"That a particular specified event or
coincidence will occur is very unlikely. That some astonishing unspecified
events will occur is certain. That is why remarkable coincidences are noted in
hindsight, not predicted with foresight."--David G. Myers
Human beings have always had an affinity for the occult.
Since a modern ape such as homo sapiens - even in 2013 - still has these old
parts of the brain functioning, there are many thoughts and actions governed by
instinctive patterns. Hence the outpour of oxytocin along with the warm fuzzy
feeling when surrounded by like-minded people extending hugs, recognition and
feeling loved, regardless whether by a relative or an imaginary being.
This imaginary being can have as many definitions as there
are humans on this planet. There is no universal understanding of the
attributes of this being. There is a common denominator which is that a being
of this type should be called a god. This god and its understanding is then split
up between different groups of believers who have agreed on a particular subset
of attributes for this god, which they triumphantly declare as the only true
definition. Since they all do that it is up to the individual, what attributes
this being has.
Let’s look at one of these groups, where a socio-political
system has emerged as a world-view based on a set of attributes which are
collectively known as Islam. The god in this context and religious environment is
not supposed to be humanized and thus the followers of this world-view have not
assigned a name. It is simply: god. There are many different types of followers
within this context, all with their different rituals and interpretations for
this one god, the largest group being people who call themselves Muslims.
The dilemma is that for some unknown reason, the followers
of this being need a book to be able to believe in their god. This book, the
Koran, is quite an old book, compiled over 1000 years ago. It consists of
stories, commands, descriptions and threats. It tells the reader about a being,
which is a type of a god. This god is not real in the sense that it exists
within the confines of our Universe and can’t be adequately described or
perceived by means available to humans.
There are stories in the Koran, which tell of huge powers of
this being which is said to have created our entire Universe, without
explaining why, how or by what means. The same goes for every living thing.
Because this is not plausible and does not really fit in with our perception
and knowledge of reality, rational thinkers have rejected the claims made in
the book, called the Koran.
Since these followers have no rational or fact based reason
to believe what they believe, they try from time to time to inject an aspect of
reality into this occult and esoteric book. To justify their rituals and
rejection of reality, these deceiving scumbags try and convince others that
there are elements of knowledge which have been described and verified via
today’s scientific evidence, hidden away in the vague and obscure passages of
this old book. Because this fails miserably, they then try and convince others
that ignoring the commands will lead to huge amounts of punishment as a
consequence. If all of that fails, some of Muslims, followers, believers or
submitters attempt to impress others by claiming to have unearthed some
mathematical patterns, which are so wondrous that the author of this book and,
by deduction, the entire world-view, must surely be super-human and thus, a god,
dutifully following the Barnum Effect.
A man who had exactly this in mind was Rashad Khalifa, born into
a Sufi household in 1935 in Egypt, who declared in 1974 that he had in fact unearthed
by divine and spiritual revelation a mathematical miracle. He claimed that the Koran
was written around a mathematical structure, the base of which was 19. While he
was at it, not only the book, but the entire Universe was based on and designed
around this number 19. The Bahá'í calendar is composed of 19 months, each with
19 days – but they are not Muslims. Like we all know that Earth was designed to
rotate once around its axis every 19 hours and the moon would rotate around it
19 times in one solar year, in our solar system with 19 planets and a sun 19
times as large as Earth.
In my past videos I have already mentioned this miracle
claim and have dismissed it as just another hoax and the artificial scrambling
for artificial signs. I completely dismissed it for the dishonest tactic it is.
If Muslims require confirmation by non-believers and require constant
admiration and active agreement from the believers I see this as an indication
of inherent weakness and that Muslims themselves are not really convinced of
the divine origins of this book. This is further demonstrated by the need for
external sources and the idol figure of Muhammad, who is believed by some
Muslims to be the father figure worth following and copying even today. On top
of that there have been numerous attempts at placing scientists and scientific
miracle claims into a position of supporting the Koran and Islam.
All this has a long history. In the history of numerology I
found Pythagoras saying:
Such magic, as a theory, has
Occidental roots but is usually ascribed to Pythagoras. The theory or system
theorizes "that all things are number and that numbers influence the
essence of things. Thus number is the mediator between the divine and the
earthly. So, if one performs various operations with numbers, these operations
also affect the things related to these numbers."
Thus number is the mediator between the divine and the
earthly.
In many essays, speeches and videos the fallacious and
highly dishonest claims for scientific miracles in the Koran have been
thoroughly refuted. The mathematical and numerical claims were dismissed as
being fallacious and horribly wrong. Anyone can make any number of claims
surrounding an event using a date, which can be written like a large number
which can be manipulated in various ways. Even short numbers can be manipulated
such as what happened after the Twin Towers attack:
1. The date of the attack: 9/11 - 9 + 1 + 1 = 11
2. September 11th is the 254th day of the year: 2+5+4 = 11
3. After September 11th there are 111 days left to the end of the
year.
4. The
first plane to hit the towers was Flight 11
5. American
Airlines or AA
- A=1st letter in alphabet so we have again 11:11
6. State
of New York
- The 11th State added to the Union
7. New York City - 11 Letters
This shows that simply looking for things resulting in a
specific number are pretty easy to find applying different methodologies and
varied ways of manipulating data.
So what I will show is that the 19 miracle claim fails at
any amount of levels. It is itself not defined and does not follow a defined
pattern or recurrence. It only works by retro-fitting, ie taking a text and
trying to squeeze a pattern onto it, known as “apophenia”, or, as Michael
Shermer has coined it: patternicity. In a previous video I have looked into the
version seeking out visible patterns called pareidolia. I will further show how
text is manipulated to make the claim fit and how selective cherry-picking is
merely creating an effect, a hollow and temporary feeling of amazement, where
sceptic and rational analysis quickly reveals the trickery and dishonest manipulations.
However the default and much easier position is to simply accept these claims
as they don’t initially sound threatening. Proving, checking or verifying does
require work and intellectual activity.
A video has surfaced, made by a Turkish apologist, who went
around and gathered names, names of atheists, much like Ben Stein in his piece
of trash and lies called Expelled. This Turkish guy, Edip Yüksel, accumulated
bits of video with non-believers to gain credibility for his bunch of concocted
nonsense, editing it to make it look as though someone was paying even
superficial attention to his endless rambling once they got the gist of what he
was saying. Yüksel is an apologist who believes in the inerrancy of the Koran
and rejects any text outside the Koran. Because this single book becomes so
important to him, he tries to revive the old miracle claim, using numerology and
pattern seeking mechanisms around this 19.
Yüksel seems to see atheists as the greatest threat to Islam
and the credibility of the Koran. I would imagine that a believer believes what
she or he believes because of a positive experience and not in spite of the disbelief
of others. If I know that horoscopes are crock, I either ignore them or, if I
need to know what a horoscope apparently says about me, I will blank out all
the reality stuff and pretend that there is some validity and value in this
horoscope. Why would I go and confront sceptics with this, knowing full well
that I will only be laughed at.
This does not deter this guy Yüksel from publishing selected
debates he had with Daniel Lomax and some other critics of the “19 miracle” and
call it a book. Now, he is following this up with a video utilising other
critics, trying to make them look foolish and thereby making them what he calls,
running like zebras, and insinuating this somehow increases the credibility of the
Koran and thereby Islam.
In his “preliminary” video, he shows exactly what kind of
level of juvenile thought processes we are dealing with:
So the place where a mosque used to be, has a ZIP-code, an
identifier tag made by humans, which is 85719. This means that a person who is
obsessed with the number 19 finds the number 19 on the highway he is using and
the last digits of a ZIP-Code. Wow! Do all other highways in the world all end
with 19? No! Do all ZIP-Codes where there is or even used to be a mosque end
with a 19? No! Is the rest of the ZIP-Code, the 857 of any use? No! You need to
somehow strip the 8 and you are – lo and behold – left with a 57, which is
3x19. A miracle. It’s like I’m interested in a car I’ve not paid much attention
to in the past and suddenly I see it all the time. Does that represent a
miracle? No, just a pattern. Is this any confirmation for the divine origins of
the Koran? Well, let’s take a look, shall we?
What is strange is that Islam does not always base its
teachings and understandings of their god’s wishes only on the Koran, but some
sayings and actions of a human, a messenger called Muhammad, who is often
attributed the title: prophet. The things he said or did were not recorded
during his lifetime, but 2- or 300 years later. As a result, many Muslims today
reject these sayings, especially when considering that they make Islam a barbaric,
irrational and inhumane worldview.
But they can’t abandon the occult and mysticism altogether
and somehow require confirmation beyond their blind faith. That’s where we
enter Rashad Khalifa and his so-called “19 miracle”, which is claimed to give
the Koran the physical proof beyond doubt which it must have been missing all these years, propagated today by
this Edip Yüksel.
Do these “mathematical miracles” provide any credibility and
is this number 19 a miracle at all?
Proponents of this claim define the very discovery of this
number based system a mathematical miracle. However, looking at their rationale
and how they arrive at this miracle, very quickly reveals that this method is
just another hoax and the intentional deception of gullible Muslims, who have
not had exposure to critical thinking.
Here’s a quick example: Rashad Khalifa, who was a Koranist
or “Submitter”, came up with his “mathematical miracle” claim in 1974. This is how
believers in the “19 miracle” manage to milk this date:
This makes the number
of years from the revelation of the Quran to the discovery of its miracle (in
1974CE or 1393AH), 1393+13=1406 years. It was more than interesting to notice
that 1406 = 19 X 74.
Wow! Isn’t that impressive! But, sorry for being sceptical
here, why wasn’t the “miracle” discovered or
- if this is really all controlled by a god – revealed only 13 years
later in the year 1406AH or 1387AH, only 6 years earlier? Both are divisible by
19, but Muslims who believe this “miracle” need to make mathematical
adjustments to make the “mathematical miracle” work. Is 1974CE divisible by 19?
Nope. That also does not work. No, we have to rely on a fabrication. How do you
get from 1393 to the desired 1406? By simply stating that the Koran was
revealed 13 years earlier and use that as an adjustment factor and add 13. Is
that a constant adjustment factor? No, just here and once. Was the Koran
revealed 13 years before Hijra? No. Or to be more precise: nobody knows when,
where, for how long or by whom the Koran was written. There are stories, myths
or legends that the very first time the first sentence of something which would
later become the Koran was “revealed” was in 610CE or thereabouts. Is there any
historical evidence for this? No, of course not.
Coming back to Rashad Khalifa, we acknowledge he made many
claims. He created his own translation of the Koran, which is a mix between
what the previous translators already did and what he added as wishful thinking,
such as his own name. Later, it seems, he became increasingly deluded, calling
the Koran corrupt when it did not conform with his “19 miracle” claim and he
could not find adjustments to make it fit. Much like firing a random shot at a
wall and afterwards painting a target around the bullet hole. He finally
declared himself a messenger of Allah and also declared his version of the
translated Koran authorised by none other than Allah himself. His delusions of
grandeur led to extravagancies where his interpretation of his reality put him
on a collision course with Man-made law, resulting in a trial where he admitted
having fondled the breasts of an underage girl. His dogma as a borderline
theologian led to an increasing rejection and finally hatred by other Muslims and
culminated in a fatwa and his subsequent killing in a mosque in the US.
Hang on! Can’t his faithful Muslim followers somehow
capitalise from this death? Can’t you somehow convert the death into a
miraculous sign? No problem at all. You just take the date of his death in 1409AH
- and convert it to the date standard introduced by the Catholic Pope Gregory XIII
- which is then 01/31/90 - and now you convert
that from the US format to the European dd.mm.yyyy format, simply remove the
separator dots and divide the resultant number by 19. Now you need to take some
knowledgeable Hindus, devise a system which converts letters into numbers, convert
and adapt this for Arabic, which is shown in the table of gematrical values and
manipulate that to get a value of 1230 for the name of Rashad Khalifa, which
only requires some minor manual adjustments to correct for intrinsic errors.
Process description:
the name Rashad Khalifa in Arabic is made up from 9 letters,
R, SH, A, D, KH, L, Y, F, H.
(200 + 300 + 1 + 4) +
(600 + 30 + 10 + 80 +5)= 505 + 725=1230 (according to the table humans made and
not provided by any god)
But wait, why is the last letter of Khalifa an h? The explanation
is amazingly simple:
Rashad Khalifa was a native Arabic
speaker from Egypt with heavy Arabic and religious knowledge, he did not know
anything about the great mathematical miracle that would surround his
assassination. He genuinely calculated his own gematrical value as 1230 and
that was genuinely confirmed as correct by other native Arabic speakers
studying with him as well. He had a PHD in Biochemistry and an Egyptian,
calculating the gematrical value of his own name was no less than a no brainer.
You can’t beat these logics… You gotta hand it to them,
their IQ’s must be well into the double digits.
Anyway, let’s continue our miracle exploration:
We now need to apply this gematrically derived 1230 to the
values we have from above by dividing the total by 19 and then divide this by
the value we established for the name, the 1230, and that leaves you with a
remainder. This number, a 1327, turns out not to be divisible by 19 and has nothing
special about it. But if you search long enough, you will turn up something and
in this case it turns out to be a prime number and you triumphantly declare
another miracle.
The number as equation:
becomes 31011990 = 19 x 1230 x 1327
I am sure that if I were a god I’d come up with something a
lot more impressive. As it stands, there are humans I share my genome with, who
will believe all of this is a sign from a super-natural entity.
So why would a god present me with stuff I consider
hog-wash? Why all these undefined and arbitrarily combined elements? I am sure
that if a god were omniscient, it would know what I would consider a sign. If
it were omnipotent it would be able to provide what I require and if it were
all-merciful it would feel compelled to deliver the right sign for me. But this
stuff?
What any rational mind would consider to be a total lack of
definitions and the constant need for brain acrobatics, does not deter our
Turkish/Kurdish/American apologist Edip Yüksel from propagating the miracle
claim further and deeper.
He claims he investigated, studied and researched this miracle
claim and can therefore further substantiate it.
So what we have is another claim which is similar to the
inimitability claim. The format of a book verifies its divine origin. Can this
be true? Is human creativity equivalent to divine authorship? No, of course
not. How can style verify contents?
If we look at the basis of all this counting and allocating
numbers to letters and words we immediately see that this is virtually impossible
with the Koran, as Hafs and Warsh have different lettering systems while
maintaining the contents, the meaning. Khalifa arbitrarily decided to take one
version of the Koran, modify the contents by deleting some sentences and
changing others and then started counting. But as anyone who has seen my
textual criticism videos will know, the Koran was originally written in one
constant flow. Humans, decades and centuries later, divided the text into words
and sentences and applied diacritical marks to give it the meaning we know
today. The methodology varied and we know of the Kufah, Basra, Shami, Makkah
and Madinah systems of division. Nobody really knows when the sentences and
chapters were set into the order we know today and by whom, where this task is
purported to have been done by Khalif Uthman. Here’s the first chapter of the
Koran in a simulated Koranic format. First we add vowels and then diacritical
markings. Finally we bring it into the shape and form we are familiar with.
Now let’s look at the methodology of the 19 miracle claim.
You get counts which claim the occurrence of a particular letter or word in the
Koran or the gematrical value of a word.
So how does this counting of the value of a word work?
Example:
Waheed = wahd = 6+1+8+4=19
BUT the Koran does not write this with an Alif, so the
number for the Alif, the 1, falls away and we get the number count 18, not 19.
Ooops. Unless, of course, we have different versions of the Koran which contain
different letters and words.
If we look at the counting system applied by the “19
miracle” it becomes obvious that it is not straightforward at all. Looking at
the occurrence, we see that some words are counted according to spelling, some
according to meaning and some according to grammatical derivative. Anything to
make it fit.
Edip Yüksel spends considerable time on this and always
declares that the “19 miracle” is a legitimate and authentic claim, which
actually provides a structure to the Koran.
What about the competition? Will a Muslim acknowledge the
veracity of the Bible after reading the following mathematical miracle claim:
1.
Psalm
118 is the middle chapter of the entire Bible?
2.
Psalm
117, before Psalm 118 is the shortest chapter in the Bible?
3.
Psalm
119, after Psalm 118 is the longest chapter in the Bible?
4.
The
Bible has 594 chapters before Psalm 118 and 594 chapters after Psalm 118?
5.
If you
add up all the chapters except Psalm 118, you get a total of 1188 chapters?
6.
1188 or
Psalm 118 verse 8 is the middle verse of the entire Bible?
Somehow, I doubt it.
Watching the Yüksel video “Running like Zebras” I noticed how
a repetitive pattern is constructed showing Islam as the victim, trying its
best to establish itself as a credible and cooperative world-view – yet off
camera using vocabulary like penetrating, infiltrating and other, really nasty
terms.
The
Quran is simple to understand (54:11).
A
portion of the Quran requires intensive analytical study.
Yüksel seems to enjoy piggybacking into the offices of
people. He just hangs on to the coat-tails of a film crew interviewing Michael
Shermer and then just hangs around when the interview itself is over. He says
totally nonsensical stuff like: “I wrote a thesis on his [Carl Sagan’s] work –
erm, not on his work but basically 19”.
Say WHAT?? He then talks endlessly at Shermer who is totally
bewildered and eventually has enough of this and asks Yüksel what he wants and
what this is about and eventually throws him out, telling him he needs to go
back to work. Yüksel is not at all impressed by this and simply carries on
talking until he is finally stopped and asked to leave.
In the video, Yüksel simply lies, saying Shermer invited
them to their offices. He did not. In fact, Shermer was so infuriated that he
forbade the usage of the section of the video with Yüksel, which is later
unilaterally ignored by Yüksel “on moral grounds”.
This is the interview request and there is no mention of
anything like 19, Islam, the Koran or the name Yüksel. In – what Yüksel terms -
an interview – which means he talks incessantly, the other person sits around
bored stiff and gets to inject a word occasionally. Later, with atheists.org
David Silverman, Yüksel talks about the 19 miracle claim and his “chat” with
Michael Shermer, and he claims there was a “bit of a discussion”, which there
was not. He states Shermer said “he looks like an idiot”, which he did not say
and then confesses his blatant lying tactics by admitting that he promised not
to publish any of the material with him, which he later did use.
He does not care at all that he is infringing on the legal rights of others – anything to collect names and get his silly doctrine in there. Yet in the video he calls himself a scientist and seems to see himself as some sort of intellectual academic – and then argues for the superstitious beliefs of a 7th century desert nomad and camel herder. Like I said: deluded.
How far deluded? Well, he claims he had a “discussion” with
Carl Sagan. This entire discussion consists of Yüksel writing pages and pages
of stuff to Sagan and he did finally receive a note, telling him his claims
were nonsense. Yüksel is not deterred, however, and even writes the most fantastic
sentence to Sagan: “We may end up co-authoring a book together” – that is how far gone our Mr. Yüksel is.
He calls himself and likes to think of himself as an
intellectual, a scholar, yet is unable to grasp that the editor-in-chief of a
magazine is not the expert in everything, but rather gets experts to write
about their area of expertise and then bundles everything in a newspaper or magazine.
Shermer describes the process several times and explains that the “Skeptic
Magazine” edition including Islam was written by an expert and that he,
Shermer, had never read the Koran himself and did not need to. The people
interviewing him did not comprehend this.
Yüksel continues his oral diarrhoea and further infringes on
Shermer’s hospitality. In his dishonesty, Yüksel later describes this as a debate and claims he overpowered
Shermer. With what? Audacity?
Even an Islamic Imam gets impatient when Yüksel tries to
talk him to death, endlessly repeating everything. He simply gets up and
aborts.
The dishonesty within Islam and the inherent sectarian
division is so apparent when the Imam in the video says Shariah is NOT about
stoning or hacking off hands and Yüksel himself shows a woman being stoned and
some hacked off hands.
Yüksel, who still rejected the classification Muslim with
Shermer, suddenly calls himself a Muslim and calls the Imam’s message garbage. In his defiant
attitude he refuses to accept his state of delusion and likens the Imam of the
biggest mosque in New York to a zebra, fleeing the sight of a lion, which
Yüksel sees himself as. Like I said: deluded.
In his quest for downloading portions of the “19 miracle” to
unsuspecting victims, he comes across a very realistic Muslim, a musician who
does not really know why he believes what he believes and simply says that a
numerical pattern would do nothing for him anyway. The segment ends in a sick,
sexual, depraved threat, which is completely meaningless and primitive.
Yuksel fluctuates between claiming he is not a scholar and claiming he is a scholar. What an evil, conniving
moron! Yüksel is the typical representative of a Muslim who thinks nothing of
tearing apart Islam if it only feeds his own ego and his own, personal agenda.
So leaving behind the pathetic, pitiful person and analysing
the factual claim for a “19 miracle” shows it is simply another patternicity
and numerology exercise. If one manages to still argue that the 1st
chapter of the Koran adheres to the number 19, the 2nd already fails
flat out. As do all the other sentences. Only some assorted ones behave as
desired. Which is exactly what you would expect from a random text.
But how can anyone come up with so many incidents of text
matching the number 19? It follows the good old pattern of “The Only Statistics
You Can Trust are the Ones You Falsified Yourself”.
Here are 3 examples, suggested by someone called Abdul
Haleem:
Rashid Khalifa made his own personal translation of the
Koran, which he continuously updated as the words were required to change their
meaning how he wanted them. In his initial version, the last 2 sentences in
chapter 9 were still there. So, when counting the word al-raheem, the merciful,
he gets 115, which alas, is not divisible by 19. So he gets rid of one by
saying it is wrongly attributed to Muhammad, the messenger. So he simply
subtracts this one and arrives at 114, which is 19x 6. Miracle accomplished.
When he wrote his “Quran: the Final Scripture” he still had
the sentences in chapter 9, which include the word Allah. Including this, his
count is: 2698
Later, he deleted the last 2 sentences and, one of them
containing the word god or Allah in Arabic, and he adjusted his count to: 2698
Well, he couldn’t reduce this because 2698 is 19x 142. 2697
wouldn’t match the miracle claim, so he must have found an additional Allah hiding
somewhere in the Koran, which he had previously overlooked.
Miracle accomplished.
If a specific word or letter is missing to complete the miracle, why let intellectual honesty get in your way? Why would you want to abandon a perfectly good miracle, just because it does not fit? No, you need to be creative, even if it takes placing a black star when you have a hit – even if you need to include counting the ornaments in the frame.
Miracle accomplished.
Does this mean all these claims are based on trickery and
lies? Yes. (0:33)
If there is a hidden message in the Koran which is based on
the number 19, what does chapter 19 sentence number 19 say? Something about
Jesus. Hm. So where is this hidden message announced? Why in 74:30 of course.
It’s a hidden message. What probably
happened is that someone read 74:30 which reads: "Over it are
nineteen" and did not manage to associate that with the context of hell
and some angels managing hell and then started doctoring the words in the
Koran. Now, what is important is that Arabic is a Semitic language, based on word
roots with 3 consonants. These roots can be manipulated in endless ways and
grammar consists of the modification of these roots and inserting letters to
adjust the meaning of words. As there are still multiple possibilities for the
meaning of each word we need to have the context to arrive at a precise
meaning. Because the Koran uses vague and ambiguous words this deception is
easily pulled off. No follower of the “19 miracle” ever bothers to explain the
definitions or methodology of the counts and why it seems highly dependent on
coincidence when or where or how a multiple of 19 is found.
Many people have since analysed the claims and are simply
appalled at the level of dishonesty at work here. Naturally, because I have not
studied ancient or classic Arabic, I need to rely on people who have. Many
Muslim apologists make the common mistake of thinking their knowledge of one of
the many current Arabic dialects enables them to understand the Koranic Arabic,
but I have been assured by Koran teachers that this is not the case. Only a few
hundred 1000 Muslims have studied ancient Arabic, so we are in the 0.0x %
range.
Looking at the – what I by now call - childish “19 miracle”
claim we see that it is sometimes counting words, sometimes sequences,
sometimes parts of words or maybe descriptions. Is there any consistency? No.
It’s not that all chapters start with a pattern of 19 letters or every 19th
chapter has pattern x. No, it requires a huge amount of creativity and brain
acrobatics to manipulate everything to bring it into the desired sequence. Is
any of this capable of making any predictive statement? No! As per usual, we
have only the standard taking of current knowledge and projecting it onto an
old text.
When critics showed up and pointed out error after error,
the claims were toned down and the text itself modified to make the claims fit
more readily. Instead of abandoning the futile quest, Yüksel still insists
there is a point in all this. The worst nightmare must be the attempt of making
some sense of the 29 single-letter “verses” or sentences or signs. They are
renamed to signatures and the chapters are scrutinised for any pattern which
can be made resembling those initials at the beginning of some of the chapters.
Does it work? Nope! Does it make any sense? Nope! Patternicity at work.
Just as Ivan Panin or R. McCormack found hundreds of codes
in the Bible or Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg (WRR) in the
Torah, we have our Yüksels for the Koran. Or Michael Drosnin for Moby Dick and
War and Peace. Nothing new or original.
Now that the 19 miracle has been debunked again and again,
what do Muslim apologists do? Give up and apologise for their own behaviour for
a change? You must be kidding! No, they simply move on to the next claim, where
this time around, selected words in the Koran have been repeated any number of
times to make it look significant to someone with the knowledge which is termed
common knowledge in the 21st century.
However, in the age of the internet, the miracle claim that
the word “day” appears 365 times in the Koran becomes a lot less impressive once
you discover the selection process necessary to make this work. First off,
“day” is an English word and appears zero times in the Koran. What we need is
the Arabic word for day. But here we run into the main problem: what is the
definition of what is to be counted? The critic known as “Abd ulRaHman” points
out that “If the word is "yawm" in all its forms, the answer is 475
times”.
Is a sentence with “2 days” in it counted as 1 or 2? Well,
either way it suits you to make up the required count. And please consider that
the Koran would be validating a Christian calendar because an Allah was not quite
omnipotent enough to push the Islamic calendar. Maybe his motion was overturned
by the combined vote of the offspring of the Jewish and the Christian gods, the
sons Ezra and Jesus. Will Muslims abandon their Islamic, moon based calendar as
a consequence?
How come some of the counts of “day” which in this case
serve towards establishing a year are suddenly turned into an entire era or an unlimited
and unspecified time span when used in connection with the creation of the
Earth and the Universe in the Koran? What about the sentences where the word
day in the Koran is the equivalent of 1000 or even 50,000 years? Can’t a god do
better than that? Do I really need to analyse every single instance of the word
“day” to establish the claim is mere wishful thinking?
Anyone can do this for any of the numerical claims. They are
so childish and wrong and – just as is the case with the inimitability claim
- will never answer the age old
question: can style verify contents?
Here’s a list with columns indicating differences in
counting the word day in the Koran. Anyone using both brain cells will see that
the counting methodology is anything but a method and just tries to squeeze the
result in to seem impressive. But for what? Yüksel continuously propagates
miracle claim after miracle claim for his beloved Koran. But for what purpose?
In the Silverman interview he clearly says:
Well, if these verses don’t show that the Koran is the word of god, all others can be rejected as well. If Yüksel claims that Judgment Day is in 2280, what are the calculations for that? Why just give the ominous “requires deeper study” brush off?
When I asked him for a definition for one of his claims, he
just wrote back: What is your definition
of definition? What does Stop mean? What does mean mean? What is the weight of
an average redherring? He’s easily upset and thrown off balance when it
comes to actually proving anything, quickly changing the topic and applying the
typical Muslimologica, where anything the “others” do wrong, automatically
verifies Islam and its holy book.
Christians, who are understandably keen on refuting all
these claims have spent considerable efforts on this and have blown it out of
the water completely. I am unable to follow most of the arguments they make as,
unlike their specialists, I don’t speak or read ancient Arabic. They do.
So what is the point of arguing for miracles all the time if
not for the claim of the divine origins of the Koran? Why ask how Muhammad
could have known what was correct if Muhammad did not write the Koran? Did the
god of the Muslims author the Koran or was it a human? Are the mathematical
miracle claims showing the divinity of Muhammad? What is the ulterior purpose
of mathematical miracles? Why does he claim he is a Koranist and requires only
the Koran - and then follows the hated Sunnah when it comes to making some
sense of the origins of the Koran for him?
Please! Would it make people better Muslims if the
numerology or mathematical claims were true? Would it benefit Muslims in any
way? Or did the Arabs in the 7th century lack the knowledge that a
solar year consists of roughly 365 days? No, of course not. Would a god really
provide such an inaccurate count in the form of a puzzle? Instead of providing
predictive information, we get Nostradamus-style nonsense which requires retro-fitting
to make any sense. Why not provide accurate definitions instead of puzzles and spare
apologists the embarrassing task of having to manipulate the words to make the
information fit? In this century a year consists of 365.2425 days. Earth was
rotating faster 1000 years ago, so it would be more. Is this information in the
Koran?
If I take a price list and take some of the prices and show
they are divisible by 19 - have I made
any significant discovery? Does it mean anything? If ALL numbers have a common
factor or follow a distinct pattern, I can say there is a pattern. Does this
make any statement in itself about the prices or the descriptions? Hardly.
Just like a page in a telephone directory can be made to
show some patterns, the Koran does have some recurring instances of something.
Like any text. It is coincidence. That’s why the word was created. Yes, there
are some coincidental structures, but nothing so unusual which would make it
wow or anything worth writing home about.
In conclusion we see that the claim for a mathematical
miracle is based only on wishful thinking and the result of a deluded, simple
and deceived mind. We see that the criteria for establishing a mathematical
miracle are bogus and arbitrary. There is no evidence for the existence of
anything super-natural or the Koran being of divine origins. We are still stuck
with good old faith. Because this is so easily demonstrated, the claim for
further numerology miracles is simply dishonest and shows the lack of moral
integrity and propensity for the willing deceit of others. As we have heard
before: religion poisons everything.
Thanks for your patience and your time.
No no no wait!
A new message has just reached me:
This book … recent discovery … one of the most exciting …
miracles of the Qur’an. …
studying thousands of …words and passages, … discovery of an
intricate numeric system … proving … existence and accuracy …
numeric system… comprehensively covers … chapters, verses,
words and
letters.
… new phenomenon … ‘numeric
miracle’ of the Qur’an.
This work is an attempt … firm scientific … grounds …
numeric miracle. … sound scientific
approach … whenever Qur’anic numbers are analysed
The foundation and
basis of this numeric system is the number 7 the most significant
number in the Noble
Qur’an
Oh no, not again………
In this video I examine the claims by Edip Yüksel regarding
mathematical miracles within the text of the Koran. I show that this
letter/word/meaning counting is sheer apophenia/patternicity. It was only
during the post editing that I came across a refutation by Dr. Bilal Philips,
who, in a 105 page text, completely destroyed all the claims one by one using
the very texts and sources used by Khalifa/Yüksel. Highly recommended if anyone
wants to know more about this.
Sources:
Running Like Zebras
The book
History of Numerology
Large numbers
Bible miracle
Discussion with Sagan
19 Koran coincidence
Khalifa rape newspaper
Khalifa gematric
1230
Shermer on Yüksel
Muslim and 19 believer
QURAN: THE FINAL
SCRIPTURE
ISBN 0-934894-19-1 Library of Congress Card No. 81-80923
Deceit
Dr. Bilal Philips - The Quran's Numerical Miracle: 19 Hoax
and Heresy
Arabic, Brian Bishop , A History of the Arabic Language
Panin and co
365 claims
Number 7
Audio under Creative Commons License:
Calmucho - Give Me Twice
Frizzo - ElectroSwing minimix 128 Bpm
Sweep Kick-SoundBible.com
Notice and Disclaimer:
This video is in no way associated with TheJinnAndTonicShow.
It is a private video and the views expressed here only represent my own
personal views and nobody else’s.
Copyright:
The usage of this footage follows the guidelines as laid out
in section 107 (Fair Use) of the Copyright Act 1976 as it is used exclusively
for analysis and criticism for non-profit educational purposes and thus does
not require any permission from anyone.
This video contains transformative information, does not
infringe on the target audience of the critiqued material, is non-commercial,
uses only the minimum, required material and thus does not infringe any
copyright laws. It provides either a review, a comment, criticism, parody,
education, satire or all of the aforementioned. Abusive take-down notices will
be countered.
Copyright and Fair Use
Creative Commons attribution non-commercial no derivatives
license (CC BY-NC-ND)
It is a silly claims to claim Maurice will leave Christianity for no prove .
ReplyDeleteHe is a famous enough Doctor and he doesn't need to be famous .
He commented that pharaoh body intact like mentioned Quran . Many century and his body didn't got hurt because Allah creator promised to save his body to be a sign for disbelievers
_"It is a silly claims to claim Maurice will leave Christianity for no prove"_
DeleteWhat "Maurice"? What are you talking about? This is nonsense.
_"He is a famous enough Doctor and he doesn't need to be famous ."_
What are you talking about? This is nonsense.
_"He commented that pharaoh body intact like mentioned Quran"_
The Koran only uses the word "Firaun" without specifying which one. The Koran does not mention anything about any intact body either.
Look, you need to stop embarrassing yourself.
Learn what it says in the Koran, then learn what reality is and then start thinking. Stop spreading these stupid lies.
Maybe you fail to see it, , , , , that was awsome mathematics, chapter 114=19x6, 6346 verse 334x19, goes on and on....even moon eclipse back to it position its took 19 years, your finger 19 bones, and much more, , , , god in quran solemn '19' is great miracle and also WARNING sign to human race,,,
ReplyDelete"Maybe you fail to see it"
ReplyDeleteNo, no fail. There is nothing and you are spouting nonsense. You are following childish numerology.
"your finger 19 bones"
That is false
The bones of the hand can be divided into three categories:
Carpal bones (Most proximal) – A set of eight irregularly shaped bones. These are located in the wrist area.
Metacarpals – There are five metacarpals, each one related to a digit
Phalanges (Most distal) – The bones of the fingers. Each finger has three phalanges, except for the thumb, which has two.
So your claims are idiotic.
Hi bro, i am not believer myself however i think there is more to investigate. Numerology and patternicity is dangerous, yet the question "When it is obvious there is no patternicity yet an order?" stands. For me, biggest wonder is the Quaranic initials. They are cleary a code, in some chapters there is only letters in first verse and after that "These are miracle of God" verse. And many schoolars tried to explain it for years, however 19 code; which is relatively simple-just counting letters in the chapter- is worth examining. Also, Rashad Khalifa's life has multiple of 19 days, and many things about him so on. I agree there can be facts seen as simple numerology and bogus, but there is more.
ReplyDeleteAnd one more thing, dont know if you believe in official conspiracy about 9/11, but let me add one other thing about it. Just eleven years before 9/11 Bush mentioned "New World Order" in his speech, first time. Trying to explain modern history without the knowledge of occultism and kabala is pointless.
Peace!