I'm sure most of you saw this one, but if you didn't this is interesting in that the same journal that started all the fuss about the so-called "Bible Code," hidden codes in the Bible that allegedly predict future events, has now published a study showing what we demonstrated in Vol. 5, #2 of Skeptic (and even more significantly in the journal Bible Review, among other places)--that it is all bunk.

This from Richard Ostling for AP:

NEW YORK (AP) - An international team of statisticians is debunking the controversial "Bible code," which claims the Old Testament has hidden references to 20th century events that can be revealed by a computer. Proponents of the code claim that names and events were hidden in the Bible as written thousands of years ago and can be found through computer searches of the Hebrew text. Television documentaries, fast-selling books and numerous articles have popularized the theory, first published in the academic journal Statistical Science.

Now the same journal, published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics based in Hayward, Calif., is offering an article challenging the technique it reported in 1994. The article will be published in the quarterly next week.

Believers in the "Bible code" theory treat the Hebrew Bible as a string of letters without spaces, looking for words formed by equidistant letter sequences. For instance, computers might select every ninth Hebrew letter and register a "hit" when a "coded word" intersects with a Bible verse containing related words.

Five years ago, three Israeli scholars published the results of their search in the journal. As they explained, they took names of famous rabbis from a reference dictionary, applied letter sequences and found the names near the rabbis' dates of birth or death.

Using the same technique, others have claimed the Bible contains secret predictions, including everything from the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 to a Los Angeles earthquake in 2010.

Major Bible scholars ignore the code because, they note, no one has a letter-by-letter version of the Bible as originally written. The oldest surviving manuscripts include slight variations, any of which would throw off computer test results.

In the upcoming edition of Statistical Science, the new study's authors - Dror Bar-Natan, Maya Bar-Hillel and Gil Kalai, professors at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, and Brendan McKay of the Australian National University - combine expertise in mathematics and computer science to debunk the theory.

Using other spellings and assumptions, they ran hundreds of tests that repeated the experiment with different variations and applied it to more biblical books.

"Despite a considerable amount of effort," they write, "we have been unable to detect the codes."

This is significant, Bar-Natan said in a Thursday interview, because "truth in science is never based on the results of a single experiment. A significant requirement is repeatability."

Their results were no more successful with the Hebrew translation of Tolstoy's "War and Peace." Such letter configurations can be found in any long text, they say. The trick is to find letters in close proximity that form significant words more often than by chance.

But Eliyahu Rips, an Israeli mathematics professor who was co-author of the 1994 article, said in a statement that evidence for the code is "stronger than ever" and said a detailed reply to the new criticism would appear soon. His ally Michael Drosnin, author of "The Bible Code," said the critics "told a lie."

Robert Kass, head of the statistics department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, edited the journal when it published the first article and said it was reviewed by other experts. He is disturbed that people perceived publication as "a stamp of scientific approval." That first article, he said, merely presented a puzzle - one that has now been explained.

"The new study shows there were many, many choices, particularly for things like the names of the rabbis, that involved a lot of latitude. It was only for special sources that the results appeared," he said Thursday. He said such studies must avoid statistical "tuning," just as medical research projects follow strict protocol. Bar-Natan says that procedures in the 1994 project had "enough wiggle room to produce whatever you want."

This was a nice letter from an atheist in a foxhole I thought you all might appreciate:

I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank the staff and writers of Skeptic magazine and the Skeptic Society. I'm a Radioman for the US Navy and have just finished a tour in the Mediterranean sea and the Persian Gulf with air strikes in Kosovo during operation Allied Force and strikes in Iraq in support of the UN no-fly zone (Just to prove there are atheist in foxholes!) Your support of logic and reason in response to extraordinary claims in refreshing and welcome in this day and age, and your magazine provided many hours of entertainment during this long deployment. Keep up the good work.
--Sincerely, Joseph C. Bentley, bently@roosevelt.navy.mil

The latest edition of Skeptic is now out to subscribers and on newstands and bookstores. The "Special Section" theme is CLONING AND GENETIC ENGINEERING. You won't want to miss RICHARD DAWKINS' brilliant response to the creationists' latest attack on evolution.

SPECIAL SECTION: CLONING & GENETIC ENGINEERING:

--"How Close Are We to Cloning Time?: An Introduction to the Science and Ethics of Human Cloning," by Frank Miele
--"The Man Who Would Be Cloned: An Interview with Dr. Richard Seed, Director of the Human Cloning Project," by Frank Miele
--"Only God Can Do That?: Cloning and Genetic Engineering Test the Moral Limits of Science," by Michael Shermer
--"The 'Information Challenge': How Evolution INcreases Information in the Genome," by Richard Dawkins
--"Group Selection and the Origins of Evil," by Nicholas Thompson
--"Theology and Evolutionary Psychology: A Historical Perspective on a Very Old Problem," by Kari Konkola and Glenn Sunshine.

Also included in Vol. 7, #2:
--James Randi on "Pigasus Flies Again."
--Randy Cassingham's "Dumbth News."
--John George on "They Never Said it!: Freethinkers, Fundamentalists, and Fake Quotes."
--Harry Ziel, M.D. on "How to Evaluate New Medical Discoveries."
--David Henige on "Depopulation Myths: How Many People Really Lived in the Americas Before the European Conquest?"

Tim Callahan reviews biblical scholar Richard Elliot Friedman's new book, THE HIDDEN BOOK IN THE BIBLE and Jonathan Kirsch's MOSES: A LIFE, and thoroughly debunks the latest pseudoscience claptrap book THE ALPHABET VERSUS THE GODDESS by Leonard Shlain.

Plus, Peter Weichman analyzes the flaws in Gerald Schroeder's THE SCIENCE OF GOD, and Chet Raymo reviews Ursula Goodenough's thoughtful THE SACRED DEPTHS OF NATURE.

JR. SKEPTIC MAGAZINE this issue features a fabulous analysis of Urban Legends by Pat Linse, who spent months distilling the works of the legendary king of Urban Legends, Jan Brunvand; plus, Pat orchestrated an analysis of the UL "cow tipping," showing just why it would be impossible to tip over a cow by gently pushing on one while it is sleeping (despite the fact that lots of people claim they have done just that!)

You can pick up a copy of Skeptic/Jr. Skeptic at any Barnes & Noble or Borders or any other chain or independent bookstore, or order it directly through www.skeptic.com and click through the shop cart program, or call us directly at 626/794-3119 or fax through your order at 626/794-1301. We just need your name, address, phone, and Visa or Mastercard number and expiration date.

If you haven't seen this floating around on the net it's worth a good laugh. I figure it is okay to post this in light of the fact that even Carl's widow, Ann Druyan, laughed when I read them to her:

The Top 12 Theories Developed by Carl Sagan While Stoned Copyright 1999 by Chris White, www.topfive.com 12> The period of rotation of Pulsar JC9270 totally synchs up with the drum solo in "In A Gadda Da Vida," man!

11> "Twinkies, Twinkies, little stars; seem so close, yet are so far."

10> The Theory of Munchitivity: At times, peanut butter is more valuable than gold.

9> The sensor casing from a mass spectrometer makes a handy roach clip.

8> "Some day, with all of our advances in science and technology, we'll be able to land a man on the sun."

7> The Big Bong Theory

6> If you took a hit while travelling at the speed of light, you'd get one major rush, dude.

5> Betty Crocker brownies > Duncan Hines brownies

4> "Theory of Joint Relativity": A complex quantum physics equation that proves that the more pot you smoke, the slower your automobile travels with you at the wheel.

3> Floyd rocks!

2> A single "You Are Here" sign will work EVERYwhere. and Topfive.com's Number 1 Theory Developed by Carl Sagan While Stoned...

1> Wow, man! There are, like, a LOT of stars. There must be *hundreds* of 'em. Maybe even *thousands*. No, millions and millions! Wait -- I'm onto something here...

I thought you would all appreciate this bit from this week's National Review, allegedly from a Texas A&M chemistry midterm exam, an actual question given:

Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Support your answer with proof. Most of the students wrote proofs on their beliefs using Boyle's law (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:

"First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets into Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions. Some state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions, and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.

Now, we look at the rate of change in the volume of Hell, because Boyles law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:

(1) If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

(2) Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase in souls, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Sheryl _______ during my freshman year, that "It will be a cold night in Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then (2) cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic."

The student got the only A.