Cherry Picking: A Fundamental Cognitive Error

[RAMcGough]

Cherry Picking is a fundamental hermeneutical problem in all fields of study. The scientific method was designed, in part, to help overcome it. It is especially prevalent in non-empirical studies, such as religion, politics, and philosophy. It is one of the most common pitfalls in gematria: practitioners often scan extensive lists of words, phrases, verses, or transliterations, highlighting only the "hits" while ignoring or downplaying the far larger number of "misses". This selective focus can create the illusion of significance where none exists statistically.

Cherry Picking (also known as the fallacy of incomplete evidence, suppressed evidence, or selective evidence) is the act of selectively presenting only the data, examples, cases, or evidence that support a particular claim or position, while deliberately ignoring, omitting, or downplaying a significant body of relevant evidence that contradicts or undermines it.

This is a cognitive error because it stems from — and reinforces — confirmation bias, a well-documented tendency in human reasoning where individuals preferentially seek, interpret, remember, and emphasize information that aligns with their preexisting beliefs or desired conclusions, while filtering out or undervaluing disconfirming information. As a result, cherry picking distorts reality by creating an incomplete or misleading picture, often leading to overconfidence in flawed conclusions and poor decision-making. It is classified as an informal logical fallacy of selective attention and is a hallmark of biased reasoning, pseudoscience, or intellectually dishonest argumentation, even when unintentional.

In precise terms: By focusing only on "favorable cherries" and suppressing the rest of the tree's fruit, the practice violates the principle of considering the full body of evidence needed for accurate inference.

My primary reason for creating this thread is because cherry picking is the sin-qua-non of many systems of gematria, and I think it is important to "clean up" the practice if we want the true alphanumeric structure of God's Word to shine forth.

[bluetriangle]

Thanks for that opening post. You have succinctly stated the fundamental problem of the practice of gematria, one I have wrestled with myself for 25 years. It has no solution, like squaring the circle, but has nonetheless to be attempted, because there is no other option for me. Avoiding the insertion of words and phrases by concentrating only on numerical and geometric patterns may be fine for others but could only take me so far. If a code has a message for us about current events, as with the New Bible Code, then pairing words and phrases with numbers is unavoidable. However, since any number can be linked with many words and (especially) phrases and since I was guided to use four systems of alphabetic substitution, and eventually three languages, the possibilities for errors such as cherry picking have been endless.

There is a real code: that we all accept - and I believe there is only one, integrated Code, with many facets. But finding codes is like walking along a path in a dark forest, where rabbit tracks, shadows and random configurations of bushes continually misdirect us. Only the chosen can find their way through this forest of numbers. By this I do not mean the most intelligent or even the most devoted or morally elevated. There are smarter and more devoted people than me on this forum. But I was literally chosen for this task and subsequently given an enormous amount of help. I could never have gotten this far without prior training (three years of it) and continual direction from spiritual forces, including thousands of words, both directly and from a silent partner, sadly now deceased. One reason I believe in gematria is because the words we continually received to guide me were and are all encoded, and I mean all of them, always under the ordinal value system.

I do not, incidentally, mean that my work is perfect - far from it. But I am only one person and so to get to the finish line I had to work quickly, often under inspiration and frequently with great spiritual opposition, which has almost killed me at times (I've been hospitalised twice). I simply haven't had the time, or the energy, to tidy up my website, and take out material written when I was at the beginning of the learning curve. I should say here that studying the work of Vernon Jenkins and yourself has been of great help to me. I learned from the best.

My assignment began with the miraculous appearance of a Key to my Alpha Course Director, on a day (15/11/2001), when I myself was given two signs. It is the Key with which I would like to begin, because it shows how the New Bible Code works, while also giving numbers that relate to two Divine titles and directing me to the starting point for my work: Genesis 1.1. More to the point, it also shows how cherry picking is an unavoidable element of doing gematria. I've had to do it from the start. There are no rules to guide us here, only hard work, experience and discernment, inductive reasoning rather than deductive reasoning. The first one was given to me to help me on my way, because that very title was already in the Key, which is shown below.

The essence of the New Bible Code is the two-part ordinal-to-standard value system. In cryptology, the theory of codes and cyphers, the standard model for encryption and decryption is as follows:

PLAINTEXT MESSAGE
ENCRYPTION
CYPHERTEXT
DECRYPTION
PLAINTEXT MESSAGE

In plain language, the sender of a message first encrypts it by using an encryption key, which creates a cyphertext. The cyphertext is then sent and decrypted by the receiver using a decryption key. The bulk of the codes that constitute the New Bible Code follow this model perfectly. This is easily shown by formulating the first code find I made in terms of this model:

PLAINTEXT MESSAGE - JESUS
ENCRYPTION - Convert to number 515 using standard value system
CYPHERTEXT - 1st twelve words Genesis (NIV)
DECRYPTION - Convert to number 515 using ordinal value system
PLAINTEXT MESSAGE - JESUS

That is how it works. The first 12 words of the NIV '84 sum to 515 and this is the standard value of JESUS. The next 12 words sum to 654, which is the standard value of WORD. All the even and odd words in the first 24 sum to 515 and 654 respectively, so we have JESUS and WORD again.

515 and 654 sum to 1169 and this is the standard value of ATONEMENT COVER, which of course points to Jesus once more. There is much more there, but back to the Key.

This was given to my Alpha Course Director as she was reading 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, on 15/11/2001. She twice heard THIS IS FOR BILL (these words x 2 sum to 316, which is Yeshu, a shortened form of Yehoshua). Shaken, she put a plain piece of paper in her NIV Bible as a bookmark and made herself a cup of tea. When she returned the words below were written on her bookmark. Note how they are shaped like a key (nothing like how they were written in her NIV Bible). Incidentally, she was sitting in a Christian cafe called The Open Door. Keys open doors!

The first verse is 1 Thes. 5:23
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May our whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This has an ordinal value of 1559.

The second verse is 1 Thess. 5.24
The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.
This sums to 468

These are the standard values of the following phrases, one of which is already found in the verse.

Our Lord Jesus Christ (s) = 1559
The Lord God (s) = 468

A sceptic at this point may cry "cherry picking", because there will be many phrases with these standard values. How do we choose between them? But the context and the title in the first verse make it obvious, though unprovable, that these are the titles I was supposed to find.

The entire Key has an ordinal value of 2194, which is the standard value of the first verse of Genesis in the NIV

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (s) = 2194

Again, there are no doubt many possibilities here, but given the context it was an obvious place to look. So that is where I began, soon finding Jesus and Word (and much else) over the first few verses.

How do I defend myself against the charge of cherry picking? I can't. However, the Key (which contains other codes) showed me that words and phrases are encoded as ordinal values and take on meaning as standard values. This system was great for hiding codes until 9/11 happened, but to the sceptic it is problematic, because

1. It employs two systems of gematria; one would be simpler, and
2. All numbers can be tagged with several words and many phrases

Given the Biblical context, JESUS is the word that fits best over the first 12 words, especially given the synonyms I also found here (see below). 12 is the Biblical number of perfect government too, which supports my interpretation.

It can never be proven that the first 12 words of the NIV Bible are meant to be decoded as JESUS, but this is the site of a confluence of related numbers. The first 24 words can be split into four six word strings, which encode JESUS (515) YEHOSHUA (391) MESSIAH (263) MESSIAH (263) WORD (654 and WORD (654). This is a kind of signature (x 6, the number of creation days, this being the beginning of the Creation narrative), placed on the first 24 words, which remember is the standard value of ATONEMENT COVER. 24 itself is the reduced value of IHSOUS and WORD. Many other words could be substituted here, but these are all meaningfully related and in a sense form an edifice, along with many other interlocking codes here. They stand or fall together. They also remind me of the view through a kaleidoscope. A slight change in viewing angle reveals new patterns. interlocking with others in an almost holographic way (the codes are also fractal but I don't have time to go into that).

Note that the names I showed are pinned to the beginning of the NIV, greatly reducing the opportunity for another type of cherry picking, now more easily done through the power of computers: choosing a group of words somewhere in Scripture that gives desired numbers. Perhaps the regular pattern of words I showed are also found somewhere in Deuteronomy or Acts, but these are the first 24 words of the NIV, so that kind of cherry picking can pretty much be discounted here. They also respect word boundaries. Letter level codes exist but are much more likely to be chance.

So the Key, a gift from Spirit, encourages and justifies my use of two alphabetic substitution schemes and points to encoded words and phrases. I substituted words and phrases because it was what I was supposed to do (I'm essentially finished now). The encodings I found in Genesis 1 also introduced me to Hebrew words (YEHOSHUA) and fractal snowflakes. But this post is already too long, so I'll leave it there.

[bluetriangle]

Essentially we cannot do gematria at all without 'cherry picking'. Yes we can still find mathematical structures concealed within scripture. But there is a higher tier of alphanumerical encoding that necessitates finding words and phrases that can be fitted onto word strings. This is 'dirtier' than purely numerical Bible research, like doing physics or astronomy instead of pure mathematics. It's riskier doing real gematria rather than just Biblical mathematics, but as I hopefully proved in my last post, word-substitution codes are there to be found.

Here is my 'dirty dozen' list of cherry picking 'cognitive errors'.

1. Picking words and phrases. Numbers can be linked to many words and especially phrases.
2. Picking languages. Numbers can be linked to concepts in various languages.
3. Picking systems. Numbers can be linked with words and phrases under many possible systems.
4. Picking places. Numbers can be found in different Biblical locations (or even outwith the Bible).
5. Picking Bibles. Numbers can be found in different Bible versions.
6. Picking bases. Numbers can be linked to counting systems other than base-10.
7. Picking methods. Numbers can come from different sources: gematria, number counts, etc.
8. Picking names. Numbers can come from different versions of names or titles, or synonyms.
9. Picking word strings. A verse of 7 words contains 21 strings of 2 words or more.
10. Picking letter strings.A verse of 28 letters contains 378 letter strings of 2 letters or more.
11. Picking combinations of words/letters. A verse of 7 words harbors many possibilities.
12. Picking different arithmetic operations. Using subtraction, etc, alone and in combinations..

That's a lot of cherries to pick and there are probably more choices than I've listed.

It's impossible to do gematria and not break at least one of those rules, but the trick is to break as few as possible and in as intelligent a way as possible. Our saving grace here is patterns of meaningfully-related numbers, which are statistically improbable, mutually support each other and together convey a message, either in abstract meaning, its relation to the text or by visual metaphor.

Below is an example of gematria using word substitution at both word and letter level.

It commits at least errors 1, 2, 7, 8, 9 and 10, yet is obviously by design, conveying a lofty concept in a symmetrical confluence of numbers, encoded by various means. It involves the central three words of Genesis 1.1 in the original Hebrew.

Together with several mirrored pairs of antisnowflakes, trefoils and Sierpinski triangles, a few of which I've shown already, these names collectively symbolise the glory of the Lord above the Ark, flanked by the two cherubim. Genesis 1.1, in other words, is a numerical ark.

We are not calculating machines. We are minds, originating from beyond this material world. So we can make a cognitive leap (not error), cause a glitch in the Matrix, and grasp what an algorithm cannot grasp: higher purpose.

[RAMcGough]

Thanks for that opening post. You have succinctly stated the fundamental problem of the practice of gematria, one I have wrestled with myself for 25 years. It has no solution, like squaring the circle, but has nonetheless to be attempted, because there is no other option for me. Avoiding the insertion of words and phrases by concentrating only on numerical and geometric patterns may be fine for others but could only take me so far. If a code has a message for us about current events, as with the New Bible Code, then pairing words and phrases with numbers is unavoidable. However, since any number can be linked with many words and (especially) phrases and since I was guided to use four systems of alphabetic substitution, and eventually three languages, the possibilities for errors such as cherry picking have been endless.

Hello my friend!

Thanks for the awesome post. I'm really glad we can dig into this together. Sorry for the slow response, but things are starting to pick up around and here with many deep and interesting threads so It takes a lot of time to catch up!

There is a real code: that we all accept - and I believe there is only one, integrated Code, with many facets. But finding codes is like walking along a path in a dark forest, where rabbit tracks, shadows and random configurations of bushes continually misdirect us. Only the chosen can find their way through this forest of numbers. By this I do not mean the most intelligent or even the most devoted or morally elevated. There are smarter and more devoted people than me on this forum. But I was literally chosen for this task and subsequently given an enormous amount of help. I could never have gotten this far without prior training (three years of it) and continual direction from spiritual forces, including thousands of words, both directly and from a silent partner, sadly now deceased. One reason I believe in gematria is because the words we continually received to guide me were and are all encoded, and I mean all of them, always under the ordinal value system.

I agree that there is one unified "code" governing the whole Bible since it all comes from the one divine Mind of God. Some of the codes are more obvious than others. Some patterns presumed to be codes are probably spurious. It does indeed take a lot of work to sort it all out. I just created a new thread for that very purpose: Categorizing the Codes: A Systematic Review of Patterns in the Bible You've done so much work in this field. Much of it overlaps with the general "Biblical Holographs" section, while other parts of it are more unique to you. I look forward to your contributions.

I know you have seen a lot of English gematria patterns are linked to your own private experience. That might make them harder for others to appreciate.

I'll answer more as time permits. I gotta get out for my bike ride. It really helps keep me feeling good.

God bless you brother!

[RAMcGough]

My assignment began with the miraculous appearance of a Key to my Alpha Course Director, on a day (15/11/2001), when I myself was given two signs. It is the Key with which I would like to begin, because it shows how the New Bible Code works, while also giving numbers that relate to two Divine titles and directing me to the starting point for my work: Genesis 1.1. More to the point, it also shows how cherry picking is an unavoidable element of doing gematria. I've had to do it from the start. There are no rules to guide us here, only hard work, experience and discernment, inductive reasoning rather than deductive reasoning. The first one was given to me to help me on my way, because that very title was already in the Key, which is shown below.

Hey Bill,

It's great that you are telling your story. That adds important context and really helps me understand where you are coming from.

But I strongly disagree about cherry picking is [an unavoidable element of doing gematria. There is ZERO cherry picking in my analysis of Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1. The values of the words are in the verses being analyzed. I never go scanning through long lists of words and phrases looking for "hits". I might do that as an addendum to the analysis, but it is completely independent of the analysis itself.

The essence of the New Bible Code is the two-part ordinal-to-standard value system. In cryptology, the theory of codes and cyphers, the standard model for encryption and decryption is as follows:

PLAINTEXT MESSAGE
ENCRYPTION
CYPHERTEXT
DECRYPTION
PLAINTEXT MESSAGE

In plain language, the sender of a message first encrypts it by using an encryption key, which creates a cyphertext. The cyphertext is then sent and decrypted by the receiver using a decryption key. The bulk of the codes that constitute the New Bible Code follow this model perfectly. This is easily shown by formulating the first code find I made in terms of this model:

PLAINTEXT MESSAGE - JESUS
ENCRYPTION - Convert to number 515 using standard value system
CYPHERTEXT - 1st twelve words Genesis (NIV)
DECRYPTION - Convert to number 515 using ordinal value system
PLAINTEXT MESSAGE - JESUS

That is how it works. The first 12 words of the NIV '84 sum to 515 and this is the standard value of JESUS. The next 12 words sum to 654, which is the standard value of WORD. All the even and odd words in the first 24 sum to 515 and 654 respectively, so we have JESUS and WORD again.

I see how you say it works, but there is a fundamental problem. Real encryption is LOSSLESS. The decrypted message can be determined exactly from the encrypted message. This doesn't work with gematria because almost ALL INFORMATION is lost when a word is converted to a number. You have no way to know what word was intended in the first 12 words of Genesis (NIV). All you know is the words have the value 515.

This is the classic problem with this kind of gematria that is based fundamentally on the cognitive error called "cherry picking". Take for example the system that uses a=6,b=12, c=18. It yields the following identities:

Jesus = 666 = Lucifer = Muhammad

Did God encode that?

515 and 654 sum to 1169 and this is the standard value of ATONEMENT COVER, which of course points to Jesus once more. There is much more there, but back to the Key.

Does the phrase "ATONEMENT COVER" even appear in the NIV? It doesn't sound like a standard phrase to me. But I could be wrong. But even if it is a standard phrase, how many other phrase would have the same value. But the time you get to large number like 1169 in English gematria, the stats make it absolute impossible to establish the "intent" of the "coder".

I don't do anything like this in my analysis of Genesis, John, and Deuteronomy. I doubt any serious mathematician would accept these methods as valid.

This was given to my Alpha Course Director as she was reading 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, on 15/11/2001. She twice heard THIS IS FOR BILL (these words x 2 sum to 316, which is Yeshu, a shortened form of Yehoshua). Shaken, she put a plain piece of paper in her NIV Bible as a bookmark and made herself a cup of tea. When she returned the words below were written on her bookmark. Note how they are shaped like a key (nothing like how they were written in her NIV Bible). Incidentally, she was sitting in a Christian cafe called The Open Door. Keys open doors!

The name "Yeshu" is not a "shortened form" of Yehoshua. It is an insult that Jews invented to denigrate Jesus. It means "May his name be blotted out". Here's an explanation from Grok:

image.png (142.85 KiB) Viewed 1581 times

The first verse is 1 Thes. 5:23
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May our whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This has an ordinal value of 1559.

The second verse is 1 Thess. 5.24
The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.
This sums to 468

These are the standard values of the following phrases, one of which is already found in the verse.

Our Lord Jesus Christ (s) = 1559
The Lord God (s) = 468

Yes, but you could have chosen many variations to many different numbers with the same meaning.

1109 = Lord Jesus Christ
1322 = The Lord Jesus Christ
925 = Jesus Christ
1932 = Jesus Christ Son of God Savior
Etc., etc., etc. There's no end it really. I don't know how anyone could discern the "correct" or "intended" phrase from just one number.

A sceptic at this point may cry "cherry picking", because there will be many phrases with these standard values. How do we choose between them? But the context and the title in the first verse make it obvious, though unprovable, that these are the titles I was supposed to find.

I don't think I'm being "skeptical" - I think I'm simply being rational and noting the fact that there is no objective way for anyone to determine the "intended" value.

But you certainly are able to determine what "feels right" to you personly, and if it really is a message from God to you personally, then HALLELUJA! You have the witness of God's Spirit telling you that God Himself has sent you a message.

The thing I'm really curious to explore with you is why you think this message is meant for others. I'm sure we'll get to that as the conversation continues.

The entire Key has an ordinal value of 2194, which is the standard value of the first verse of Genesis in the NIV

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (s) = 2194

Now THAT is much more striking. A number pointing to Genesis 1:1 does not feel arbitrary or cherry picked. But it does feel very idiosyncratic, since it points to a particular 1984 English translation that now has been superseded by newer editions of the NIV.

Again, there are no doubt many possibilities here, but given the context it was an obvious place to look. So that is where I began, soon finding Jesus and Word (and much else) over the first few verses.

Yes, I remember looking at some of your findings in Genesis 1:1 where you chunked words and/or letters to get specific values. I would have to do an analysis to see what the stats really say.

How do I defend myself against the charge of cherry picking? I can't. However, the Key (which contains other codes) showed me that words and phrases are encoded as ordinal values and take on meaning as standard values. This system was great for hiding codes until 9/11 happened, but to the sceptic it is problematic, because

1. It employs two systems of gematria; one would be simpler, and
2. All numbers can be tagged with several words and many phrases

Given the Biblical context, JESUS is the word that fits best over the first 12 words, especially given the synonyms I also found here (see below). 12 is the Biblical number of perfect government too, which supports my interpretation.

It can never be proven that the first 12 words of the NIV Bible are meant to be decoded as JESUS, but this is the site of a confluence of related numbers. The first 24 words can be split into four six word strings, which encode JESUS (515) YEHOSHUA (391) MESSIAH (263) MESSIAH (263) WORD (654 and WORD (654). This is a kind of signature (x 6, the number of creation days, this being the beginning of the Creation narrative), placed on the first 24 words, which remember is the standard value of ATONEMENT COVER. 24 itself is the reduced value of IHSOUS and WORD. Many other words could be substituted here, but these are all meaningfully related and in a sense form an edifice, along with many other interlocking codes here. They stand or fall together. They also remind me of the view through a kaleidoscope. A slight change in viewing angle reveals new patterns. interlocking with others in an almost holographic way (the codes are also fractal but I don't have time to go into that).

Note that the names I showed are pinned to the beginning of the NIV, greatly reducing the opportunity for another type of cherry picking, now more easily done through the power of computers: choosing a group of words somewhere in Scripture that gives desired numbers. Perhaps the regular pattern of words I showed are also found somewhere in Deuteronomy or Acts, but these are the first 24 words of the NIV, so that kind of cherry picking can pretty much be discounted here. They also respect word boundaries. Letter level codes exist but are much more likely to be chance.

So the Key, a gift from Spirit, encourages and justifies my use of two alphabetic substitution schemes and points to encoded words and phrases. I substituted words and phrases because it was what I was supposed to do (I'm essentially finished now). The encodings I found in Genesis 1 also introduced me to Hebrew words (YEHOSHUA) and fractal snowflakes. But this post is already too long, so I'll leave it there.

I understand why you find that striking. I look forward to digging into the details with you.

God bless you my friend,

Richard

[RAMcGough]

Essentially we cannot do gematria at all without 'cherry picking'. Yes we can still find mathematical structures concealed within scripture. But there is a higher tier of alphanumerical encoding that necessitates finding words and phrases that can be fitted onto word strings. This is 'dirtier' than purely numerical Bible research, like doing physics or astronomy instead of pure mathematics. It's riskier doing real gematria rather than just Biblical mathematics, but as I hopefully proved in my last post, word-substitution codes are there to be found.

Here is my 'dirty dozen' list of cherry picking 'cognitive errors'.

1. Picking words and phrases. Numbers can be linked to many words and especially phrases.
2. Picking languages. Numbers can be linked to concepts in various languages.
3. Picking systems. Numbers can be linked with words and phrases under many possible systems.
4. Picking places. Numbers can be found in different Biblical locations (or even outwith the Bible).
5. Picking Bibles. Numbers can be found in different Bible versions.
6. Picking bases. Numbers can be linked to counting systems other than base-10.
7. Picking methods. Numbers can come from different sources: gematria, number counts, etc.
8. Picking names. Numbers can come from different versions of names or titles, or synonyms.
9. Picking word strings. A verse of 7 words contains 21 strings of 2 words or more.
10. Picking letter strings.A verse of 28 letters contains 378 letter strings of 2 letters or more.
11. Picking combinations of words/letters. A verse of 7 words harbors many possibilities.
12. Picking different arithmetic operations. Using subtraction, etc, alone and in combinations..

That's a lot of cherries to pick and there are probably more choices than I've listed.

It's impossible to do gematria and not break at least one of those rules, but the trick is to break as few as possible and in as intelligent a way as possible. Our saving grace here is patterns of meaningfully-related numbers, which are statistically improbable, mutually support each other and together convey a message, either in abstract meaning, its relation to the text or by visual metaphor.

I strongly disagree on this point. When I analyzed the Shema, I use the words in the Shema. There is no "cherry picking" at all.

And the result? An amazing structure of four nested multiples of 13 that reiterate the primary message of the Shema.

13 = Echad/One
13 x 2 = 26 = YHVH
13 x 3 = 39 = YHVH Echad = 3 x ONE => Trinity
13 x 86 = 1118 = Sum of Shema = 13 (ONE) x 86 (GOD).

After this self-reflective structure is fully established with no cherry picking of any kind, I then do note that the three binary products of its prime factors (2,13,86) match the three primary names of God used in the Bible:

2 x 13 = 26 = YHVH
2 x 43 = 86 = ELOHIM
13 x 43 = 559 = Ho Pater (The Father)

But I don't feel that this is cherry picking, because the first two name/titles are in the Shema itself and are the primary name/titles of God in the OT. And there is no other name or title of God that sums to 559. So this seems very solid and defensible to me.

As for error 7: the picking the one universally recognized standard method of gematria is not "cherry picking".
As for 12: I don't do that.

Etc.

Below is an example of gematria using word substitution at both word and letter level.

It commits at least errors 1, 2, 7, 8, 9 and 10, yet is obviously by design, conveying a lofty concept in a symmetrical confluence of numbers, encoded by various means. It involves the central three words of Genesis 1.1 in the original Hebrew.

Together with several mirrored pairs of antisnowflakes, trefoils and Sierpinski triangles, a few of which I've shown already, these names collectively symbolise the glory of the Lord above the Ark, flanked by the two cherubim. Genesis 1.1, in other words, is a numerical ark.

We are not calculating machines. We are minds, originating from beyond this material world. So we can make a cognitive leap (not error), cause a glitch in the Matrix, and grasp what an algorithm cannot grasp: higher purpose.

I don't understand how you could defend it as being "obvious" if you admit that the pattern commits "errors 1, 2, 7, 8, 9 and 10". That seems irrational.

The fact it commits those errors means that the appearance of design is an obvious illusion created by faulty methods.

I trust you understand I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm just explaining how I understand the logic, gematria and the rules of pattern finding.

God bless you brother! Thanks for putting in all this effort to help me (and any interested readers) understand you message.

[bluetriangle]

Hey Bill,

It's great that you are telling your story. That adds important context and really helps me understand where you are coming from.

Thank you for that. This is only a tiny part of it, of course, and telling only part of it it brings the danger of skewing people's understanding. It always makes me uncomfortable revealing persona details too, but it's unavoidable if people are to understand what drove me to do it.

But I strongly disagree about cherry picking is [an unavoidable element of doing gematria. There is ZERO cherry picking in my analysis of Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1. The values of the words are in the verses being analyzed. I never go scanning through long lists of words and phrases looking for "hits". I might do that as an addendum to the analysis, but it is completely independent of the analysis itself.

It depends on the information you are trying to extract. A lot of my own discoveries in G1.1 and J1.1, which individually and together contain a cornucopia of mirrored fractals, does not involve cherry picking, unless you count other possible geometries. For example, words 2 and 3 sum to 289 and words 5 and 6 (their mirror about the central Aleph-Tav) sum to 802. These are both Koch anti snowflakes, derived from triangles 496 and 946. But 289 is also the square/rhombus of 17. Is it cherry picking to focus on the antisnwflake? I would say no, because the existence of the mirrored antisnowflake justifies the choice.

But we will have to agree to disagree here. If there's a message in the NIV Bible and if it involves substituting words enumerated under one system for Biblical phrases enumerated under another, how can that be done without 'cherry picking'? You either have to accept it as inevitable or reject the whole concept of that kind of code. However, if God has indeed encoded information by this method, which you then reject, you are in danger of raising yourself above God. No slight intended, but it's an error many intellectuals make. Their intellect becomes their god, and a jealous one at that.

Note: I just reread this and it sounds as if I'm saying I have God on my side and he'll smite you if you dare disagree with me. Please don't read it that way. I had the same experience with my silent partner, incidentally and was forced to recognize what I was being too narrow in my methodology. God is infinitely creative and our linear thought processes just can't appreciate the holistic way gematria has been done.

The essence of the New Bible Code is the two-part ordinal-to-standard value system. In cryptology, the theory of codes and cyphers, the standard model for encryption and decryption is as follows:

PLAINTEXT MESSAGE
ENCRYPTION
CYPHERTEXT
DECRYPTION
PLAINTEXT MESSAGE

I see how you say it works, but there is a fundamental problem. Real encryption is LOSSLESS. The decrypted message can be determined exactly from the encrypted message. This doesn't work with gematria because almost ALL INFORMATION is lost when a word is converted to a number. You have no way to know what word was intended in the first 12 words of Genesis (NIV). All you know is the words have the value 515.

Yes, much of the information is lost, I agree. This was the closest analogy I could find, although it's more like detective work. than cracking the enigma code. But there is no way to encode information in this way - words to number to words - without losing most of the information. However, when you see that the first 24 words can be overlain with the words JESUS YEHOSHUA MESSIAH MESSIAH WORD WORD simply by splitting them into six-word strings, you can hopefully appreciate that they hold each other up. They are meaningfully related, related to the Bible and form a regular pattern.

There are ELS codes here and one of them ends on the last letter of the 24th word. It says GOD CREATED CODE. I've appended it.

This is the classic problem with this kind of gematria that is based fundamentally on the cognitive error called "cherry picking".

It does necessitate cherry picking, yes, but I am arguing that
1) this does not invalidate it if it is done with care, and
2) there is no other way to do it.

This is the classic problem with this kind of gematria that is based fundamentally on the cognitive error called "cherry picking". Take for example the system that uses a=6,b=12, c=18. It yields the following identities:

Jesus = 666 = Lucifer = Muhammad

Did God encode that?

Yes. If he made Jesus (o) = 74, and Lucifer (o) = 74, then both were encoded. I have to follow the logic of the code here. Relates to the Morning Star of course, associated with both Jesus and Lucifer.

Also

The Lord's Coming (s) = 666
God's Love (s) = 666
Satan's Hate (s) = 666

This is not the place to discuss it, but this reaches to the heart of Christian theology. And 666, as you note yourself has two sides, like Janus, the two-faced Roman god of beginnings and endings.

Does the phrase "ATONEMENT COVER" even appear in the NIV?

Yes, ATONEMENT COVER does appear in the NIV '84. One strong piece of evidence for the reality of the code is found in this page
https://www.thesecretcode.co.uk/page_3106950.html
I know you're busy, so you can go straight to the tables, where I show that the phrases

Ark of the Testimony
Cherubim of the Glory
Atonement Cover
Altar of Incense

are encoded over the NIV '84's first 37, 34, 24 and 14 words. There are two things to note here.

1) Of the 50-odd versions I've checked (and that includes all the most popular ones) only the NIV '84 (which contains the New Bible Code) uses these four particular titles, so there is no doubt it is self referential.
2) This is also referring to the Day of Atonement, a major theme of the NBC, because on that day only, the Altar of Incense was regarded as being part of the Most Holy Place (Hebrews 9).

Yes, but you could have chosen many variations to many different numbers with the same meaning.

1109 = Lord Jesus Christ
1322 = The Lord Jesus Christ
925 = Jesus Christ
1932 = Jesus Christ Son of God Savior
Etc., etc., etc. There's no end it really. I don't know how anyone could discern the "correct" or "intended" phrase from just one number.

A sceptic at this point may cry "cherry picking", because there will be many phrases with these standard values. How do we choose between them? But the context and the title in the first verse make it obvious, though unprovable, that these are the titles I was supposed to find.

I don't think I'm being "skeptical" - I think I'm simply being rational and noting the fact that there is no objective way for anyone to determine the "intended" value.

Fortunately, it is not mathematics we are doing here! It's gematria, which has its own rules and is as much an art as a science. Would you interpret dreams by the rules of mathematics?

I was once given a vision of a 'wise child', who seemed as ancient as time itself, but as fresh as a newborn baby. He said to me, very quickly,

I'M TWENTY-SIX AND I'M HERE FOR YOU

I did the ordinal value. It was 358, which mystified me at the time, because I didn't use standard values. Fortunately I wrote it down and years later discovered it was the value of Mashiach.

That would never satisfy a mathematician. Maybe I should have used '26' instead of 'twenty-six'. Maybe 358 meant 'Nachesh'. But there was no doubt in my mind that this was the correct written version. There are 26 letters too, which supports 'twenty-six' rather than '26' and of course 26 is God (o) and YHVH.

Yes, I know what the Rabbis say about 'Yeshu' and that Yehoshua was reduced to Yeshua then Yeshu as signs of disapproval (theirs, not God's). I have a good study of it, if you're interested. But I also have no doubt it was Jesus talking to my Alpha Course director (who lived in Bethlehem for many years and was the most devoted Christian I ever knew).

As I said, I got a hint in 1 These. 5.23, the first verse of the Key, which actually has the phrase 'Our Lord Jesus Christ'.

I struggle to understand where you're coming from here, I really do. There aren't that many titles we could give to God and Jesus Christ and these would be preeminent among them anyway. The fact that two of them are ordinal values of a verse that miraculously appeared on my Alpha Course director's bookmark must surely impress you as significant. You seem at times to be playing Devil's advocate.

I think you're looking for certainty here. You said no mathematician would accept this kind of thing and mathematics is all about certainty, deductive reasoning. But we exist in a world where inductive reasoning, the primary method of analysis employed in science, is king. Mathematics is essential to science but in a messy, uncertain world, any code that manifests in the Bible will, by necessity, have to be part of that uncertainty, even if all that means is that it is probabilistic (all codes, including yours, could be a statistical fluke). I think it's significant that the code is founded on mathematics, which comes from the pure and pristine Mind of God. But it has 'incarnated' in a messy, uncertain world and so has to span both worlds.

Given the nature of the code, only one version and one edition could have been the vehicle. And only one spelling too, British English. As new editions are being created, the code is now being slowly rubbed out. But it exists in millions of copies of the NIV '84.

You say you're being rational. Richard, But should you not be being empirical?

[bluetriangle]

It's impossible to do gematria and not break at least one of those rules, but the trick is to break as few as possible and in as intelligent a way as possible. Our saving grace here is patterns of meaningfully-related numbers, which are statistically improbable, mutually support each other and together convey a message, either in abstract meaning, its relation to the text or by visual metaphor.

I strongly disagree on this point. When I analyzed the Shema, I use the words in the Shema. There is no "cherry picking" at all.

And the result? An amazing structure of four nested multiples of 13 that reiterate the primary message of the Shema.

13 = Echad/One
13 x 2 = 26 = YHVH
13 x 3 = 39 = YHVH Echad = 3 x ONE => Trinity
13 x 86 = 1118 = Sum of Shema = 13 (ONE) x 86 (GOD).

After this self-reflective structure is fully established with no cherry picking of any kind, I then do note that the three binary products of its prime factors (2,13,86) match the three primary names of God used in the Bible:

2 x 13 = 26 = YHVH
2 x 43 = 86 = ELOHIM
13 x 43 = 559 = Ho Pater (The Father)

But I don't feel that this is cherry picking, because the first two name/titles are in the Shema itself and are the primary name/titles of God in the OT. And there is no other name or title of God that sums to 559. So this seems very solid and defensible to me.

I have to say I'm not overly impressed with this. I agree it is genuine, yes, and fundamental too. It's based on the factors of 1118: 2 x 13 x 43. 43 is also the reduced value of Yehoshua HaMaschiach.

Correction: I just read the Shema and you're right, the words YHVH, Elohim and Echad are all there, so it is more impressive than I originally supposed. But it begs the question (now rephrased): why is my substitution of 'Our Lord Jesus Christ' (1559) for the first verse of the the Key (1559) any less solid than your use of YHVH, Elohim and Chad? It's not even a factor. It's the entire verse, although it uses two systems, I'll grant you. Substituting 'The Lord God' is more of a leap in the dark, yes, but it's amply justified, I feel, especially since it is a direct translation of YHVH Elohim, the preeminent name and title for the Deity.

I have to say you stunned me yesterday with the continued fraction coming from the holographic generating set. That really was impressive and it incorporated and improved upon 1080/1480 (27/37). Alpha is mysterious and fundamental, quantifying the strength of the interaction between light and matter. I think it may play a role in how codes have been created and spiritual experiences. It's well known that light can be encoded with information and our pineal glands (the seat of the soul, according to Descartes) are covered with minute crystals that can act like radio receivers. I've found alpha-related codes in the NIV and I think God is letting us into a secret here.

As for error 7: the picking the one universally recognized standard method of gematria is not "cherry picking".

\
I'm not sure why you're saying that, because I agree. Error 7 is about using some of the many other systems.
In my latest book I use nothing but the standard value, applied only to Hebrew and (occasionally) Greek. That, plus the fact that I restrict my investigation to Genesis 1.1, minimizes cherry picking.

Below is an example of gematria using word substitution at both word and letter level.

It commits at least errors 1, 2, 7, 8, 9 and 10, yet is obviously by design, conveying a lofty concept in a symmetrical confluence of numbers, encoded by various means. It involves the central three words of Genesis 1.1 in the original Hebrew.

Together with several mirrored pairs of antisnowflakes, trefoils and Sierpinski triangles, a few of which I've shown already, these names collectively symbolise the glory of the Lord above the Ark, flanked by the two cherubim. Genesis 1.1, in other words, is a numerical ark.

We are not calculating machines. We are minds, originating from beyond this material world. So we can make a cognitive leap (not error), cause a glitch in the Matrix, and grasp what an algorithm cannot grasp: higher purpose.

I don't understand how you could defend it as being "obvious" if you admit that the pattern commits "errors 1, 2, 7, 8, 9 and 10". That seems irrational.

I'm trying to show that cherry picking is inevitable and that it doesn't necessarily invalidate a code.

The fact it commits those errors means that the appearance of design is an obvious illusion created by faulty methods.

At the centre of Genesis 1.1 exists a confluence of names and titles we ascribe to The Almighty, completing the analogy being made with The Ark of the Covenant and symbolizing The Glory of The Lord, which manifested on The Day of Atonement, the central rite of Judaism. The rite of atonement and the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross that superseded it, form the connecting link between Judaism and Christianity. This confluence of numbers, manifesting within the central three words of the seminal verse in Scripture, therefore has the greatest possible significance and is a true miracle of God. That doesn't impress you?

Yes, 525, 345, 543, 401, 446 and 801 can all be related to other words, phrases and titles. But turn that around and ask how likely it would be that numbers that can be related to Divine names just happen to have collected in that location. And note the 2, 4, 8, 12 pattern of letter strings, all centred on the Aleph-Tav, with Alpha-Omega encoded in the 8 letter string.

I trust you understand I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm just explaining how I understand the logic, gematria and the rules of pattern finding.

God bless you brother! Thanks for putting in all this effort to help me (and any interested readers) understand you message.

Thank you. May God also bless you and your work.

[bluetriangle]

I used the NIV '84 Bible (British English) because of three incidents, which also suggested a gradual manifestation.

1. The two verses in The Key are from the NIV Bible. They were given to me first.

2. On the day I finished a very crude first attempt at a paper on 9/11 and the number 11, which are central to the code, and was reading through it, my eldest daughter walked into the house and handed me a Gideon New Testament, which is from the NIV.

3. Months before I began work on the code, I had asked my wife for an NIV Bible for Christmas, simply because I liked the way that version read. Before Christmas, she went to a bookshop with my eldest daughter to look for it. However, as she stood in front of the shelves where Bibles were stacked, she realized she'd forgotten which of the many versions before her I had asked for. As she stood there wondering what to do, an NIV fell off the bookshelf into her hands. My daughter confirmed this is what happened. It was as if an invisible finger had poked the Bible from behind.

That is why I knew it was the NIV Bible I was to work on. It's not just the NIV Bible, it's the British English version and the 2001 reprint. The spelling differences between British and American English are minor, but here and there they make a difference. So the US version is not quite perfect. I must have been raised in Scotland because I was the one destined to find the code.

The day my Alpha Course director received The Key I was driving to work when I decided to switch on the radio, something I rarely do, and heard the opening chords of the overture to Verdi's La Forza Del Destino, The Force of Destiny. This is one of my favorites, so I listened to it all. I thought nothing of it, but driving home that evening I decided to again switch on the car radio - and again heard the opening chords of that overture! Of course I realized by then that destiny was calling me.

This was two days after I made my first tentative gematria links between Osama bin Laden and 9/11, which itself was two days after I had received the Holy Spirit at an Alpha Course Holy Spirit weekend, on 11/11/01 - which was a truly extraordinary experience and which healed me of a trauma that no doubt would have hindered my work.

[RAMcGough]

But we will have to agree to disagree here. If there's a message in the NIV Bible and if it involves substituting words enumerated under one system for Biblical phrases enumerated under another, how can that be done without 'cherry picking'?

It can't, and that's why it is fundamentally flawed. There is no object way to discern between chance and design. And worse, it's essentially certain that independent researchers using exactly the same methods would not come to the same conclusions. We've talked about this in the past. Your personally experiences were required for you to come to your uniquely idiosyncratic conclusions. And that's exactly the error caused by the fallacy of cherry picking.

You either have to accept it as inevitable or reject the whole concept of that kind of code. However, if God has indeed encoded information by this method, which you then reject, you are in danger of raising yourself above God. No slight intended, but it's an error many intellectuals make. Their intellect becomes their god, and a jealous one at that.

I "reject the whole concept of that kind of code" because is is not a "code" at all, in the sense that the information you extract from it is not actually contained in it. The "code" merely creates a set of numerical bins into which you place cherry picked words and phrases that match. There is nothing that necessitates any particular interpretation. It does not contain enough information to determine any actual message. Now consider this: devout believers cannot find agreement on the plain words that are actually given in the text. What good is a "code" that is a thousand times more ambiguous than the plain words that God inspired?

I don't deny that God could have intended all the messages you have derived with your methods. I have merely explained that even if He has done that, there's no way for us to know because the patterns could just as well be understood as the result of cherry picking coupled with random chance.

I know I've relied on my intellect too much in the past, and that was one of the reasons God sent me out to "eat grass" like Nebuchadnezzar for 14 years. That experience has given me a deep trust that "those that walk in pride he is able to abase." I think I learned the error of my ways. I am not being dogmatic about anything here. I'm merely trying my best to explain the shortcomings I see in your codes. But that doesn't mean they are not of God. They could be your own private "numerical tongue" by which you edify yourself. Or maybe I'm totally missing the mark and they are more significant than I can see right now. That's what we're hoping to determine in this conversation. You are deeply moved to share them with the world. I pray I can do you a good service by being a sincere sounding board. I pray that our Lord will expose any pride remaining in me that is prevent His Will being done on earth, as it is in heaven.

Note: I just reread this and it sounds as if I'm saying I have God on my side and he'll smite you if you dare disagree with me. Please don't read it that way. I had the same experience with my silent partner, incidentally and was forced to recognize what I was being too narrow in my methodology. God is infinitely creative and our linear thought processes just can't appreciate the holistic way gematria has been done.

No worries my friend! But thanks for making your heart clear. That's golden.

I see how you say it works, but there is a fundamental problem. Real encryption is LOSSLESS. The decrypted message can be determined exactly from the encrypted message. This doesn't work with gematria because almost ALL INFORMATION is lost when a word is converted to a number. You have no way to know what word was intended in the first 12 words of Genesis (NIV). All you know is the words have the value 515.

Yes, much of the information is lost, I agree. This was the closest analogy I could find, although it's more like detective work. than cracking the enigma code. But there is no way to encode information in this way - words to number to words - without losing most of the information. However, when you see that the first 24 words can be overlain with the words JESUS YEHOSHUA MESSIAH MESSIAH WORD WORD simply by splitting them into six-word strings, you can hopefully appreciate that they hold each other up. They are meaningfully related, related to the Bible and form a regular pattern.

There are ELS codes here and one of them ends on the last letter of the 24th word. It says GOD CREATED CODE. I've appended it.

Yes, I see why you find those four words compelling. But again, the enigma code was an actual lossless code. Your code is nothing like that.

I can think of a few ways God could encode specific words through gematria. The most obvious is when he builds a verse on nested multiples of the value of the word that expresses the central concept of the verse, as He did in the Shema.

Another way would be to encode Strongs numbers rather than the word itself.

Or he could have used His infinite wisdom to encode the actual words in ELS like you have with GODCREATED crossing CODE. But it would have to be much more extensive than that to overcome the objections based on what we'd statistically expect from a random text.

This is the classic problem with this kind of gematria that is based fundamentally on the cognitive error called "cherry picking". Take for example the system that uses a=6,b=12, c=18. It yields the following identities:

Jesus = 666 = Lucifer = Muhammad

Did God encode that?

Yes. If he made Jesus (o) = 74, and Lucifer (o) = 74, then both were encoded. I have to follow the logic of the code here. Relates to the Morning Star of course, associated with both Jesus and Lucifer.

Are you saying that God intended every identity possible in all three languages (Hebrew, Greek, English)? How then can any of it have any meaning without simply reading your preconceived beliefs INTO the numbers?

Jesus = 74 = Lucifer? No problem! I can make up a story to explain that relation!

At this point, the numbers have no meaning at all. They are just "connections" we use as we weave our preconceived stories. Muslims do this with the Quran. Harold Camping used numbers to weave his prediction of Judgment Day 2011, which he declared with absolute certainty because of the numbers.


Well that's all the time I got for now. I'll answer more as time permits. These posts are very long! There's so much to discuss.

Great chatting my friend. I really appreciate your patience with me.

God bless.