Okay, just had my next "miracle". This time it was a numerology claim. I haven't bothered looking at these before because they are not based on meaningful steps, but I had a go anyway.
Arite so how about this one. I am sure you have read at some point, that there are random letters at the beginning of many suras in the Quran, correct? The letters "Alif, Laam, Meem", at the start of the 2nd chapter for instance has no meaning. At the time the Quran was being compiled, it was literally believed no one knew what these letters meant. It was considered a sorf of "Miracle" at the time. Now, you can definitely argue that Muhammad merely put random letters together, to make it SEEM like they were from God, but that claim can easily be shot down.
Because if you look further, you will realise that these "random letters" at the beginning of SELECT suras, are there FOR a reason.
If we look for the chapters which start with the letters, "Alif, Lam, Meem", we find there are 6 chapters in the Quran in total. Exactly 6 suras, have these specific random letters at the beginning of the individual chapter.
The order of these 6 chapters is like this:
1. Surat Al-Baqarah
2. Surat Al-'Imran
15. Surat Al'Ankabut
16. Surat Al-Ruum
17. Surat Luqmaan
18. Surat Al-Sajdah
My note: The indexes used here are explained in my response, so just accept them for now (TR)EACH of these suras, start with "Alif, Laam, Meem" for some reason.
Arranging these numbers, we find:
Al-Sajdah Luqmaan Al-Ruum Al-'Ankabut Al-'Imran Al-Baqarah
18 17 16 15 2 1
Put them together and you get, 1817161521. You with me so far?
The number 1817161521 is a multiple of 7. Now, I know what you said previously about the number 7. How it is used in the Bible and was believed to be lucky etc etc. But let's look further into this example.
The number 1817161521 is a multiple of 7.
1817161521 = 259594503 x 7
The quotient is also a multiple of 7.
259594503 = 37084929 x 7
The quotient of THAT number is yet another multiple of 7.
37084929 = 5297847 x 7
In other words, that number we got in the beginning (1817161521) is actually 5297847 x 7 x 7 x 7.
If we take that quotient of the quotient number that we got (5297847), we get something REALLY interesting.
5 + 2 + 9 + 7 + 8 + 4 + 7 = 42
42 = 6 X 7
Yes even that number is a multiple of 7. But what about the 6? Well as you may have guessed, this 6 also matches the exact number of verses in the entire Quran that has the random mysterious "Alif, Laam, Meem" letters.
In other words, the chapters were
Al-Sajdah Luqmaan Al-Ruum Al-'Ankabut Al-'Imran Al-Baqarah
18 17 16 15 2 1
Right?
SO
1817161521
1817161521 = 259594503 x 7
259594503 = 37084929 x 7
37084929 = 5297847 x 7
5297847
5 + 2 + 9 + 7 + 8 + 4 + 7 = 42
42= 6 X 7
6 = The number of Suras that we started with, taken from the total of 1817161521 in the beginning.
7 is the common Miracle number here right? But what are the chances of us getting the number 6? This 6 is definitely a CONNECTION to the number of times the words "Alif, Laam, Meem" occur in the Quran.
NOW given all this information, in order to get the best reply out of you, I'm trying to think of what you might say to this claim.
Possible objection #1
This is all a coincidence? That the number 7 is a common multiplier, and the chances of this happening are actually quite high. Also, I divided the number 1817161521 only 3 times. After that I stop getting multiples of 7, so why stop there. Why is it only 1817161521/7/7/7?
? Perhaps Muhammad, or whoever made this miracle claim stopped at only 3 intervals to formulate this equation? Even SO, getting the 6 as well as the 7 as a multiplier at the end is QUITE hard to do. Especially 1400 years ago dont you think?
Possible objection # 2
Muhammad (Pbuh) ARRANGED the chapters in this way? Meaning, the Quran was revealed, but the CHAPTER NUMBERS were kept under control. So maybe, when the Quran was being put together in a period of 23 years, this random mysterious letter concept was kept in mind? I highly doubt that.
Possible objection # 3
This is insignificant? I put together a bunch of numbers, and divided a certain times, and then was able to get quotients to match, each being multiples of 7. And then coincidentally the 6 that I got, just happened to match to the NUMBER OF TIMES those letters (Alif, Laam, Meem) are mentioned in the Quran. Meaning, these random math equations have been put together to PROVE a miracle. Well I just have one thing to say to that my friend and I think you may recognize it:
How did Muhammad pull this off?
Hiya
Just woke up and I am taking a look at your miracle claim. If you mention chapter names in future you could also write their numbers to save me some time
The first thing I checked was that there are indeed only 6 suras that start this way, to do this I used QuranSearch.com - there are a couple with a 4th letter but only 6 that start with alif-lam-meem.
>>
1. Surat Al-Baqarah
2. Surat Al-'Imran
15. Surat Al'Ankabut
16. Surat Al-Ruum
17. Surat Luqmaan
18. Surat Al-Sajdah
<<
The first thing I need to do is to make sense of the numbers. You say that the numbers are "the order of these chapters" If they are chapter numbers in the Quran then this is what I find…
02: Al Baqarah
03: Al Imran
29: Al Ankabuwt
30: Al Ruwm
31: Al Luqmaan
32: As Sadjah
So by "order of" I then assume you mean "order in which they were originally spoken", so I looked here:
http://www.missionislam.com/quran/revealationorder.htmAnd those numbers definitely don't match that order.
So I googled "1817161521" and found that these numbers are the index of chapters that start with unknown letters, starting with 1. You didn't make that part of your claim clear.
POINT 1
I assume you are aware that the order of the chapters in the Quran as you read it was determined by Caliph Uthman?
He could have chosen to put them in chronological order, smallest to largest, or largest to smallest. He chose to put them largest to smallest BUT with the first "revelation" at the start. So the order of these verses was entirely man made and nothing to do with Muhammad. This fact alone answers your "How did Muhammad pull this off?" question…..he didn't.
Of course if this order hadn't worked the claimant would have tried excluding the first chapter and putting it in its position relative to size. Then they'd have tried reverse size order. Then they'd have tried revelation order.
So, the first thing that rings alarm bells for me is that the numbers here are man made. They are man made because they are not in the Quran, and they are not even in the order that they were spoken. They are in a man made order (Uthman) with other verses excluded. There's a lot of "man made" going on here for a miracle from god.
POINT 2
All of the verses started with letters are used to determine this index but then are excluded. They are either part of the miracle or they are not. Essentially what this miracle is saying is "If we ignore 80% of these chapters (that start with unknown letters)……."
When you discount 80% of the data that is called data bias.
POINT 3
The next big alarm bell for me was "When we arrange these numbers". Arrange them? They are already arranged! Either the order longest->shortest is the miracle or it is not. These numbers have been reversed for one reason only, to make the maths work. It wouldn't have been hard for a human to sit down and rearrange these chapters so that this miracle didn't need to have the indexes reversed, with that in mind it obviously wouldn't have been hard for god either. This is what is known as "a fudge" (i.e. a fiddle).
POINT 4
1817161521 / 7 = 259594503
259594503 / 7 = 37084929
37084929 / 7 = 5297847
5297847 / 7 = An irrational number : 756835.2857……..
So now the "miracle" switches from "this number is divisible by 7" over to "let's add up the digits". I am surprised the miracle claimant didn't also say "Look, it's a 7 digit number!"
So where is the consistency? The pattern is "multiples of 7", for it to be a TRUE it should apply to ALL of it (in nature you allow small errors due to random mutation.) So far it has been divided by 7^4 and then it becomes an irrational number. If this hadn't happened how many MORE times would we have had to divide it by 7 to get down to a single digit number?
5297847 / 7^7 = Irrational number: 6.4329937……..
So in total you'd need to divide by 7 eleven times. THAT would be statistically improbable. But only 36% of these "divide by 7" steps can be performed before the pattern fails. 36% is not a pattern.
POINT 5
Adding up 5 digits and then dividing them by 7 gives a lot of hits. I just wrote a quick C# program to test it not knowing what I would find. Here it is if you are familiar with programming
static void Main(string[] args)
{
int matches = 0;
//Go through all 7 digit numbers
for (int i = 1000000; i < 10000000; i++)
{
if (i % 1000 == 0)
Console.WriteLine("Processing: " + i.ToString());
//Get the individual digits in that number
int sumOfDigits = 0;
string numberAsString = i.ToString();
for (int charIndex = 0; charIndex < numberAsString.Length; charIndex++)
{
int currentDigit = int.Parse(numberAsString.Substring(charIndex, 1));
sumOfDigits += currentDigit;
}
//See if it is exactly divisible by 6
//If they are the same then output them
if (sumOfDigits % 6 == 0)
matches++;
}
Console.WriteLine("{0} matches", matches);
Console.ReadLine();
}
Output
1500009 matches
That's 15% of the numbers with 5 digits that have a sum of their digits which divide by 6.
I also tried this with numbers that divide by 7. I think we both know that 7 was tried first and when it failed they tried 6.
Output:
1285774 matches
That's 12% of the numbers with 5 digits that have a sum of their digits which divide by 7.
So taking into account that you are I are not stupid and we know they would have tried the 2nd divisor if the first hadn't worked that means there is a 27% chance of those 5 digits adding together to be divisible by either 6 or 7. That's higher than a 1 in 4 chance.
Not very miraculous, is it?
>I kid you not, there are over a 100 of examples JUST like these within the Quran.
Sure, and they are all numerology tricks. It's called numerology because they don't use a consistent approach within a single claim. Numerology is a discredited scientific approach which is why I have never bothered looking at a single Quran numerology "miracle" claim. In fact I think one scientist accusing another's paper as "numerology" would be seen as a derogatory term used to mock the lack of professionalism.
SUMMARY:
01: The verse orders in the Quran were decided by a Caliph.
02: The order is descending in size, with a personal choice to make an exception and put the first revealed verse at the front.
03: 80% of the chapters with "special letters" are ignored.
04: 95% of the chapters in the entire Quran are ignored.
05: The already artificial ordering is further distorted by reversing it, even though the number 1817161521 depends on the chapters being in the original order.
06: There wasn't a single mathematical technique involved. The claimant started to divide by the magic number 7 for a while, but after only 4 divisions hit an irrational number.
07: The other 7 division operations required to get a single digit number are then abandoned. That's 74% of the approach that failed there.
08: The claimant then switched to "adding up the digits", but doesn't explain the MEANING of the result. A meaningless result is a big giveaway that you are looking at a numerology trick.
09: 15% of these 9,999,999 numbers are divisible by 6, and 12% are divisible by 7 (the other "important" number in this claim"), giving a 1 in 4 chance that we'd get a /6 or /7 hit.
It's a little bit like that game people play where within 6 social connections you are connected to someone famous.
Me->My friend->His cousin->His friend->Her aunt->Her friend->Brad Pitt.
But in numerology you try a specific trick (counting occurrences that start with ALM), then you try dividing them by some number for a while, when you hit a brick wall there you switch to adding up the digits and dividing, and so on. There are so many meaningless steps they can introduce that in many cases you can find similar numbers all over the place.
The Quran has a lot of these because mathematicians like to find them, and their religious devotion probably encourages them to spend lots of time looking for them. There will be more in time too. None of them have any credibility though, I hope you can now see the numerous tactics used in the trickery of this claim?
What you need is
1: Consistency
2: Indiscrimination of data
3: MEANING - If there is no meaning to the numbers in each step then it then it is……..well, meaningless.
Topic: Miracle: Iron is sent down