There are a variety of different kinds of criticisms that have been made regarding the existence of Torah codes. Each argument makes some assumption that is incorrect, thereby invalidating the argument. Here we just summarize the essence of each of the criticisms without a discussion of their assumptions.
- Biblical Criticism Scholars have compiled lists of what they regard as transmission or copying errors. If the Koren electronic text that we use today in Torah code experiments has errors, making it different from the original text of some 3,300 years ago, then the Torah code tables have the status of tables in essentially a monkey text since such errors would change most long skip ELSs. Counter Argument
- Entropy ArgumentIf there is deliberate encoding, the entropy of the Torah's skip texts should be lower because the skip texts should have more words than those that would occur by chance. But using third order Markov probability models, the entropy of the Torah's skip texts, for skips greater than say 50, is essentially the entropy of a random text. Counter Argument
- Wiggle Room Argument For any particular historical event, the variety of different words that could be used to describe that event give too much wiggle room to the experiment. Any experiment that has wiggle room cannot be scientifically valid. Counter Argument
- A priori Argument All experiments that produce small p-values for Torah code tables, are not a priori experiments. Rather the experimenter worked in his back room and peeked and poked at the ELSs of various key words and after peeking and finding compact combinations, specified the key word list for the experiment as if it were a priori. Since the key word set is not a priori, the p-value resulting from the experiment has no statistically significant meaning. Counter Argument
- Tables from Monkey Texts ELSs of key words can be found in any long enough text searched with a large enough maximum skip. Hence, the same kind of tables that can be produced from the Torah text can be produced (by non a priori means) from a monkey text. If this is true, then whatever is causing the effect in the monkey texts is causing the effect in the Torah text. And that cause is pure random chance.
- Flawed Methodology The statistical methodology by which the Monte Carlo experiment (associated with the Great Rabbis Experiment) is flawed because there was not a proper specification of the alternative hypothesis and the calculations involve making assumptions which are not true.
- Scientism Argument Everything that happens in our world happens by natural means. The existence of Torah codes in which a text that is thousands of years old has in it brief descriptions of some events that would happen thousands of years later is not natural and, therefore, cannot exist.
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