing. If you scramble the letters in Genesis, the codes disappear. Of course, chance alone produces "codes." Witztum and his colleagues went to great lengths to set up theoretical and monte carlo examinations of the chance probability of the codes they found. They found it very, very unlikely that the codes they found occured by chance.Third, I actually would expect implausible codes in Moby Dick, and there's a website, Bible Code digest, that explores this. They also report the code study of what Jehovah thought about Moby Dick, where the critic's name was coded (in Job, of course, the only book in the Bible discussing harpooning whales) in revealing verses. Codes, implausible ones, come from supernatural beings, including muses, which I daresay Melville would have confessed to seeking and using.Fourth, the way a scientist rejects an idea as implausible is he finds the idea unconfirmed. There are many other efforts to confirm the codes which have been successful.Fifth, the Moby Dick code critics are untrustworthy authorities, based on their failure to abide by accepted rules of scientific proceedure. They basically censored Witztum and Gans' efforts to rebut the Moby Dick critique.You have to really badly want the Witztum study to be discredited, to pay any attention at all to that Moby Dick critique. This is called wishful thinking. Not generally recommended.As to my acting like a jerk (another of your posts), it's what fallen humans do. I just wanted to encourage you to believe that, if I can make it to the truth, so can you.Stephen

Rrhain,Check this out:Bible Code Digest.com - Moby Dick ArticleStephen

StephanCheck out this site.Page not found | Skeptical Inquirer

Just so ya know, I checked out both of your sites. Personally, I think that the entire Bible Code thing is not realistic, and someone sold a lot of books. Why would God speak to us in code? Does He not say that one must think like a child(full of innocence and wonder) to enter the kingdom of heaven? Not like some Gnostic who seeks to initiate DEEP meaning out of nothing!
Not to disrespect you, Stephen. Perhaps we could surmise that God foreknew that only in this modern era would the technology and wisdom exist to crack the codes. Still, I am skeptical.[This message has been edited by Phatboy, 01-05-2004]

Sidelined,I checked out the site you presented, and regard it as a straw man argument. Drosnin is denied by the authors of the code as really understanding it. Moreover, as I understand Witztum's paper, Thomas has missed the point entirely. So, I'm not impressed.But thanks for the tip.Stephen

Phatboy,You ask, Satinover's reply to this question directs up back to the biblical idea that we are at war, with an enemy who is sending deceiving messages and disinformation. Then, when at war, if we want to know whether a given message is really from our commander and chief (the Lord of Hosts), it is customary to put codes in the message that identify the author as a trustworthy one.Normally, such "signature" codes contain no useful information. Only that the surface message is really directives from headquarters. Satinover however describes how the Israelis used the codes to save thousands of lives during the Gulf War, by predicting the date that the scud missile attack would come.Skepticism kills. Captains of sailing ships were, for 50 years skeptical of James Lind's treatise on limes and scurvy, killing maybe 100,000 sailors unnecessarily. Doctors in Obstetric hospitals killed thousands of new mothers and their babies with childbirth fever, because they were skeptical of Semmelweis' studies on anti-sepsis and hand washing. Today, most cardiovascular deaths are occuring because the National Academy of Sciences is skeptical of Matthias Rath's and Linus Pauling's studies on vitamin C. Love believes all things.

"When my critics find a message a message about the assassination of a prime minister encrypted in Moby Dick, I'll believe them." - Michael DrosninAssassinations Foretold in Moby Dick[This message has been edited by Rei, 01-05-2004]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Every damn page of Moby Dick has a life lesson.

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"It isn't faith that makes good science, it's curiosity."
-Professor Barnhard, The Day the Earth Stood Still

StephanSorry to disappoint you old man but you did not read very carefully. They did not say Drosnin did not understand the code.Here is an excerpt. You will note it is Drosnin not the authors of the article that says "Thomas appears not to understand the Bible Code at all." Now please defend your stance on how Thomas missed the point on Witzum's paper.Ball is in your court.

Sidelined,About Thomas and Witztum's paper. Thomas exposes his ignorance of what Witztum did, by focusing on Drosnin, who Witztum and others accuse of misunderstanding what they did. It was Drosnin, not Witztum, who made the assertion about Moby Dick. The best control in Witztum's paper was a scrambling Monte Carlo developement of statistical probabilities associated with the proximity of certain minimal skip phrases. Monte Carlo tests are non-parametric, and extremely robust. They showed that, although the phrases they found were highly probable to occur, it was very unlikely that the minimal skips of the phrases would occur as close together in the text as they did. Thomas never uses statistics this way. His estimates of the number of expected occurances, that were confirmed (duh!), proves only that he doesn't know what rare events to look for, or how to show that they are rare.If you haven't read carefully the site on Moby Dick that I gave earlier, your accusation of me of not reading carefully was projection.

OK Stephen, i made myself read the article. I guess that the reson that I skimmed over it at first was because I am unimpressed with logical persuasions...I prefer emotional persuasions, even though logic is usually more valid. Why would such coding exist, unless God or some superior intelligence knew that it would take humanities own bright minds to sift through the information and literature to find the codes and decipher them. Perhaps we could deduce that some form of superior intelligence is giving some elaborate puzzle problems to some of the bright minds on earth. Maybe this superior intelligence knew just what "Bait" was needed to hook their interest.