But let's move on, given these insights, as scientists, not rationalizers. Ok, let's repeat the study, this time getting "God approved, prayed for authorities" to come up with lists of whatever, and compare the probability of the resulting codes with lists produced by chance, and by atheists. After all, the hypothesis being tested, that this Person, Jehovah is really out there, and that the self-description of who He is in the Scriptures is a trustworthy report, is being tested by many other sorts of studies.
The test isn't to see if Jehova is really out there. That is not why the ELS fell under such contraversy. Again, many scientists, mathmeticians, evolutionists, etc. belive in god. So unless you have evidence otherwise, you cannot brand the mathmaticians who debunked the code as athiests, nor the vast army of mathmaticians who agree, and coroborate their findings.
Since we are not looking for god here, but rather ELS codes, it is not neciseraly relevant that we put god into the equation. Its like saying: "Oh, scientificaly and mathmaticaly ELS codes are insignificant, but wait! If you belive in God then they mean something significant." You may agree with this statement, however, the idiocy of this statement comes from the following equivilant "Oh, scientificaly and mathmaticaly the ELS codes in War and Peace are insignificant. But wait! If I belive war in peace to be a prophectic text then it is significant!"
See what I mean? Your basicaly saying it's significant, because I belive it's significance. You are presuposing it's meaningfullness and not analyzing it objectively at all.
Also, I would like to point something else out in your proposition.
Ok, let's repeat the study, this time getting "God approved, prayed for authorities" to come up with lists of whatever, and compare the probability of the resulting codes with lists produced by chance, and by atheists
How would one qualify as a god aproved authority? There is no way to verfy such a thing.
Furthermore you make the statement:
So, let's get prayer into the Bible Code studies, and see whether prayer can get us more consistent results.
Why would prayr have anything to do with the results? I know devout christians who pray for lotto numbers every night, dosn't seem to work for them.
Seems like you are promoting a sort of sel-hypnosis. Belive it works, and pray, and you will see that it works!
Again, by the same logic I can pray over Moby Dick, and belive that it has encoded prophecys. And guess what? The ELS codes in Moby Dick will be prophetic! WOW!
Puleeez
[This message has been edited by Yaro, 01-13-2004]