Here’s a copy of a letter by the terrorist Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar who a little while back tried to kill some American students. Fortunately he miserable failed in that. Pathetic little idiot. The whole letter is rather idiotic and crazy, however this part stands out for its sheer battiness:
http://www.herald-sun.com/orange/10-716750.html
What’s this bullshit about “mathematically encoded with the number 19 beyond human ability”?
It’s just run-of-the-mill apophenia.
You can wade through this if you’re interested.
19, 23, 42 – pick a number, any number. Suddenly, it’s everywhere!
Huh??? By comparison, the interpretation of Nostradamus verses and the so-called “bible-code” look like a scientific theory well-grounded in fact .
From what I’ve read, in orthodox/fundamentalist Islam, one of the beliefs is that the Qur’an is so perfect that its composition – not just the nature of it content or teaching, but the way it’s put together, the language, the word choice, the meter, the order of the verses, the choice of what to NOT include, etc. – would be impossible to mere humans.
This we see here is one of the consequences of taking that and based upon it setting out to find a “scientific proof of the scriptures”, a phenom not entirely alien to the West.
The idea that hidden in numbers there’s proof of some transcendent universal message even figured in Carl Sagan’s Contact.
…(*&^%$ “submit” button)… As mentioned, it’s a frequent device in both fiction and nonfiction. I would think that a lot of “mainstream” Islam would just take the Qur’an’s perfection as a matter of Faith, rather than rely on these mental gymnastics.
No.
This whole idiotic idea was started by an Islamic heretic, the late Rashad Khalifa, who was also convinced that he himself was a prophet, that the hadith were corrupt, and that it was idolatry to mention Muhammad in the shahadah. He had to remove two verses from the Qur’an to make it fit his theory (though of course he claimed the theory showed those two verses were spurious to begin with). Nobody outside of his little American-based sect takes him seriously.
There’s nothing that can be put down on paper that couldn’t have come from a human being.
If I make a computer program to randomly spit out characters, there is a non-zero chance that it will produce ANY work every produced, be it the Koran or the Bible of the Holy Menu of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
If a computer can make it, then certainly a man can, if only by chance if not by skill. There can be no proof that a particular string of characters could not come from a human.
FYI the link is a “404 Not Found Error.”
“Mathematically Encoding,” Numerological analysis of varying scriptures/texts that self described seers exercise their limited mental capacities on in the futile hope of some improvement, or finding some new revelation.
As you say the 19 thing is BS pure and simple.
Mohammad did NOT write the Quran. He alleged it was revealed to him by the angel “Gabriel” over a period of some twentytwo years. Susequently it was recorded on all kinds of materials by varrious literate associates. Following Mohammad’s death all of the available scraps or notes were gathered and additional bits and pieces of Mohammad’s revelations were recalled from memory and recorded. These were assembled, collated and eventually resulted in the Quran of today.
Sweet! I always use 19 as my b-ball jersey number. I’m good to go!
Calypso Louie Farrakhan also did extensive research into the properties of 19. Coincidence??? I think not!