The other day, I linked to a site entitled "Assassinations Foretold in Moby Dick," which told of various assassinations, including Sirhan Sirhan's, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, and Kennedy's, which were foretold in that epic whaling tome, Moby Dick. For those of you who are interested, the authors of this site are not psychopaths, but are using Moby Dick to disprove the concept of Bible Codes.
Anyway, I spent most of the day today reading that Web site, and found it all very interesting. What was most fascinating to me—although maybe a bit obvious, now that I write it— was the way that the Bible Code believers, when confronted with evidence that Moby Dick contains the same kind of "code" as the Bible/Torah, they simply said that the code in Moby Dick was false. I didn't think they would just shrug their shoulders and say, "What do you know? I guess I was wrong," but I would have at least liked it if they bowed down and started reading Moby Dick as a new testament of God. It would be a fabulous religion. Instead of people saying that they saw demons dogging them until God's mercy saved them, they would say they hunted white whales until they were saved. The initiates would be called Ishmael until they were fully part of the faith. It would be great.
Anyway, for more on Bible Codes, including links to people who believe they are real, and a thorough explanation of why they are not, here is a link to the main site of the Moby Dick page. And for a more interesting view of hidden codes from God than any actual believer has presented, read "The Gimatria of Pi" on The Fortean Bureau.
I'd like to note just briefly that, while generally skeptical, I'm not a complete skeptic. I believe in things like ghosts and whatnot, and there is an alley up the road from where I live that I'm convinced makes people insane, because I've never seen anyone in it who wasn't. But I choose to believe these things because they make my life richer, and they make the world more interesting to live in. And maybe some of this same phenomenon is at the root of this Bible Codes business, but I personally find that using pseudoscience to justify one's faith just makes that faith incredibly shallow. Faith is illogical, unprovable, and in the eyes of anyone who doesn't have it, usually seems ridiculous, if not flat-out wrong. And that's fine. To dillute it with distorted mathematics and faulty science just cheapens both: the faith and the science.
Right. To bed with me. Hard day at work tomorrow, followed by two weeks of abject goofing-off.
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