According to the Gematriculator SEB’s evil/good ratio comes out as follows:
Which, given our site’s name, is somewhat disheartening. Kinda reminds me of when I played Black and White and tried to be an evil God and ended up being a good God anyway.
Despite the humor this brings about there is a serious point I’d like to address here. Namely, the ridiculousness of the claims of some folks that The Bible has been proven to be true through an application of math. Specifically the Gematria method developed by Ivan Panin in 1890. Consider the following claim on the Gematriculator site:
The Gematriculator is a service that uses the infallible methods of Gematria developed by Mr. Ivan Panin to determine how good or evil a web site or a text passage is.
Basically, Gematria is searching for different patterns through the text, such as the amount of words beginning with a vowel. If the amount of these matches is divisible by a certain number, such as 7 (which is said to be God’s number), there is an incontestable argument that the Spirit of God is ever present in the text. Another important aspect in gematria are the numerical values of letters: A=1, B=2 … I=9, J=10, K=20 and so on. The Gematriculator uses Finnish alphabet, in which Y is a vowel.
Experts consider the mathematical patterns in the text of the Holy Bible as God’s watermark of authenticity. Thus, the Gematriculator provides only results that are absolutely correct.
Now here’s the rub: I came across this little exercise in silliness at ***Dave Does The Blog and I generally consider Dave himself to be much less evil in his viewpoints than I myself am, yet Dave’s site was ranked as 58% Good and 42% Evil! I’m as incredulous as Dave is that my site is somehow considered much less evil than his and it calls into question the methods of analysis being used. So I thought I’d see what happens when I turned this rating method loose on some other sites that are usually considered as being more in the “good” category than the “evil” one. Here’s what I came up with:
- The 700 Club – 48% Evil and 52% Good
- Creation Science Evangelism “Dr.” Kent Hovind’s site – 67% Evil and 33% Good
- Southern Baptist Convention – 46% Evil and 54% Good
- Boy Scouts of America – 29% Evil and 71% Good
- White House.gov – 11% Evil and 89% Good
- Cindyisms (My sister’s site) – 39% Evil and 61% Good
Granted, the Gematriculator is basing it’s determination on the content of the front page of each website and that can change from day to day so there could be days when SEB is more evil than it is today, or even after I finish this entry, but this should help illustrate why I dismiss the Bible Code nutcases out of hand when they show up in the comments here. Math, like logic, is a tool that can be invaluable in analyzing and making deductions about various things, but like any tool it can be misused and produce results that don’t actually reflect the truth.
Update: After posting this entry my ratio changed to 32% evil, 68% good.
I have spoken with several people about there being some kind of “code” in the bible. Some codes even being so intricate that humans cannot figure them out, only computers. Whole books have been written on these, making many assholes rich people. My question is, how can one book have such a hold on so many people that they are willing to believe that God put a freaking “watermark” in his little novel that no one could figure out? Wouldn’t he have wanted a layman, such as a carpenter, to know that it was “his book”? I understand people need something to hold onto as true and pure so they can have a reason for their existence, but when is enough enough? I think some people just have way too much spare time.
Run me through it, Les. I’m a whopping 27% evil, according to the parameters.
Drat.
See! Questioning how effective the Bible Code is makes you more evil! The Bible Code is proven! So there!
(Cough.)
Regarding Bible Codes in general, I am reminded of an old science tidbit from an Asimov science fact book I read as a kid, to the effect that an argument was made against the existence of the outer planets because the solar system was set up with heavenly spheres that numbered the same as the (I kid you not) openings in the human head—two ears, two nostrils, one mouth, two eyes, for seven openings, corresponding to Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Sun and the Moon. So, obviously, there couldn’t be any more planets being discovered by those newfangled telescopes because, well, that was as ridiculous as discovering more holes in the human head (oddly ironic, speaking of holes in the head).
I firmly believe in the existence of God and of Meaning in the universe (and thanks for the, ah, endorsement as being “much less evil” than you
). I do not, however, believe that God has decided that one particular translation of one book should provide a secret numeric code to Truth. “If it were that easy, anyone could do it.”
The Biblical Code folks are the heirs to the Gnostics, looking for the Secret Knowledge that will prove to them that it all makes sense (and which, in turn, will give them power and wealth). If that sort of thing exists, you’re not going to find it in books and magazines supermarket check-out stands.
Hey, we take our evilness around here semi-seriously. I can’t afford to have some hoity-toity Bible-code website proclaiming you more evil than I. At best you’re like the “Bud Lite” of evil.
Haha Lesser Demon Scum. I have an evil rating of 63%! at The Library of the Lost
Uh-Oh – Looks like even I’m more evil than you Les. :devil: 36% evil, 64% good :devil:
Better get to work Les…
http://www.google.com is
27% evil, 73% good
http://www.intuit.com is
57% evil, 43% good
Hmmm… and that’s AFTER they recanted Product Activation.
I apologize, I was going to not post anymore, but this is too good to pass…
http://www.pepsi.com is
66% evil, 34% good
http://www.drpepper.com is
77% evil, 23% good
http://www.coke.com is
2% evil, 98% good
http://www.snapple.com is
1% evil, 99% good
Taste test that!!
This post goes to the symbology on SEBs lead, and its persistence. This is because a discussion in another thread piqued my interest in the subject. Additionally, I have just started reading the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, which appears to be all about the interpretation of symbols.
The history of the pentagram (or pentacle) and some other symbols, says Brown, goes something like this. In Greek mythology, Venus is the goddess of fertility and the planet Venus is her symbol in the sky. The ancients noticed that, over a four-year period, Venus traces out a perfect pentacle with respect to the fixed stars along the plane of the ecliptic. Thus they adopted the pentacle as the symbol for Venus. Venus was known as