1 December 2005

An internationally-respected Australian mathematician who has refuted the existence of the Bible Codes will give a free public lecture at The University of Queensland on Monday, December 5.

Professor Brendan McKay from the Australian National University will discuss Judgement Day for the Bible Codes at 6pm in lecture theatre 3, Hawken Engineering building, St Lucia campus.

Proponents of the Code claim the Hebrew text of the Bible was written with intentional coincidences of words or phrases that predicted events more than 1000 years in the future.

Professor McKay and his research colleagues have performed many independent scientific tests of the Bible Code claims, and the findings will be presented at the lecture.

“All our experiments failed to detect anything that was not easily explained by random chance,” Professor McKay said.

“We found the principles of the Bible Code can be used in any book and our experiments using War and Peace performed just as well as Genesis.”

Professor McKay said the successful mass-market book The Bible Code, which centred on the prediction of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, contained no semblance of scientific method.

“We were able to replicate the experiment and predict the death of Princess Diana in Moby Dick.

Professor McKay’s easy-to-understand lecture is open to the public and no bookings are necessary. Visit http://www.sps.uq.edu.au/online/news/events for more details.

Media: For further information contact Lynda Flower, School of Physical Sciences Communications Officer telephone 07 3346 9935 or 0427 158 969.