We form our beliefs for a variety of subjective, personal, emotional, and psychological reasons in the context of environments created by family, friends, colleagues, culture, and society at large; after forming our beliefs we then defend, justify, and rationalize them with a host of intellectual reasons, cogent arguments, and rational explanations. Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow.
~ The Believing Brain, by Michael Shermer
Having produced this website with thousands of pages promoting the Bible Wheel bullshit, it now is my pleasure, duty, and honor to debunk as much of its error as I am able. It’s not that everything I wrote was wrong. Not by a long shot. My errors were much more subtle than that. They were based on features common to the believing brain: a strong confirmation bias coupled with a habit of looking for meaning in coincidences. I began with a belief that the Bible was the “inspired Word of God” and was inclined to accept any pattern that seemed to confirm that presupposition. I had more than enough raw material to work with because the Bible is an exceedingly rich book filled with numinous symbols and a universal myth spanning Creation, the Fall, and the New Creation. Countless believers before me found their own idiosyncratic “patterns” that convinced them of its “divine design.” There are good reasons so many people find it seductive and compelling. It provides a framework to make sense of the world … so long as it’s not examined too closely in the light of logic and facts.
A Biased Beginning
By the year 1995 my experience with dreams, numerology, synchronicity and Kabbalah had convinced me that the Bible was a “fully coded, manifestly transcendental Linguistic Holograph deliberately designed to the last detail by the everliving Lord God Almighty.” That’s how I described it in my cover letter when I submitted my book The Holographic Structure of Holy Scripture for publication. In hindsight, I think perhaps I may not have really appreciated the value of understatement. I received a terse reply that said “Thank you Mr. McGought [sic], We appreciate you suggestion for the publication of The Holographic Structure of the Holy Spirit [sic]. But since its potential for distribution with Baker Book House would be limited, we should not pursue it for our list.”
My Hypnotic Fixation
It was in this context as a fully convinced, or rather, fanatical, Bible believer that I fell upon the idea of the Bible Wheel. It transformed my preexisting confirmation bias into a full-blown hypnotic fixation. As explained in my article Debunking Myself: What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been, I got the idea from the ancient Jewish kabbalistic text Sepher Yetzirah (Book of Formation) which says that God created the world through the 22 Hebrew letters which he had “placed in a circle.” I have no recollection of ever doubting that God had designed the Bible in the form of the wheel. I was convinced from the moment I first discovered it. I was therefore primed for a quick descent into the bowels of cognitive bias and delusional thinking powered by cherry picking, pattern matching, coincidences, and rationalizations. The Bible Wheel became a universal divine matrix through which I viewed all reality. I thought it was the template of creation designed by God himself, since it was, after all, nothing but a simple geometric representation of the Word of God. That is what things looked like inside the brain of this believer.
The Good
Unlike many, if not most, of the patterns believers find in their sacred scriptures, mine was produced with essentially no manipulation of the data. I simply “rolled up” the 66 books of the traditional Protestant canon “like a scroll” on a spindle wheel of 22 spokes corresponding to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. [See What is the Bible Wheel?] I always considered this one of the strongest points of my presentation.
Much to my surprise, many people rejected my pattern as invalid because it was based on the traditional canon. Though they often agreed with the content of the Protestant canon, they asserted that books which were originally united, such as 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, and Ezra/Nehemiah, should be counted as one. Some even suggested that the 12 Minor Prophets should be counted as one as they are in the Hebrew canon. This, of course, opens up many possibilities to find alternate patterns, such as the novel structure devised by E. L. Martin [see The Bible Wheel: Patternicity on Steroids]. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, their criticism was valid. A wide variety of patterns can be devised using different, but equally justifiable, presuppositions. If the Bible Wheel pattern required that I recombine books that were originally united, I have little doubt I would have argued for that point of view. I was just lucky I didn’t have to do that because of the happy coincidence that the scriptures I happened to believe in happened to have 66 books. Of course, if I were a Catholic, I could have made a Bible Wheel with their canon just as easily using the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet, as explained in The Battle of the Bible Wheels: Catholic vs. Protestant.
My conviction that God had designed the Bible Wheel was based almost entirely on similar happy coincidences. The most impressive was the discovery of the Canon Wheel which I saw as a “revelation of the sevenfold symmetric perfection of the Holy Bible.” I discovered it quite by accident on the morning of May 14, 1999, four years after discovering the Bible Wheel. It totally floored me and “confirmed” yet again my absolute conviction that God had designed the patterns I was finding.
As with the discovery of the Bible Wheel, it required no manipulation of the data to produce the Canon Wheel. I had simply noticed that the first spoke contained the first books of three primary divisions of Scripture:
- Genesis – First Book of the Law (Torah)
- Isaiah – First Book of the Prophets
- Romans – First Book of the NT Epistles
I then colored and labeled the rest of the traditional divisions as shown in the graphic. The result flowed quite naturally and required little effort to complete. I describe the process in a post The Discovery of the Canon Wheel (written when I was still a Christian).
The Canon Wheel transformed my hypnotic fixation into a near messianic zeal. I believed it was the fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy of the “one stone with seven eyes” engraved by God himself (Zechariah 3:9). I saw it as the “capstone” brought forth by the prophet Zerubabbel which would obliterate any opposition to God’s Word, destroying the “great mountain” of unbelief (Zechariah 4:7). That’s why I put those verses on the banner of my original site, above the proclamation “The Divine Seal and Capstone of God’s Word.”
The banner bar was flanked by two images. On the right, a traditional icon of Christ from the Church of Hagia Sofia. On the left, a stained glass rendition of the Canon Wheel my wife made as a gift for Christmas 2002. Her artwork transformed my technical analytic work into a religious icon with a striking similarity to the “tri-radiant” halo of Christ found in traditional Christian iconography. My symbolic imagination caught fire. I connected the three radii and three cycles with the doctrine of the Trinity. I placed a cross in the center with the arms aligned with the three radii to show that the geometric form of the Bible itself proclaimed Christ crucified, the essence of the Gospel. I connected the seven divisions with the seven days of creation and the seven branches of the menorah.
The Bible Wheel became a cauldron burning with numinous symbols; a supernatural unification of four fundamental archetypes: The Eternal Circle. The All-Encompassing Alphabet (Alpha Omega), the Cross, and the Number Seven. These symbols fused in my mind to become the ultimate archetype of God’s revelation, revealed in the book “sealed with seven seals” – the very Word of God. Here is how I explained my vision in the conclusion of the third chapter of my book, titled Sevenfold Symmetric Perfection:
The implications of this revelation know no limit. Never in the history of the world has anyone beheld such a profoundly compact and reiterative compound symbol in the structure of any book, let alone a book that proclaims itself Divine, that defines and exemplifies the symbols in its own text, that was composed in three languages over a period of fifteen hundred years by multiple individuals from all walks of life, that transformed the world with its message, and that kept its secret hidden for centuries after its completion only to be revealed when it was simply “rolled up like a scroll” on the alphabetic pattern established within its own pages! Obviously, we are beholding a blazing immutable miracle straight from the Mind of Almighty God.
The unification of all these patterns, coincidences, and symbols derived from a sacred text read by a believing mind, put said mind over the top. No doubt remained. I had arrived at absolute certainty. Unfortunately, absolute certainty corrupts as surely as absolute power. And that brings us to the next topic: The Bad.
The Bad
The discussion above gives a glimpse into how coincidences led me to believe the Bible was designed by God. The main difference between me then and me now is that back then I sincerely believed coincidences were meaningful and that God frequently used them to guide believers. In this I was not alone. Coincidences constitute the lion’s share of “evidence” that convinces believers their prayers have been answered. A popular Christian saying is that “Coincidence is God’s way of staying anonymous.” There is even a Christian book on Amazon by this title. This belief seemed so common I did not hesitate to use it as “evidence” in the first chapter of the Bible Wheel book when explaining how I came to believe God designed the symbolic meaning of the Hebrew letters (reproduced online here):
There is one letter of special interest that we should look at before finishing this introduction. The name of the Last letter Tav denotes a mark, sign, or cross. It is the origin of the Latin T and Greek Tau and was drawn in the old script either as
and
, the latter being identical to the traditional form of the traditional cross of Christ. I first learned this in 1991 when I began teaching myself Hebrew from Ben-Yehuda’s Pocket Hebrew Dictionary which displays an image of both the modern and ancient forms at the head of each section. The digital image above shows the heading for the last letter Tav.
This “coincidence” astounded me. The Hebrew Alphabet ends with the sign of the cross in precise analogy with the Gospel Message that declares Christ completed His Work of redemption on His Cross with the words “It is finished” (John 19:30). This was one of the first signs that God used to awaken my interest in the Hebrew Alphabet. It was this, along with a number of other “coincidences,” that prompted me to delve into a deep study of the symbolic meanings of the twenty-two letters. In 1995, as I sought to systematize my four years of study using the ancient Jewish tradition that says God “placed the letters in a circle,” it occurred to me that the whole body of Scripture could be rolled up and integrated with the Hebrew Alphabetic Circle. This is how God led me to discover the Bible Wheel.
This quote from my book shows how completely submerged I was in confirmation bias. I really believed that coincidences which “fit the pattern” constituted proof of design. And when the data did not fit the pattern? I would resort to the time honored tradition practiced by most believers when confronted with contrary data – I created a word salad of irrational rationalization. I found a good example of this just this morning in an old post I had written on my forum a few years ago (which shows what a rich resource it is for understanding the psychology of belief). A member “duxrow” had written this comment:
One intriguing aspect of the phrase “the just shall live by faith” is how we find it repeated in three (3) books of the New Testament. They aren’t all on the same spoke, obviously, but does this fit some kind of pattern?
Romans 1:17 “The just shall live by faith”.
Galatians 3:11 “The just shall live by faith”.
Hebrews 10:38 “The just shall live by faith”.Just these three (3) books where Faith is defined, and no others!
A fourth occurrence is found in Habakkuk 2:4, the source of the quote. None of these books are on the same spoke. They are found on spokes 1, 4, 13, and 14. There is no correlation of any kind with the pattern of the wheel. So how did I respond? It’s embarrassing, but here it is:
That’s a very interesting study. The three verses you found are the three that talk about the “just living by faith.” And you are right, they do not all occur on the same Spoke. This exemplifies how there are many patterns in the Bible. It’s like a tapestry with everything connecting with everything else. Things are not all “mechanically” aligned according to the Wheel. It’s much more complicated (and interesting) that that. But there is a very significant pattern based on Aleph KeyWords and the idea of faith that do align on Spoke 1. … I talk about this at length in my Spoke 1 article called The Election of Abraham, the Father of our Faith.
Oh my. If data that does not fit “exemplifies how there are many patterns in the Bible” and if the Bible is “like a tapestry with everything connected to everything else,” how could I claim that it fit one specific pattern like the Bible Wheel better than some other? What was my standard? Where was my proof? Given this “catch all” excuse for data that didn’t fit, how could my claims be falsified? And if my claims could not be falsified, how could they be justified? My rationalization also included a classic example of redirecting attention away from the data that did not fit by pointing to some cherry-picked data that did fit! It is very strange to see what I was doing. I never suspected that I was guilty of such blatant rationalization. I really thought I was being more careful than that.
It is very enlightening to contrast my rationalization with the sweeping over-the-top claim of a consistent pattern that exhibited “a perfection of intelligence unlike anything ever seen in the history of the world” found in the first chapter of my book (pg. 24). I began with the mundane task of explaining how some passages, such as Psalm 119, are acrostic – that is, they follow the pattern of the alphabet. I called them the “Alphabetic Verses” and claimed that God designed them as a template for the Bible as a whole. I then inebriated myself (and my readers, I had hoped) with quotes from famous preachers who praised Psalm 119 as a “star in the firmament of the Psalms of the first and greatest magnitude,” an “Alphabet of Divine Love,” a “Paradise of all the Doctrines,” and a “little Bible” overflowing with “inexhaustible fullness.” Having set the stage, I explained how Psalm 119 served as a “foundation” of the Bible Wheel (bold italics in the original):
These comments show that the glory of Psalm 119, like that of the Bible itself, surpasses the limits of human language. Even when we speak only with superlatives, our praise falls short of the “inexhaustible fullness” of this supreme Psalm of God’s Word.
Yet there is more – so much more! – in this “little Bible” than anyone ever anticipated. It is here in Psalm 119, and kindred Alphabetic Verses, that God eternally established the order and meaning of the twenty-two Hebrew letters and so laid an unshakable foundation for the large-scale structure of His Word within its own text. The Bible is self-reflective; it contains an image of itself within itself in the Alphabetic Verses. Moreover, God embedded within this foundation an abundant storehouse of Alphabetic KeyWords that prophetically anticipate the thematic pattern of the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation. This is the Work of God. This is the revelation of the Bible Wheel.
This “unshakable foundation” consisted of a set of words derived from the alphabetically structured passages in which each verse starts with an “Alphabetic KeyWord,” as shown in this example from Psalm 145:
I hoped to prove the alphabetic design by finding unique links from these alphabetic passages to content found only on the corresponding spokes. I called these uniquely connected verses “Alphabetic KeyLinks.” I was highly motivated because I had found a few that seemed profoundly significant (to my believing brain, that is). For example, the name of the 16th letter, ayin, means “eye.” It is used as a KeyWord in its corresponding verse in Psalm 34:15 “The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry.” This verse is quoted in one and only one book of the Bible, 1 Peter on Spoke 16. It was a “direct hit” that deeply impressed me. After years of searching, I found a total of 20 Alphabetic KeyLinks, but only four were as stunning as this. None of them impress me now, for the reasons explained below.
Alphabetic Keylinks were a special case of the more general concept of KeyLink which I defined as a “unique word or set of words found only in books on a single spoke that exemplifies a common theme.” My favorite example was based on the calling of Abraham in Genesis 17:4: “As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations.” That verse is quoted in one and only one book, Romans, which aligns with Genesis on Spoke 1. Furthermore, the key concept of “father” is spelled aleph-bet (אב, av) and so was an “Aleph KeyWord” corresponding to Spoke 1 – Aleph. So here I had found a KeyLink on Spoke 1 that was directly connected with the corresponding Hebrew letter. But did this prove anything? How do we know if it was just a random coincidence? Certainly in a book consisting of 31,102 verses we would expect some random hits like this.
I defined KeyLinks to be unique in my effort to filter out the countless off-spoke connections that would be expected if the Bible really is “like a tapestry with everything connecting with everything else” (which it is). When I began my research, I wrote a database program to track all unique connections and included a checkbox to mark those that were “off-spoke” so I would have the data needed to do a statistical analysis. It did not take long before I recognized that there were so many off-spoke connections that I could never prove design using statistics. Therefore, I stopped the tedious practice of counting my misses and relied instead upon my subjective sense of the “significance” of the hits as “evidence” of design. I didn’t consciously choose to ignore the misses – they just didn’t seem “significant” in light of the “overwhelming miracle” of the hits. I believed that coincidences were meaningful, and served as evidence.
Cognitive bias is an inevitable consequence of the limitations of our finite minds. It follows from the psychological Law of Limited Attention which states:
A person can pay attention to only 2, or at the most, 3 things at one time. If we are stretching our attention and trying to pay attention to say 3 things and a fourth thing comes along and we try to attend to it also, the fourth thing becomes the new first and the others recede. Some psychological research indicates some can pay attention to 7 things at once. This does not contradict the principle; it only changes the numbers.
If a person chooses to focus only on the hits, the misses will inevitably recede into the background. If attention is not intentionally applied to bring them back into consciousness, the illusion of a “perfect pattern” will result. Once one has fallen into the habit of seeing only the “proof” and ignoring and/or rationalizing all the contrary data, it can be exceedingly difficult to retrain the mind to view the data objectively, especially if the patterns are charged with religious ecstasy. This is what happened to me, and that’s why it took me three full years after debunking the Bible and rejecting Christianity before I had the clarity of mind to successfully debunk myself. I tried soon after quitting Christianity in a series of posts called A Critique of the Bible Wheel Book – by the Author! but failed to detect any of the errors that now are as obvious as the nose on my face. So what woke me up? It’s a long story, but the gist of it is that I got in the habit of debunking others and intentionally chose to apply the same standards to myself, come what may. I discuss this at length in my previous article Debunking Myself: What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been.
It all came to a head on August 8, 2014, when I began a thread on my forum called The Bible Wheel, Numerology, and Cognitive Bias. It was in response to a member who appealed to my work as proof that God had designed the Bible. He thought I was using “cognitive bias” as a mere excuse to reject the Bible Wheel since I had rejected Christianity. To prove his point, he dug up an old post from another forum that I wrote when I was a believer in which I dismissed the charge of “cherry picking” with these words:
Now one of the primary objections people raise is the charge of “cherry picking.” They suggest that the Bible is such a big book that anyone can make connections with anything, and therefore nothing like the Bible Wheel could have any real meaning. But this is not true. God established the connections for us in the Alphabetic Verses, and the specific content of the books is an objective fact.
I presented a few of my favorite cherry picked examples (debunked below) and declared that they represented a general pattern found throughout the Bible:
Now the real miracle of the Bible Wheel shines with its greatest clarity when we examine the specific content on each Spoke in light of the Alphabetic KeyWords that God established in the Alphabetic Verses of Scripture. The Alphabetic Verses are the passages that God designed on the pattern of the Hebrew alphabet. The most notable example is Psalm 119 which has 8 stanzas for each letter giving a total of 176 (= 8 x 22) verses. And what is the theme of this, the largest chapter in God’s Word? It is none other than the WORD itself! And how are words written? With the Alphabet, of course. We find therefore that God designed the PSALM of HIS WORD on the pattern of the Hebrew Alphabet, and this establishes the pattern for the large-scale pattern of His entire Word in the form of the Wheel. But there is more! There are many profound correlations between the Alphabet KeyWords and the specific content of the books on the corresponding Spokes.
There it was. My primary claim, staring me in the face. As always, I had asserted that the entire Bible fit the pattern of the Wheel. But this time, after three years of skeptical thinking, I finally asked myself if it was really true. The answer came quickly. No. It is not true. Not by a long shot. Most of the text of the Bible has no obvious connection with the spoke on which it is found.
On August 24, 2014, I reviewed the total number of Alphabetic KeyLinks that I had discovered over the course of ten years of study. The result? Only 4.5% fit the pattern (link). That means that 95.5% do not fit the pattern. Then on August 29 I examined them in detail in a series of five posts on my forum (here, here, here, here, and here, reproduced below) and found that even my best evidence was riddled with flaws. All my claims fell like a house of cards. This brings us to the final topic: The Ugly.
The Ugly
I will now review the four examples I presented on my page called Alphabetic KeyLinks. It was the best evidence I had to support my claim that God had designed the entire Bible on the pattern of the Hebrew alphabet. Unfortunately, it consisted of nothing but four cherry picked coincidences and a suppression of contrary evidence. <sigh>
#1: The Eyes of the Lord
As mentioned above, the name of the 16th letter, ayin, means “eye.” It is used in the corresponding verse in the alphabetically structured Psalm 34:
Psalm 34:15 The eyes (ayin) of the LORD are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry.
This verse is quoted in one and only one book of the Bible, 1 Peter on Spoke 16, corresponding to Ayin:
1 Peter 3:12 For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil.
This KeyLink is valid. The verse is quoted nowhere else. But what I failed to mention is that there is an off-spoke KeyLink in the immediate context. Peter also quoted the verse corresponding to Peh, the first letter of “panim” (face):
Psalm 34:16 The face (panim) of the LORD is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.
If 1 Peter had been on Spoke 17 instead of 16, I would have quoted the Peh verse as “evidence” of design and ignored the Ayin verse. Rather than being evidence of design, it was evidence of bias. How can we say that God designed the one verse that happens to fit while ignoring the one that does not fit?
As the attentive reader probably noticed, there are anomalies in the verse numbering. The 15th verse of Psalm 34 corresponds to the 16th letter. It always bothered me that “God designed” things this way since the whole point was that the verses were supposed to match the corresponding letters and the numerical mismatch made my job harder because I had to explain it and that made things seem not quite so “amazing” if you know what I mean. You’d think God would have ensured that the verse numbers matched if he had actually designed everything according to the alphabet. It was things like this that helped wake me up from my delusion. I could not help but noticed that I, a mere mortal, could have created a much more impressive Bible Wheel than the one I claimed God designed.
#2: He Keepeth All His Bones
This was another my favorite KeyLinks. It is based on the Shin KeyWord “shamar” which means “keep.”
Psalm 34:20 He keepeth (shamar) all his bones: not one of them is broken.
This verse is quoted in one and only one verse of the Bible, in the Gospel of John on Spoke 21, corresponding to Shin:
John 19:36 For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken. 37 And again another scripture saith, They shall look on him whom they pierced.
Again, we have an off-spoke KeyLink in the immediate context. The second citation is from Zechariah 12:10 which is on Spoke 16. It is quoted in no other passage. We now have one miss for each hit. Not very impressive, to say the least. So why didn’t I notice this before? Because of selection bias and confirmation bias. I reported only the hits and ignored the misses. And not only did I ignore reporting them, I ignored the fact that they contradicted my whole thesis! I am stunned to see how deluded I was. If the verse from Zechariah was a KeyLink aligned on the proper Spoke, I would have shouted it from the rooftops as more evidence that God designed the Bible. But it didn’t fit the pattern I was looking for, so I ignored it.
#3: I will bless the Lord
My third example was based on the specific form of the Hebrew word avarakah, translated as “I will bless.” It is an Aleph KeyWord:
Psalm 34:1 I will bless (avarakah) the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
The word “avarakah” also appears in another alphabetic verse corresponding to Aleph (Psalm 145:1). I took this as a “double witness” to its significance. It is found elsewhere only in Genesis on Spoke 1:
Genesis Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless (avarakah) them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
As with both examples examined above, there is an off-spoke KeyLink in the immediate context. The promise that “in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” is quoted in one and only one book of the Bible, Galatians on Spoke 4
Galatians 3:8 And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.
So there it is. Each of the first three “favorite” examples of “divine design” of the Bible Wheel contain off-spoke KeyLinks in their immediate context. That’s three strikes in a row, from my “best” evidence! There is no evidence of any design at all. I was merely cherry-picking hits and ignoring the misses.
#4: The Beginning of Wisdom
This KeyLink is based on the 20th letter Resh and the KeyWord reshit (beginning). It is from Psalm 110 which has two clauses per verse. I mark them with the name of the letters:
Psalm 111:10 (Resh) The fear of the LORD is the beginning (reshit) of wisdom. (Shin) a good understanding (sekel) have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.
The word order of the English translation is reversed. The Resh clause begins in Hebrew with “Reshit chokmah.” Here’s what I say about this link on my Alphabetic KeyLinks page:
As a final example – perhaps the most significant of them all – we have the unique appearance of the phrase Reshith Chokmah (Beginning of Wisdom) found only in the Resh verse of AV Psalm 111 and the Twentieth Book, Proverbs, the premier “Book of Wisdom” to be found in the Bible. It is actually a double Alphabetic KeyLink, as discussed at length in the Synopsis of the Twenty-two Spokes in the Bible Wheel book and on this site in the Spoke 20 article The Beginning of Wisdom.
Now let’s look at the Shin verse which is found in the immediate context. The word “understanding” is sekel, a Shin KeyWord. The phrase “good understanding” is sekel tov. This phrase is found in three other verses of the Bible, in Proverbs 3:4, 13:15, and 2 Chronicles 30:22. None of those books are on Spoke 21 corresponding to Shin, and two of them are in Proverbs on Spoke 20. None of them align correctly on the wheel.
That’s it. All four of my “best examples” are reduced to ashes. My best evidence has been debunked.
As a final example, I review the evidence I presented in response to the charge of “cherry picking” from the other forum mentioned above. Here is the challenge to which I was responding (link):
This is my point. If the Bible wheel was true then the spokes would work out. The fact that the spokes don’t work means that we have no basis for having a 22 spoke wheel. So we could just as easily have two cycles of 33 spokes. Or 6 cycles of 11 spokes. And why is it a wheel? Why not a rectangle with 6 rows and 11 columns. I reckon I could turn it into the star of David. As I pointed out there is NOTHING to cause us to group the scriptures into 3 cycles. They have always been grouped into 2 cycles. OT and NT. If God wanted to be symettrical then he would have the same number of OT books as NT. Or else twice as many OT books as NT books so we could have 2 cycles of OT and one cycle of NT.
Here is how I replied:
I am really glad you brought the question of the correlation between the Books and the meaning of the corresponding Hebrew letters. Contrary to your assertions that the “Spokes don’t work out” we have, in fact, the greatest conceivable miracle revealed in the correlation between the Alphabet and the specific and unique content of the books on the corresponding Spokes. Indeed, the lion’s share of the Bible Wheel book is devoted to a full review of the primary correlations between all 66 books and the 22 letters.
One of the most obvious, and astounding examples, is seen on Spoke 18. The 18th letter is Tzaddi, and the primary Alphabetic KeyWords associated with it are based on the root “tzedek” meaning righteousness. God used words based on this root in many of the Alphabetic Verses corresponding to Tzaddi. For example (AV stands for Alphabetic Verse):
- Ps 119:137 Righteous (Tzaddik) art thou, O LORD, and upright are thy judgments.
- Ps 145:17 The LORD is righteous (tzaddik) in all his ways, and holy in all his works.
- Lam 1:18 The LORD is righteous (tzaddik); for I have rebelled against his commandment.
- Ps 112:9b … His righteousness (tzedakah) endureth for ever;
- Ps 119:142 Thy righteousness (tzedakah) is an everlasting righteousness.
- Ps 119:144 The righteousness (tzedek) of thy testimonies is everlasting:
This is the primary symbolic meaning of the 18th letter Tzaddi – righteousness.
This theme dominates all three books on Spoke 18:
- Job is a theodicy, an exploration of the righteousness of God in light of human suffering.
- Matthew is the Gospel of Righteousness, as explained below.
- 1 John – this book explicitly defines the meaning of righteousness, and is the only book to proclaim the title of our Lord as Jesus Christ the Righteous.
Now one of the primary objections people raise is the charge of “cherry picking.” They suggest that the Bible is such a big book that anyone can make connections with anything, and therefore nothing like the Bible Wheel could have any real meaning. But this is not true. God established the connections for us in the Alphabetic Verses, and the specific content of the books is an objective fact. Case in point: the frequency of the word “righteousness” is greatly maximized in Matthew relative to the other Gospels:
Things get very interesting when we compare parallel passages between Matthew and Luke:
Matt 6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Luke 12:31 But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.Where is the “righteousness” in Luke? It is missing by design – design by God, that is. I have seven such parallels listed in the article linked below. This specific kind of pattern is consistent throughout all three synoptic Gospels, and is seen on many other Spokes were there are similar parallel accounts such as between Kings and Chronicles. The differences were designed in accordance with the Hebrew Alphabet. All three synoptic Gospels show maximized distributions of words related to their corresponding Hebrew Alphabetic KeyWords. I present the evidence in my article called the “Solution to the Synoptic Problem” which demonstrates that God designed the specific variations between the synoptic Gospels on the pattern of the Hebrew Alphabet.
The facts I stated are true. There is a prominent emphasis on righteousness in Matthew when compared with the other Gospels. And this does fit the pattern we would expect from the Alphabetic Verses. But this is just one pattern relating to one letter and one book out of all the letters and all the books of the Bible. It does not represent any pattern that is generally true for the whole Bible. And that’s the ugly error. It is a classic example of selection bias. I chose to carefully select a small subset of the data that fit, and then falsely claimed it represented all the data. I searched for patterns like this for over 15 years and found almost none. I have no reason to think that this particular “hit” is statistically significant, especially since I focused on a very small fragment of the data. Here is the full distribution of the word “righteous” (and related terms like righteousness) throughout the Bible:
So there it is. I found one happy coincidence and presented it as if it were common to the whole set of data. If that ain’t ugly, I don’t know what is.
The biggest problem with your Biblewheel book was always the over-the-top-zeal. It is good to see that you have finally recognised this after all these years. But you are overcompensating now. Yes, certainly, your KeyWord and Word Frequency tests are flawed. So discard them. While we’re at it, throw out all the baubles too: the stained glass window, the medallions, the rings, the tricycle. All that was unnecessary and added a cult-like flavor where none was required. So, yes, indeed, throw overboard all that.
Now: what is left is a sweet, simple, powerful idea which could just as easily have been published in a 4 page pamphlet as a 401 page book. The Protestant Canon does wrap onto those 22 spokes, and when it does, there are many wonderful resonances to behold. Nothing you can do or say now will ever unravel this.
But the Biblewheel is not more important than the Bible. It is just one of many deep structures and resonances which the canon exhibits.
The genie is out of the bottle. The Biblewheel exists and all the “debunking” in the world cannot undo the straightforward intuition which came to you on those two key dates, May 12 1995 and May 14 1999. Everything else was unnecessary elaboration. Fascinating elaboration, flawed elaboration perhaps in parts, but strictly speaking: there was nothing which needed to be added to the original pair of ideas: wrap the books on the 22 spokes. Observe the symmetry of the canonical division. Done. Sorted.
Your journey has been utterly fascinating. I applaud the manner in which you have documented it, and your personal story, and woven the two together. It has made for a mesmering website which has brought pleasure to very many people.
We are all coping with the magnificent mystery of existence, and all hurting from the pain of separation from God. It’s a trip, and a joyous wonderful thing.
Until then, your journey will remain a fascinating spectacle for those who visit these pages. I salute your searing self-honesty, your commitment to searching for the truth, your struggle with the implications of your discoveries. I respect your path.
But when all is said and done: the Biblewheel endures. Perhaps one day, there will be a Third Act to your journey, and you will find a way to gaze on it objectively from afar, without feeling the need to either overpraise it or trash it. I am sure there are others out there who would join me in that wish, without in the slightest wanting to impinge on your freewill. We’re all grappling in the dark, searching for the light switch, in our own time, in our own way.
For me, the Biblewheel has been an extremely rich and rewarding discovery. I remain profoundly grateful to you for having found it and gifted it to the world with such skill and insight. Nothing you have written recently has changed that for me. And if it’s true for just one person, then that’s enough. It’s out of your hands now Richard. The horse has bolted. The stable door is open. The Biblewheel is a thing, and there’s nothing that can make it not a thing.
Simon,
Thank you for the very thoughtful comments. I have been looking forward to discussing this with you since you have adopted and adapted the Bible Wheel to suit your own purposes which are very important to you, so you have a vested interest in saving it from being totally debunked. Our conversation should be very enlightening.
It’s fascinating to see how one man’s Bible can be another man’s bauble. When I was a believer, the stained glass Bible Wheel revealed the glory of God’s design of his holy Word. It was not merely a “divine seal” but also a profound work of art that integrated with fundamental theological doctrines such as the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement. It seems that all those associations are lost on you. This makes me wonder what significance you see in the Wheel. As far as I can tell, you have not actually said.
Wonderful resonances? Aha! I see what you are doing. You apparently understand that there is no actual evidence of any “divine design” in the Bible Wheel so you have chosen a subjective “standard” that really is no standard at all. Anyone can find “wonderful resonances” in anything. That is the essence of cognitive bias, and it’s all the Bible Wheel actually amounts to. Your comment seems to indicate that you have found a way to maintain your delusion while admitting that there is no evidence, all through the wonder-working power of “wonderful resonances.”
What are these “wonderful resonances” of which you speak? You rejected as “baubles” many of the “wonderful resonances” I saw in the Bible Wheel. So what’s left? You didn’t say, so I have no idea (except from our previous conversations in which you made connections with dates, crop circles, and numerology).
By themselves, those two ideas are empty. There are no statistically significant patterns so whatever “wonderful resonances” you find are nothing but a reflection of your presuppositions. They will prove nothing but that you happen to believe the Bible. It’s like the “wonderful resonance” of the number 19 that Muslims find in the Qur’an. Do you find that significant? If not, why not? I think we all know the answer.
There is nothing left to unravel. The Canon Wheel is one minor coincidence that proves nothing. I’ll be debunking my claim that it was statistically significant in my next article.
You can put any collection of things in a circle. And if the size of collection is divisible by three, you can put the collection in three circles that align with a set of spokes. You can do the same thing with the Catholic Bible as I showed in my article The Battle of the Bible Wheels: Catholic vs. Protestant. Granted, I have not found a pattern in the Catholic Bible as impressive as the Canon Wheel, but neither have I studied it on a daily basis for four years like I did before discovering that pattern in the Protestant canon.
What endures? An illusion of design.
But I agree there may be a “Third Act” that I have no way to anticipate. And if so, then great!
And I have not been simply “trashing” it. The purpose of the article above was to review the “Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” There were lots of “good” things about the Bible Wheel, or at least I thought they were good, but you reject them as “cult like baubles.” Oh well. That just goes to show how little objective truth there is in any of this. The majority of the “patterns” and “wonderful resonances” that people find in their sacred texts and synchronicities are idiosyncratic and subjective – meaningful only to themselves.
Yes, the Bible Wheel is a thing as is the Roman Catholic Bible Wheel, and E. L. Martin’s symmetric pattern of 49 (= 7 x 7) = 22 + 5 + 22 books integrated with both the Aleph Tav and the Alpha Omega. Etc., etc., etc. Such patterns are meaningful only to those who begin by believing. It’s nothing but cognitive bias.
I hope you will share your reasons for thinking there is something more than mere coincidence in the Bible Wheel.
Thanks again for your very thoughtful and well-reasoned comments Simon.
All the very best,
Richard
Richard:
There is mystery in life. Profound mystery. And that mystery touches all of us…. No amount of cognitive bias or coincidence based structure can erase that fact. The Great Mystery – Wakan Takan. The Great Mystery Spirit echos in loves chambers of the heart. This much is true!
The path of love leads home!
Namaste,
Mystykal
Mystykal,
I have never denied that there are “mysteries” in the sense of things we don’t understand that move us deeply. But that has nothing to do with my article exposing the errors of cognitive bias and coincidence-based evidence. Is there anything in my article you care to comment on?
All the best,
Richard
I finally got around to reading this, and from an outsider perspective:
It looks like you are taking all the zeal and foolishness and recklessness that you had at first, but now you’re running in the opposite direction. First everything was a “hit”, and now everything is a “miss”.
First everything was “perfectly designed and arranged to the glory of God”; now everything is “coincidence and cherry picking and confirmation bias, etc.”
You seem to have traded one set of “blinders” for another.
As usual, you are shooting from the hip into the dark. You don’t have a clue what you are talking about. First, I would have rejected your bullshit when I was a fully convinced Christian who believed in gematria. My reasons for rejecting it have nothing to do with my debunking of my own delusions. My reasons are the same now as they would have been then, except sharpened with added insight into the psychology of belief.
Second,I didn’t just “flip” from one belief to its opposite. On the contrary, it took me three years after debunking the Bible itself before I had the clarity of mind to debunk the Bible Wheel. I have given it a lot of thought. For three full years, I had a statement on my sidebar that said the evidence supporting the Bible Wheel appeared to remain valid despite the fact that the Bible itself was not true, and I was willing to live with that “cognitive dissonance” as long as those “facts” appeared to be valid.
I explored many possible explanations, from naturalistic ideas as such as an evolutionary explanation which seemed to make good sense of the Canon Wheel (though it did not explain the detailed correlations between the books with each other and the alphabet) to “woowoo” explanations based on Jungian psychology, as explored in The Bible Wheel as a Cosmic Mandala of Archetypal Wholeness. I remained quite open-minded until I reviewed my evidence for design and found it full of holes, as explained in my recent posts, especially Debunking Myself: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
If you think I have “blinders on” then all you need to do is present the evidence that I am supposedly blind to. You have done nothing like that, and apparently you know you cannot, so you retreat to the last resort of cranks who have no evidence, and declare that I can’t see the evidence you have not presented because I am “blind.” What an unmitigated load of bullshit!
I’m just calling it like I see it. You talk about “bias”, “dissonance”, “cherry picking” with the same zeal and strong feeling of being personally correct as before. You just swapped the vocabulary.
IMO, an evolutionary explanation makes the most sense instead of just denying that the patterns exist.
Not true. I did not merely “swap vocabulary.” I have exposed the root error that created my delusion. And it’s the same error that has created your delusion.
Your assertion that I switched from “all hits” to “all misses” shows that you do not understand what I have done. I do not deny the hits! That’s not the point. The POINT is that I was ignoring the misses and that’s what caused the error in my judgment. When you bring them into account the “hits” are exposed as a cherry picked sample that is not representative of the whole. That’s why my claims failed.
Which pattern? Are you talking about the Bible Wheel or the Canon Wheel?
The bible wheel is real. If you don’t believe me, go to a synagogue, steal the Torah scroll from the altar, then goop to church, steal the Bible, rip out the New Testament, paste the leaves together, roll it up, and then jam it in inside the Torah scroll. There’s your bible wheel.
The Bible resembles a scroll BECAUSE IT IS A SCROLL.
It’s not a new idea. It’s not a spiritual epiphany. It’s just a historical fact. The mistake you made was claiming that it was supernaturally designed.
Your comment makes no sense. Merely rolling up the OT does not make the Bible Wheel.
Again, your comment makes no sense. Neither the Protestant Bible nor the Tanakh as a whole were ever a single scroll. On the contrary, the books that were collected into the Bible existed on many different scrolls. Some books like the 12 Minor Prophets were collected on a single scroll, but never the entire collection. That would be absurdly unwieldy.
Again, your comment makes no sense because it has nothing to do with the Bible Wheel. It is not a “historical fact” that the books collected into the various canons of Christianity were ever put on a single scroll.
Which pattern do you think “exists” and is in need of “explanation” beyond mere coincidence?
I also never said the whole Bible was ever actually written on one scroll. I did describe how one could MAKE such a scroll. My point is that it’s not a huge leap of logic to imagine the Bible as one scroll “sealed from beginning to end with ΑΩ.” It’s certainly not a new idea.
>Which pattern do you think “exists” and is in need of “explanation” beyond mere coincidence?
The fact that it’s a book. With chapters. And every book needs a table of contents. It’s not far fetched to imagine that Jews and maybe early Christians used the alphabet for a sort of “table of contents” or “index” to their sacred holy scriptures.
I never said it was a “leap” of any kind, let alone a “huge leap.” On the contrary, I consistently described it as a “surprisingly simple act.” Here is what I’m said in the second paragraph of the first chapter of my book:
There is a curious consistency to your comments. They rarely have anything to do with what I’ve actually written.
> The primary thing to understand about the Bible Wheel is the simplicity of its origin. It emerges when we do nothing but take the list of the sixty-six books and roll it up like a scroll on a spindle Wheel of twenty-two Spokes, corresponding to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew Alphabet. That is all there is to it. Everything else in this study follows from that single and surprisingly simple act.
Ok so you do agree that there is a correspondence with the 66 books and the 22 letters!?
Yes, just like there is a correlation with a random set of 66 dog turds.
The fact that you can correlate arbitrary sets does not imply that there is any meaning or design in the correlation.
The Jews tried to force their canon to fit the 22 Hebrew letters, but could not come to agreement and ended up with 24 (the current count in the Tanakh). I always thought that was significant when I was a believer. Here is what I what I wrote about it in my article discussing the 22 Books of the Jewish Canon:
The problem, of course, is that the vast majority of the verses of the Bible do not correlate with the 22 letters. That was my error, and that’s why the Bible Wheel is meaningless. I cherry-picked the best hits I could find, and then claimed that they represented all the data. They do not.
Yes we are talking about random sets, because the folks who collected the Christian scriptures were not trying to make any correlations with the 22 Hebrew letters. That correlation is random.
>The problem, of course, is that the vast majority of the verses of the Bible do not correlate with the 22 letters.
Ok, but if you’re already admitting that redactors guided the process, they could do their best to arrange the books in an elegant way. Which means much of the material you supposedly debunked could be true. It’s just not divinely inspired. It’s redactor-inspired.
>The Jews tried to force their canon to fit the 22 Hebrew letters
>Yes we are talking about random sets, because the folks who collected the scriptures were not trying to make any correlations with the 22 Hebrew letters. That correlation is random.
You contradicted yourself. Both of the above statements can’t be true.
That’s why I edited it, but apparently too late since you had already answered. I meant to say that “the folks who collected the CHRISTIAN scriptures were not trying to make any correlations with the 22 Hebrew letters.” If you disagree, please provide some evidence that the content and sequence of the Christian canon was deliberately designed on the pattern of the 22 Hebrew letters.
I’ll let you know when I find that French cathedral.
Yes, it is obvious that they tried to arrange the books in an elegant way. The Christian redactors rearranged the Hebrew canon into logically coherent categories. The Jews just tossed a bunch of miscellaneous books in the third section called “Kethuviim” which contained poetry, history, prophecy all jumbled together. The Christian order was much better.
Thanks. Sounds interesting.
Out of all the verses in Shakespeare, there are some rhyming couplets. How do you know the rhymes aren’t a coincidence? Maybe it’s just another delusion!
It was within Shakespeare’s ability to write rhyming couplets. It was not within the ability of any human or group of humans to design the Bible Wheel (assuming it were true) because that would require knowledge of the Christian canon before it was written to make all the pieces fit.
>>Ok, but if you’re already admitting that redactors guided the process, they could do their best to arrange the books in an elegant way. Which means much of the material you supposedly debunked could be true. It’s just not divinely inspired. It’s redactor-inspired.
>Yes, it is obvious that they tried to arrange the books in an elegant way. The Christian redactors rearranged the Hebrew canon into logically coherent categories. The Jews just tossed a bunch of miscellaneous books in the third section called “Kethuviim” which contained poetry, history, prophecy all jumbled together. The Christian order was much better.
Right, but that means that some of the stuff you supposedly debunked could be true! Some things which you now attribute to coincidence, could in fact be intentional on the part of the redactors.
> It was not within the ability of any human or group of humans to design the Bible Wheel (assuming it were true) because that would require knowledge of the Christian canon before it was written to make all the pieces fit.
But now you’re appealing to the “coincidences” again, which you already debunked.
What are you talking about? Your comment makes no sense at all. I have never said nor implied that everything about the Bible is just coincidence! THe order of the books is obviously not “just coincidence.” It’s the CORRELATION with an outside set like the Hebrew alphabet that is almost certainly coincidence. There is no evidence it is not.
General references like “some of that stuff you supposedly debunked” are totally meaningless. If you want to challenge something I’ve actually written, please quote what I wrote and show why it is in error.
Thanks!
OK – I think I see what you are getting at. Apparently, you are suggesting that the folks who collected the 66 books did so to deliberately make a Bible Wheel even though there is no meaning to it because all the connections I found were just “coincidences”?
Man, that’s some loopy thinking.
> It was within Shakespeare’s ability to write rhyming couplets. It was not within the ability of any human or group of humans to design the Bible Wheel (assuming it were true) because that would require knowledge of the Christian canon before it was written to make all the pieces fit.
So your argument is that the Bible Wheel is… too good to be true? Even better than Shakespeare!? Seriously!?!
Man are you dense! I debunked the damn thing. There is nothing about it that is “too good to be true.”
If you have a point, please try to write it in a coherent sentence.
Getting back to the point – you are suggesting that some of the design features seen in the Bible could have been deliberately designed by the redactors. I agree. That is obviously true.
Next, you apparently want to suggest that the Bible Wheel itself was deliberately designed by some of the redactors. That’s not impossible, but I see no reason to believe it is true. No Christian has ever mentioned such a pattern as far as I know, so there is no reason to think it was deliberate. It’s based on a trivial coincidence that the number of books just happened to be 66. But that pattern didn’t become prominent until the 16th century and the Protestant Reformation and the printing of the KJV. So it is hard to imagine that it was the intent of some “early redactors.”
>Man are you dense! I debunked the damn thing. There is nothing about it that is “too good to be true.”
Then why did you say “it’s design is beyond human ability”? I don’t understand your point. How can you be sure about Shakespeare’s intentions, but not the intentions of the redactors?
As explained in my previous comment, there is no reason to believe that any redactors deliberately designed the pattern. But even if they did, why would it matter? It would be nothing but some people putting books in a circle. What would that prove?
Fair enough. I’m glad that you don’t believe in divine inspiration anymore, but I think that with this “debunking” you might be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
And what might that baby be? Secret gnosis through sloppy numerology?
I’ve been dealing with people and their “secret gnosis” for two decades. My site attracts every variety of numerological pattern finding end-time predicting fool imaginable. I’ve been contacted by folks who say the number of their birthdate proves they are Christ. There’s no end to the lunacy of folks who follow the path you advocate. If you really think there is a “baby” in your numerology, then you should be able to defend that position. As it stands, you have presented me with no evidence I have not debunked long ago, even when I was a believer in gematria.
Hi Richard:
My previous comment is related to the Fact that once you debunked your theories as based on some bias – you then concluded that:
“On August 24, 2014, I reviewed the total number of Alphabetic KeyLinks that I had discovered over the course of ten years of study. The result? Only 4.5% fit the pattern (link). That means that 95.5% do not fit the pattern. Then on August 29 I examined them in detail in a series of five posts on my forum (here, here, here, here, and here, reproduced below) and found that even my best evidence was riddled with flaws. All my claims fell like a house of cards. This brings us to the final topic: The Ugly.”
…Or put another way – All that is known with regards to the “Spiritual” world as “revealed” in the Bible is false based on the falsifying of your theories about the layout of the Bible itself. It is that conclusion which I question as I know you no longer believe in ANYTHING Spiritual.
The inability to have a Spiritual aspect in one;s life seems to be opposed to all the ancient teachings wherever they may originate, And that is my point.
Namaste,
Mystykal
I have no idea how you could have gotten that meaning from what I wrote. I debunked the Bible three freaking years before finally getting the clarity of mind to debunk the Bible Wheel. Debunking the Wheel had nothing to do with my conclusion that the Bible is false.
I have never said I do not believe in anything spiritual, and have no idea how you could have gotten that idea.
Fundamentally life is filled with coincidence; I believe there is a reason for that. What then of existence if it was not a representation of faith in itself. What one recognizes or see’s therewith resonates with that individual, like a candle or light. If we do not see by light, or through the spectacle of belief what else is there to believe in? Why are certain individuals attracted to somethings. The dynamics of elements and how they pair is it merely coincidence or by divine design. The scripture in itself, provides everlasting insight. The comprehension of one to another may vary, however it does not mean that by which comprehension either is void. Point and case, the bible wheel varies true and false. The elegance of will strained through faith of divine coincidence bares the synchronicity of guidance in reality. Scripture denotes that Christ lives within us as the Ruach Kodesh, Holy Spirit. The wheel of course is debunked if you discourse the word itself. However we are back into that conundrum of perception. Your perception has changed based upon belief; however this does not devoid the occasion that the wheel is particularly false either. I believe you did a great work and I believe your work was inspired. Whether or not you believe in it yourself. If the word is the living word and it is forever, who could make what is indefinitely infinite definitely finite? Thus an everlasting basis of continuation. Doubt not your work brother. And before we can even delve into the comprehension of insanity, one must delve into the comprehension of sanity; how unique the variety of universal society, each comprehensible mind different within the collective. Who is he that can define normal, since normal is a perceptive quality dependent of each individual. Faith is the root in which we all embrace what is. Love is what makes us grow. Shalawam
Nothing Richard said involves violence, but of course Tony’s God purportedly does violence, and Tony calls its violence just, righteous, and holy (which of course means there is no grace, no law, no patience, no mercy, no truth, and no forgiveness). If someone practices the principle of non-violence it is a shield against false religion and its adherents who are a dime a dozen and even hate one another. Who is more worthy of respect and dignity, a non-violent atheist or a violent God? The answer is a non-violent atheist, all day, everyday. Might does not make right. Right makes right.
I already posted a comment about 26,31, 86 and 137 the four Hebrew gods before the B. confinement.
The Hebrew Shema 1118, and the 26 000 trpical years. Did you get the whole text?
Richard, I’ve studied your Bible Wheel and have never yet found any errors in what you teach on the Bible Wheel! If I took the information out the wheel and posted it on a website it would still be in my opinion very valuable material, so why you would think it has errors in it is a mystery to me.
Also the process of linking verses from the holy Bible together as you did in the Bible Wheel isn’t meaningless but meaningful!
It is in fact God’s will to do this and the Holy Spirit inspires earnest, diligent students to do this as they study the Bible.
Hi Richard,
It must be over 10 years since I bought your book and I am very surprised about your change of faith. Therefore Im also quite curious to what your current worldview looks like, so… if you`re able and willing, please let me know the following :
1.Is there a God?
2.Who do you think Jesus is / was? Or do you believe he didnt exist at all?
Please elaborate if possible.
Thanks.
Hi Skybreaker,
I answered your questions in a new post Reader’s Questions: Is there a God? Who was Jesus?
Hi Richard, I hope you still check these comments because I have a problem that I think you may be uniquely qualified to help me with. Several years ago I, like you, believed I had discovered an amazing pattern with profound, theological implications. However my pattern isn’t in scripture, it’s in crime statistics.
I’ll just spill it, I guess. If you draw a graph of the total number of crimes committed per year in the U.S., starting in 1935, the year the FBI started collecting the data, you will see a shape that I think is a complex waveform. If I’m right, it means harmonic motion is happening. This would, in turn, have some very silly sounding implications, such as the existence of a restorative force that fights evil.
I really don’t want to go around telling people there is a restorative force that fights evil if my belief in it is just the result of cognitive bias. I don’t think it is, but I wouldn’t know, would I? And this is some undeniably crazy sounding stuff – I actually have myself thinking that when Jesus said “turn the other cheek,” he was thinking about phase cancellation. Oh, and I’m pretty sure there’s a fundamental frequency of evil.
I know how funny that sounds, and yet I believe it all, based on data that a zillion people have looked at before me. The odds of cognitive bias being responsible must be very high. On the other hand, I know what a $%&*#@% complex waveform looks like.
So here’s where you come in. I’d like you to take a look at a small post I put up. With your background you’ll breeze right through it – ten minutes, tops. It’s really just a bunch of pictures of this one graph, with which I try to show that the whole thing is a long series of patterns, and patterns of patterns, one flowing right into the other, which repeat, or flip over or show some other symmetry. And they all add together to form a big sine wave.
I don’t expect that your some sort of expert on complex waveforms – you may not even know what one is. I’d still be interested in your opinion.
http://michaelneuman.org/harmonic-motion-in-u-s-crime-rates/
So check it out if you get a chance and let me know what you think. Thanks
Mick
Hey Mick,
Good to hear from you. Why don’t you post this on the forum in it’s own thread. It wouldn’t make any sense to discuss it here in this comment stream.
All the best,
Richard
Thanks, good idea. It’s in there now.
So if all this is “Bull” as you say, why not take it down?
Richard:
After reading all your debunking revelations and the threads it is obvious you didn’t fall off a bus. What is sad though is moving from salvation to what appears to be agnosticism—I hesitate to say atheism. Regardless, Father God exist as does His Son and the Holy Ghost whether-or-not you embrace them. It goes back to Jesus’ question to His disciples “who do you say I am.” Appears you are satisfied with the stance He does not exist nor His Word. Because your wheel is flawed doesn’t mean the Bible is flawed. I don’t get the correlation. So some things, or a lot of things don’t line up on your self “debunked wheel” has nothing at all to do with the veracity of the Bible. Paul tells us (Timothy) not to argue the Word or get involved with other argumentative topics. I have not studied your wheel to the extent others in this thread have, nor will I. It is my hope you come to the conclusion that yes, your wheel is flawed but there is a one threaded garment that began in Genesis and its tapestry is finished in the Book of Revelations, and whether you believe it or not Christ Jesus loves you. And if your position at this stage in your life is to reject Him and that love it would appear you are not as humble and smart as you seem to be as the author of the wheel or its subsequent rebuff.
I have a solution!
One I also found myself. I am an Auctioneer, I love Poetry and write a fair bit of it, and after reading a few comments here, would like to offer something that is so simple, I could blow your mind at just how simple. It has given me many many many answers to life.
I’m also searching, I think if one stops that, ‘darkness’ can creep in as we stop growing in spirit. We all have a spirit, it’s our very being, our consciousness. And we are threaded together with our ConScience. Otherwise we’d all be psychopaths killing one another. Even the word ‘darkness’ is just a metaphor, for ‘bad.’ And bad, can be defined. It just happens to be the opposite of goød, and that can be defined too. Otherwise everything would mean nothing and nothing would mean everything. And that wouldn’t be good, would it? 🙂
Verbs (deeds/actions) and abstract nouns can be defined as good or bad too. Depending on context sometimes, but it doesn’t take much to work that out.
Those verbs and abstract nouns can then be ranked in order to how they make you feel. And all of them, can then be distilled down to either two ’causes’ (Newton) stemmed from either goød or bad intentions earlier in the line of time (chronology).
Cause/effect. Not rocket science. Simple.
The secret, is letting of the outcome and then shifting the energy to appreciating the here n’ now, adn then our our very next decision will more than likely be coming from a goød place. With good intentions = ( ∑ of: heart / intentions / being / spirit / consciousness / ConScience).
All of this can be put on one page, and make a ‘hell’ of a lot of sense. Simple.
Feel free to reply if you would like me to share more, for free.
“Give and give freely.”
I’m not denominational and I don’t like the word ‘religion,’ as it implies an absolute and I don’t like totalitarian thinking as that assumes the notion of “playing god” and makes others wrong, and maybe they are wrong, maybe not, but that’s not my business unless it encroaches on me. If any debate is stuck to in good faith, the truth is what will prevail, in the end. The caveat is, goød faith. If that is not maintained, the truth can’t be guaranteed. And therein lies a little secret.
Even though I don’t call myself religious, but I have huge faith, my faith in the goødness of humanity, and there is goødness in humanity, for a reason. And it’s not because of what some idiot scientists will try and assert, and that is “consciousness is necessary for evolution to occur.” That statement, is simply not true. A tree, would not make a very good juror, would it? They can be mutually inclusive and exclusive.
So my faith is in the ’cause’ of consciousness and the remnant thereof, in us all.
So anyways, if anyone wants a fun and enlightening exercise to complete on one page, reply, and I’ll give it to you for free. 🙂
“Give and give freely.”
Cheers,
Dave
*Please excuse typos and grammatical errors above.
I have one other suggestion to, I feel rather than go flat out for the absolute, i.e. flat out belief, or lack thereof, be happy to know know for sure. That’s the beauty of it, is to suspect, and feel it.
It’s not being totalitarian that’s the key. And ‘letting go of the outcome’ or the desire to ‘know’ for sure. The gift of ‘freedom’ of one’s spirit, is in one’s self’s ability in accepting that we can never know for sure, and having the humility to do so. On other words, freedom is surrendering thy ‘rational mind’ to thy conscience. Thy conscience, knows best.
Our brains are only 1400grams. Only so much computing it can do. Thy conscience is infinite.
Let go of the outcome, listen to your heart and know the difference between good and bad. And you’re half way back to the ecstasy you may have once had, but with more measure and balance. Not having any faith at all, is no good. It’s meaningless. We have to have our heart believe in something bigger, better, more good than us, otherwise we’re just dying slowly, and have nothing meaningful to aim upwards at.
The other suggestion is instead of looking for absolutes in the scriptures, look at them as metaphoric stories and examples to tell us what is good for us rather than trying to get to god himself. You’ll always be disappointed if you try and meeting him in person rather than feel a presence of goodness.
This poem is for you mate, hope you don’t mind me sharing:
“The Good in the Day”
In this weird and funny place,
Of energy, matter n’ space,
There appears to be,
A daily test for me.
We’re merely just passing through,
What I thought was a place,
Where the sky is always blue.
It matters not how strait the gate,
Or how long one may be prepared to wait.
For there’s one last ingredient,
Going into the mix,
That one thing, we cannot just buy,
Or even pay, to fix.
It’s a thing we don’t really understand,
Is it infinite?
Or does it eventually, get canned?
We call it ‘time,’
And, I just can’t think,
Of the next word to rhyme.
So I’ll just get to it now, and say my bit,
Before someone, fairly loses their shit!
It’s not about the ‘where,’ the ‘what,’
Or even the ‘who,’
And it’s really not even a concept,
That’s one little bit new.
Some may say it’s all about the ‘why,’
But I suspect, as I grow old,
And truth unfold…
That before the ‘why,’
It’s all about the ‘HOW,’
In the right here, n’ NOW!
So, I have decided for my daily test,
I’ll just do my very very best,
And let the goød in the day,
Do the rest.
David V. Vitale
31 July 2019
Correction top line above:
Be happy not to know for sure….
Great advice David!
Fundamentalist thinking certainly helped to sink my Ship of Wonder that I was sailing through the Mystic Seas. I probably would still be a believer (of sorts) if I didn’t fall into the trap of “proving” my beliefs. There’d be nothing to “debunk” if I kept my ideas in more in the realm of art, philosophy, and theology.
I am very happy to know that there is much I don’t know. Or better, to know that there’s very little that I do know. I don’t feel a need for “certainty” that used to dominate my mind. It is strange to look back at my old writings where I spoke of absolute incontrovertible proof that God designed the Bible in the form of the Wheel. This is one reason I leave the site up even though I no longer believe what I used to preach. I think there’s a lot of value in seeing how I changed.
Thanks for the comments, and the poem. Very cool!
Good work on finding all this. I have an interest in finding the number of Hebrew and Greek words. How can I find the Hebrew and Greek gematria pages on this website? Thank you in advance!
Is all of that information REALLY gone and unavailable FOREVER?