A Skeptic’s Guide to ‘The Skeptic’s Guide To God’

I will probably anger some people at church with this. But I feel compelled to write it, people should hear the skeptic’s side as well. Hey, if you want to use David Heenan’s arguments and statements to argue with hardened atheists, you should know what you’re up against.

A Commentary On David Heenan’s Presentation ‘The Skeptic’s Guide To God’

Evolution: Darwin was worried about lack of support in fossil record. This is true – he was. However, relatively speaking, a tiny amount of fossils had been found in the time of Darwin. For example, the dinosaur species Diplodocus, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Stegosaurus, Apatasaurus, and Velociraptor (that’s most of Jurassic Park) had not yet been discovered when Darwin died. Paleontology has not stood still since then, and the predictions of evolution have in fact been fulfilled because transitionary fossils actually have been found.

Let me quote the science journalist Michael Le Page on the claim that there are no transitionary fossils.

There isn’t a nice way of saying this: anyone making this claim is either appallingly ignorant or an outright liar. In fact, there are far too many fossils with intermediate features to count – trillions if you include microfossils. These fossils show the transitions between major groups, from fish to amphibians, for instance, as well as from one species to another. New discoveries are continually made, from the half-fish, half-amphibian Tiktaalik to an early giraffe with a shorter neck than modern animals.

By the way, Charles Darwin is not the final authority on evolution; many parts of his original theory have since been modified or discarded.

Yes, David Henaan had some two quotes from scientists. One was from a geologist, not a biologist or palaeontologist. You can always find a quote from someone authoritative-sounding who will support what what you say. But in truth, the vast majority of people trained in biology believe that the theory of evolution can explain the variety of life on earth today, and that its predictions have been tested and found correct.

David Heenan’s arguments against evolution are 50 years old. Much stronger and subtler criticisms can and have be levelled against it, which he did not bring forward, and this suggests to me that he really has not researched this much himself. A good start for further reading can be found here.

To be honest, I felt like walking out of the room during parts that section.

The Bible Code:I found this bit the most interesting and most grounded, and did the most research on it. Yes, the equidistant letter sequences (ELS) technique can be used to find phrases. Yes, the prophetic statements are there.

However, determining the probability of them randomly being there is much less clear. Statistics is very hard, very easy to manipulate, and it’s very easy to make subtle errors. (My qualification is a distinction in UNSW’s Mathemathics 2099 course; I consider it the branch of mathematics I’m weakest at).

So the argument is: that it is so improbable that these equidistant letter sequences are there by random chance, that they must have been intentionally inserted by a intelligent coordinator (i.e. God). The most mathematically valid arguments (as far as I can tell) that this is the case can found at www.biblecodedigest.com. It’s done by Edwin Sherman, an actuary with a P.H.D in mathematics. I read several articles in the technically advanced readers section. It’s not obviously wrong but it seems to me as though there are a few weak links.

In particular, with his derivation of the Markov chain ELS extension model, I think the probability ‘d’ would get less as more extensions are found. He does note this but doesn’t appear to take it into account. Also, I suspect ‘d’ could be different for ELS’s with different skip lengths…they’re not quite random sequences of letters, the (extremely complicated) structure of natural is actually in there.

A page summarising some more technical criticisms against the original Rips, Rosenburg and Witzum paper (and the study by Harold Gans) by actual statisticians can be found here.

The original study by Rips et. al. found that ELS’s of the names of the most famous Jewish rabbis were more likely to be ‘near’ ELS’s of the dates of their birth (as in, there were relatively few pages in between the two ELS’s). This is interpreted as meaning that the bible codes were predicting the births of the famous rabbis. Stepping back for a moment…does this mean the bible codes are actually supporting Judaism?

Also, the author of ‘The Bible Code’ predicted global war and apocalypse in 2006, which obviously didn’t happen. The authors of the original bible code study have distanced themselves from Michael Drosnin and his conclusions.

It’s also very important to note that the same or similar techniques can used to extract ‘prophecies’ from Moby Dick, War and Peace, and Vanilla Ice’s song lyrics. To quote physicist Dave Thomas, “Hidden messages can be found anywhere provided you’re willing to invest time and effort to harvest the vast field of probability”.

Here’s a study that found phrases in just two pages of ‘War And Peace’. If the whole book is searched, you can apparently match ‘Harrison’ with ‘Let it
Be’, ‘Beatles’, ‘Rock God’, ‘Fab four’, and ‘Yoko Ono’.

Both of those were from the aforementioned Dave Thomas, a physicist and mathematician with a Masters degree in mathematics. His main bible codes website ridicules the idea with many incredible examples.

However, it’s really really horribly designed, which makes a bad impression on me – it looks like a crackpot site. He apparently has the approval of Michael Shermer though.

Another list of refutations. Notes in particular that the spelling of Hebrew words has changed throughout history, resulting in today’s Hebrew bible having “tens of thousands” of letter alterations from the oldest texts, in particular the Book of Jeremiah. If this is the case the ELS’s would not be found in the original text of the bible.

And finally, be honest, the sentences in the bible codes are often broken/pidgin: they look like something from a random phrase generator! This criticism comes to mind: “Do you really think the God of Abraham and Moses needs a remedial Hebrew lesson?”

The parting of the Red Sea at Nuweiba:This site was discovered and popularised by Ron Wyatt, a seventh-day-adventist who worked as a nurse-anaesthesiologist and had no archaeological training. He also claimed to have found Noah’s Ark at Durupinar near Mount Ararat. Take a look. Of course, all the chariot wheels and bones could quite possibly be there. (In this day and age, photos by themselves shouldn’t count as evidence). I’m just saying.

Also by the way, the Bible’s veracity as a historical document is not really disputed any more.

The number 7: Really, what on earth? The conception dates of many animals are divisible by seven? Lots of numbers are divisible by seven. Also the musical scale has seven notes? The chromatic scale has 12; modes, major scales and minor scales have 8; the pentatonic scale has 5; and the melodic minor even has different notes depending on whether you move up or downl; but none I know has seven. Why is this important again, anyway?

Conclusion: I was not overly impressed with David Heenan’s talk.

I believe that there will never be found any scientific evidence for God or for miracles or divine intervention. God is not required for a scientific explanation of the world. That’s why it’s called faith, and why you need it to be a Christian for crying out loud!