Statistical analysis of the Bible.



Here is another one of my myspace ramblings. :-)

Joshua wrote: I'm not a rebel against God. I don't see how it belongs in a science class. Your mysticism argument is not science. You're simply saying that everything that can't be explained must be God.

If you have a BS in science then you should know that is not scientific.



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Statistical analysis IS scientific.

See...when you view a situation where there are no remotely plausible solutions, you logically have to begin entertaining every suggestion.

And the evaluation of the bountiful suggestions that God created all that is, results in a STAGGERING statistical confirmation!

What are the odds for instance of chariot ruins being strewn all over the ocean floor in the gulf of Aqaba.... were they not there from the incident described in Exodus?

I mean...it wasn't a ship that sank. THey're all along this path. Far too spread out. What the heck would a ship be doing in THAT location...loaded with Chariots anyway? They were made over in Egypt. Why would they haul them onto a ship and take them way around an out of the way path to get them back up in the gulf of Aqaba so that they could unload them again? And who would they historically have been selling chariots to over there anyway? The whole scenario doesn't make sense. Unless. It's exactly what that story describes.

And on and on I can go about the fact that this is reported as HISTORY and not myth. It's the only exhaustive history of a people group! Anyway who claims this isn't actual history is anti-semitic in the WORST way; claiming that a people group were SO LAME that they promoted this as history when it's actually myth.

That's insane. For a variety of reasons. Firstly that the whole thing is anti-human motivational. I mean why make up a history that makes you look like class A stooges spiritually? Near 100% of the people always rebelling against God even when he's right there manifesting his presence? C'mon. Is that the kind of story you'd make up and try to pass to your children as fact? "Look how dumb mommy and daddy were! Now just believe this...it's real history!"

Good grief. Some people just don't have a living brain cell. Obviously the extensive and HIGHLY substantiated through archeology and other history writing, IS INDEED HISTORY. Should we teach kids the FACTS that relate to WHY we might think this people group's history is real?

Of course. Unless we're anti-semitic dip wads we should recognize that this is THE most significant piece of literature of all time. We should teach it's content in school and let kids decide for themselves after showing them the ACTUAL FINDINGS that confirm so many of the stories therein.

But are we remotely intelligent? No. We neglect teaching children the most relevant things. Instead we try to OBSCURE that which is relevant and replace it with literary crap in relative comparison. Works of documented fiction that indeed relate to some aspects of life well and I'm not condemning them. I'm just saying..the bible blows away Steinbeck, etc. in terms of how USEFUL it is to KNOW.

I believe it should be taught in schools IF WE ARE REMOTELY UNBIASED simply because it is the greatest piece of literature and so MANY things point to it being PROBABLE HISTORY.

I mean..we have to take all history with a bit of faith. There have been discussions about how some American history might be slanted just a wee bit. BUT FOR CRYING OUT LOUD...teach what is STATISTICALLY intelligent to teach WHEN IN DOUBT and let the kids figure it out in their own life.

Agreed?

There is such a richness that kids have been deprived of by not studying OT literature in school. THen we move to the four gospels and must stand in awe at it from a statistical analysis as well. Each and every discrepancy can easily be explained when we realize that these are independent perspectives. For example one person seeing one angel and another two at the tomb. If an Angel was right in my face, I might miss one standing behind and the person by me might see that one and since we were both there we never bother to tell what we saw to the other person and instead wind up telling the story our way to whoever records it. And there winds up being a varied report in that area.

This is perfectly understandable and actually just verifies that nobody worked over these texts to make them look more credible. And this opens up a can of statistical WHOOP ASS on skeptics, because hey. What are the odds of 4 pieces of literature existing which are FICTION, but which correlate to this level of accuracy and where every little anomole like that is fully understandable as a normal observational discrepancy?

The odds are..essentially zero. Hyper astronomical. FURTHER... unlike the 'other testament' of Joseph Smith for instance which was generated in relatively recent times, THESE Gospels hold 100% scientifically. Nothing was reported therein that has been disproven. The coins described existed. The people described existed. Meanwhile, Smith's tale..not a single artifact has been found. Plus genetic studies don't bear witness at all that the Native americans and Hebrew people are related nor the Polynesians.

The bible is an incredible work AND SHOULD BE..if anything in literature..presented IN historical context so that kids can just see the truth and make their own decision about whether it is valid history or not. It is a ...buried treasure.

Now beyond that, the bible testifies of things in creation that seem to correlate well to scientific knowledge. 100% of the things Catholics taught that were not in the bible have been proven FALSE scientifically now. However, NONE of the things actually taught in the bible have been proven false. As I said there are expressions like the 4 corners of the earth' which related to people's perception in their local world. Being surrounded militarily for instance, people tend to say 'you take the right, I'll take the left flank and you guys circle around behind and you guys do a frontal attack..

However NOTE it never says "The earth has four corners and if you go to the edge you fall off into the abyss. " or some bullcrap. WHAT ARE THE ODDS that given ALL OF THE ASSERTIONS IN THE BIBLE...that a fabricator wouldn't have said at least ONE thing that is documentedly stupid like that?

The odds are essentially 100%. Again...due to the NUMBER and NATURE of the assertions that ARE made...statistical analysis determines that the odds of not ONE of them being of the form of what I just suggested above or equiv. ARE WAY out there beyond 1 in 10^15th power or so. Odds that we LAUGH at scientifically.

Here's how it works. Every time someone makes an assertion without potential knowledge to support it at that time, there is essentially a 50/50 chance that they will be on target. And in certain instances the odds will be some better and in some MUCH worse because of the known perception of the time as established by other literature.

For instance, we know that people even thousands of years later thought the earth indeed WAS flat. So is it not logical to think that in these even less enlightened days scientifically, that they would have made all kinds of crazy assertions about a variety of things like this and expressed 'unknowable guesses' POSED as PROPHECIES BASED ON THIS IGNORANCE?

Absolutely. Yet..not ONE instance of such a thing appears in the bible. Take your Hindu creation stories. They are full of animations; cosmic cobras and crap. Obviously science has made a complete laughing stock of these stories. However what thing in the bible's creation story even has science disproven?

Not a single thing. Again look how many assertions there are...and even assign 50/50 odds to each one that potentially could have been disproven as it was not known scientifically to be fact at that time UNLESS IT ACTUALLY WAS OBSERVED in which case we are reading factual history and this discussion is off the table :-)

Do you see what I'm saying? Add up those odds and you will get something in excess of 10^15th power to 1.

So any remotely intelligent person IN THE ABSENCE of plausible explanations outside the consideration of such suggestions, goes with the most straight forward possibility.

God created the heavens and the earth, is the most straight forward FROM THE ONLY SCIENTIFIC TOOL THAT CAN BE USED TO TRULY ANALYZE THIS SITUATION. Statistics.

Enjoy. -bob