Chinese Characters and the Bible

Yesterday, a friend of mine forwarded me a video file that purports to show that the Chinese language shows proof of the authenticity of the stories of Genesis:

http://students.washington.edu/cbsf/cool/Chinese.swf

The video is produced by an organisation called the "World Bible School", but when I clicked on the link in the World Bible School's website, they have removed the video:

http://www.wbschool.org/chinesecharacters.htm

If you don't like the flash video version, the same contents can be viewed as a static web page here:

http://www.jdaniellowe.com/china.html

However "entertaining" this article is, and may seem utterly convincing and believable to some people, the sceptic in me immediately tells me that this is not PROOF!

There are at least 20,000 characters in the Chinese language, although only about 10,000 are used contemporarily (see note #1). With 20,000 characters to choose from, it is possible to find all kinds of coincidences and meanings to fit whatever you want. (Note: another Wikipedia entry states that at least 53000 unique Chinese characters were compiled in 1039 CE during the Song Dynasty. See note #2)

There are only 214 radicals in the Chinese language, which are used to form the Chinese characters. It is obvious that for any combination of radicals, you would get at least several characters that are formed from such radicals. Now, all you need is to choose characters that have any superficial connection to the bible stories, and put them into this multimedia presentation, and ta-da, you have a very convincing presentation that seems to say that the Chinese language validates the authenticity of the bible!!!

This is weak thinking. In actual fact, this video proves nothing except that you can choose to interpret anything you want to make the flimsiest of connections to the bible.

Fundamentalist Christians have a weakness for developing this kinds of "proofs", in which you first form the conclusion ("Chinese characters are related to the bible"), and then look for evidence that supports the pre-conceived conclusion and publishing them, while ignoring and discarding evidence that do not support it. This is totally against the scientific method, in which you accept and publish the evidence that are both pro AND con to your hypothesis. In the scientific world, if contradictory evidence is found, the initial hypothesis MUST BE REJECTED, and the researcher must refine it, or re-propose a new hypothesis. Unfortunately, fundamentalist Christians do not like to acknowledge contradictory evidence, always choosing to sweep aside facts and ignoring them when such contradictions are pointed out. This is the sole reason why fundamentalist Christians believe that the bible is LITERALLY true, and that the universe is only 6000 years old because of this unshatterable belief in the inerrancy of the bible.

I found that another blogger has written about this video, and has use the same kind of weird logic employed by the World Bible School to make a mocking association that is so provocative that you just have to read it yourself:

http://www.hanzismatter.com/2006/03/chinese-language-of-god.html

Notes

#1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language#Vocabulary

#2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Chinese#Literacy