I haven't actually discussed this publicly, though a lot of you who know me will probably know what my thoughts are on this. I was first privately confronted by someone elsewhere on a different website on some of my views regarding religion, and it appears he had contacted me because he believed me to be "intelligent", or somehow, worth talking to, based on what I had been posting on those forums.
But what he had to share with me was something he described as convincing evidence that god exists. That it was stupidly simple, and mathematically interesting. Being someone who has previously studied math, that would certainly be of interest. For any atheist out there, that is certainly intriguing. After having seen shitty argument after shitty argument after shitty argument...well, they're all over Rational Wiki and Iron Chariots Wiki (and SkepDic, so I won't dwell on that much more), it would actually be refreshing for once to see someone come up with an argument that actually does support religion, wouldn't it? He claimed that this was what convinced him to believe that (the Christian) god exists.
Now I have to say that I was content to continue discussing this argument with him in private, and seeing as it wasn't that special or convincing enough to convert me (or else I would have posted it in public by now), I saw no reason to post it online. Until I read a recent article, most likely by Greta Christina (or was it the Atheist Experience? I can't remember). And it's good advice, so I'll mention it anyways.
Basically, this article or stream mentioned that if you are confronted by a believer and asked to discuss something in private, do not take up their offer. Of course, don't reject the discussion entirely, but if you are to have this discussion, it should be made publicly available. Why should you let them have their say to you in private if they have something so convincing to tell? Why not tell everyone else about it as well and convince them too? Could it be they'd be embarassed by the public if they were wrong about it?
Now I have no idea what that guy's intentions were, and why he didn't simply post a public thread about it and link me to it, unless he already made a thread about it and didn't feel like bringing it up again (gee, I wonder why...could it be several people have shot his arguments down?). Either way, I've decided I'm going to post the argument that convinced him to become a believer.

The argument goes like this:
The number seven is rampantly occurring all over the bible. It gets mentioned several times, certain properties of the original (really? I wouldn't know for sure) Hebrew reveals the number seven when you count up some of the values of certain words or selectively look at certain parts of the phrases or words or letters and in a certain way. The mathematical part is that some of these properties lead to the number seven (for example, that the sum of certain words or phrases leads to a number like 28, which is 4x7).

Here's the link he sent me if anyone is interested: [link]

In fact, you don't have to read very far into this to see that this is all just nonsense. Anybody who's read my thoughts on craptastic hoaxes like astrology knows this is just a nod at numerology, but no; my "friend" says this is unique, special in some way because there isn't another text where you can get these combinations of sevens. The writers themselves couldn't have written the bible like they have with this in mind.

Well, there's a few problems with this. Now, maybe I'm being dense, but I fail to see the significance of this. As a mathematician, I fail to see why the number 7 reoccurring in such a way is special. I see this number all the time in mathematics when I solve problems. But the fact that I see it is not all that significant. It is just a tool; a means to an ends. In fact, numbers like 1, 2 or 0 are sometimes more special in mathematics because of their properties; 2 is properly the first prime number and you need it for even numbers, 1 is useful for multiplication sometimes (it's the multiply by 1 trick), 0 causes headaches for infinity sometimes (and it also has a trick; the add 0 trick), and both 1 and 0 are used extensively in binary and by computers and in identity matrices and vectors. But 7 isn't special; it's just a prime number, and there are plenty of those. The fact that you see it a lot is not surprising.
I would feel insulted as a mathematician to be told that performing certain mathematical operations just to get this recognition of patterns and seeing 7 a lot is supposed to mean anything. Well, it doesn't. It hasn't proved any math theorems, it hasn't solved any math problems, it hasn't advanced our knowledge of mathematics or its applications of such, and it's not mathematically elegant or intriguing the same way Euler's identity is; it's just a cruel trick played to make people think this is special and should be given attention when it isn't and shouldn't. The fact is, you can take any text you want and see the number seven in it if you're looking hard enough. If you have enough knowledge of how mathematical operations work, and you play with them enough, you can get what you want. In fact, you're not seeking "anything" in particular; you're just looking for a pattern that lets you see the number seven, so long as you're looking for it.
Now why am I supposed to believe this is unique? Because the first seven words of any text don't always add up to 28? (Well, they could be 14. Or 35. Or some other multiple of 7. They'll make it seem like 7 is related somehow.) Why the hell does that matter? And for that matter, why would I purposely pick the first seven words in the first place? Why not the first 14? Was there a reason to do it? It seems to me like whoever came up with this idea was pandering to the conclusion, and nothing more. And when you do that, you can claim it's special and "unique" all you like, but it's no more unique than playing a particular game of Poker and being dealt a specific set of cards consecutively. The probability that you'll play the exact same game more than once is also quite low. (Of course, if Poker were that predictable, it wouldn't be that fun to play anyways.) And if you consider the fact that we are looking at a text as large as the bible, there is a higher probability that you will find any one specific pattern that you are looking for.
This is not any different from numerology or codifying of the bible or other holy texts. It just relies on the fact that we are always seeking patterns in things, and we are very good at recognizing them. The problem is, we can seek patterns in things where the patterns have no meanings inherently; it's one we make up ourselves. It's like staring at clouds and seeing a face. Our ability to recognize patterns makes that possible.

Now of course, if we're quite done with playing the number games, and being unimpressed by the sheer idiocy and boring use of mathematics like this (and I've seen more interesting number games than this that rely on mathematical theorems and ideas beyond simple mathematical operations...), there's an even bigger problem, which is playing with numbers in the bible is all fine and good; do it as much as you like, I'm sure you get lots of fun out of doing it. However, to claim that this somehow has some sort of significance or that it proves god exists is a shitty argument. There's no connection between seeing a shit-ton of sevens in a holy book and evidence that god exists. To claim that this pattern was put there by design and it was god that put it there (oh, because it's the bible?) is just circular reasoning. It's just another way of saying "god exists because he's in the bible" in disguise.

Now that's all of my initial thoughts at seeing this. I was excited and a little nervous to see what it was that would convince us to finally admit that there might have been evidence for god. But it was disappointing when it turned out to be nothing more than a variant of numerology, a field I've always been suspicious of, and I feel that when I tell people I have a degree in mathematics, and they bring this up because they feel I would benefit from it, they are wasting my time. Now maybe they mean well, and they're not so well versed in mathematics, so of course anything having to do with numbers they perhaps feel has to do with mathematics, and any mathematician would be interested in it. But it just isn't mathematics. Numerology is to mathematics like astrology is to astronomy. They aren't the same, they're not based off of the same justification, and being an expert in one area doesn't make you an expert in the other.
(As an aside, I'd like to know if any of you are astronomers or studying astronomy and get the occasional people that confuse astronomy with astrology and ask you about astrology. Or if you're mathematicians or study math like me, and get people asking about numerology. Feel free to share your experiences.)

After a bit of research, I found out that the person who originally came up with this idea (Ivan Panin) was actually a bit dishonest about this and doctored the text he used. That was actually one of the questions I was asking myself originally; what version of the bible were they using? I'm sure the results would be different if say, we were to use the King James version, right? Anyhow, it turns out the edition he had been using was an edition that would be considered poor scholarship by today's standards. And he actually had been picking and choosing alternative readings, none of which corresponded to actual manuscripts, and did a lot of tweaking. So much for being honest. I'm far less impressed, thanks for the need for people to be dishonest about proving god exists by impressing people with a crapload of sevens.

Now I don't really entirely know what exactly it was in that argument that my "friend" saw. I don't know if it was just the sheer overwhelming number of sevens, or the fact that he somehow considered this unique. But I feel a lot of this could have been avoided if he just did enough research and looked into what it was skeptics and other people who have analyzed the texts had said and discovered about it. You don't have to be an expert in mathematics to know that the frequency distribution of the "sevens" in that text don't reveal anything. If you do enough research, you'll see that the person who did this was dishonest. That there is a specific pattern in the bible may be "cool" for awhile, but once the excitement dies down, you realize it is just a pattern. It says nothing about this universe. Nothing about if there is a creator out there. Nothing even about the text itself. There are a lot of more interesting and exciting things out there than just playing with some numbers and looking for patterns that serve only to fulfill your own fantasies, but do nothing to further our understanding of the universe. If you still feel it is fun, no one is stopping you from doing it. But please don't confuse your seeking patterns for your personal fun with making a truth statement about the universe and that we somehow have to care about it.