Intelligent Design and Bible Codes

You all know me, but I want to put my biases up front just in case it's a new reader.I don't believe in Intelligent Design. I am an abiogenesis ToEr supporter. I don't believe that there is a supernatural being holding court over the universe.Having said that, I recently saw a special on the "Bible Codes".For those who don't know what this is, the Bible Codes are a collection of hidden messages found within the ancient Hebrew texts. Basically they take all the words/letters of the text and make giant grids out of them. Then, in sort of a word search fashion look for predictions.Apparently Lincoln's assassination, Rabin's assassination, etc. have been found.I'm wondering if Intelligent Design supporters believe in the Bible Code.Here's why I ask:The Bible Code takes a collection of "random information", looks for patterns within it, then proclaims what it finds to be proof that the information was not random to begin with.This strikes me as being very much what the IDers are doing. They look at complex things which exist today (at the end of the process) and deduce that therefore someone must have set out to achieve them.It's backwards reasoning. Neither of these theories describe mechanics, they simply imply them by looking at results.In striking opposite sits ToE which describes mechanics and implies results. (There is an elephant therefore there is an Intelligent Designer vs. There is Natural Selection and, hey whatya know, an Elephant)In the Bible Code, no attention is paid to the 99.99 percent of letter/word combinations that don't result in any sort of meaningful sentence, let alone prediction.Further, the same process of gridding out a text and doing a word search on "Moby Dick" turns up hundreds of predictions as well.If the Bible Codes are holy, then doesn't that imply that the Moby Dick codes are likewise holy?Patterns appear when you look for them. We, as a species, are good at finding patterns and discarding background noise.Do IDers feel that Bible Code is a mathmatical trick, or proof that their is a God pre-ordaining our entire existance?If you don't believe in Bible Code, which uses the same top down principles of results proves means that ID uses, then how do you reconcile that?This message has been edited by Nuggin, 09-17-2005 07:05 PM

Hi Nuggin,I'm having a little trouble connecting the dots in your post. Let me run a simple query by you: It would be really helpful for me, in understanding your post, if you could outline what methodology is being used to support ID. Can you add that in? More specifically, I'm unclear on how ID methodology is different than that used in hypothesis-building in say, abiogenesis or cosmology. Why is this a special problem for ID proponents and not scientists in general?If you could address those issues in your post, that would really help me see how well the discussion will get of the ground. That really helps when considering a topic for promotion.Thanks as always.

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Right-o! Check for an edit in a bit.

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