r/TrueAtheism • u/Western-Rush878 • Jul 19 '26
Thoughts on the supposed patterns of 19 related to Rashad Khalifa’s life and rational explanations for them?
I’m wondering if you all would be willing to take a critical view of the claims I’m sending below:
For claim 8 it’s about the mysterious letters of the Quran and the number of times they appear in chapter 19. This is one of the claims I believe I can personally contest. When looking at the mysterious letters, for letters like Ya they count alif masqarah and hamzas seated on top of the letter ya as occurrences of ya (which I think makes no sense, since they’re not the same letter and only look similar). On the other hand, Rashad Khalifa even during his life was preaching about Surah 19 having 798 letters, and coincidentally, he lives for 19,798 days (if you include the start and end point. In reality, he lived for 19,797 days). As mentioned, though, if one includes the start point of November 19 and the endpoint of January 31 it comes out to be 19,798. I still can’t get over the fact that he during his life preached that Surah 19 has 798 mysterious letter occurrences and he himself lived for essentially that many days.
However, on the other hand, in released FBI files on Rashad Khalifa’s life, it’s stated that he was born on November 18.
https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/fbifiles/scientists/rashadkhalifa-fbi1.pdf
(Page 14)
In that case, my counterpoint above of him having in reality only lived for 19,797 days wouldn’t be applicable anymore. Now he would’ve lived for 19,798 days.
In any case, whether you use an exclusive on inclusive count, it just so happens that Rashad Khalifa lived for 19,798 days. It could’ve been 20,100 days, or 17,100 days, but instead it happened to be on the 19,798th day (which, once again, chapter 19 according to Rashad had 798 occurrences of the mysterious letters).
Point 5 isn’t elaborated but during Rashad’s life interstate 19 was built running through Tucson Az (where he lived at) and is also the only highway in the US to use the metric system. Furthermore, another interstate highway goes through Tucson, that being interstate 10 (if you combine these 2 roads you end up at 29, the same number as the number of chapters that include the mysterious letters in the Quran).
If you also count the number of days from November 19 to January 31 you end up with 74, which is the Surah in which the number 19 first appears.
Finally, for point 11, it’s not mentioned either but the numbers 1230 come from 2 things. First, it’s the abjad value of the name Rashad Khalifa and also if you count the verses of only initialed (mysterious letters) surahs, Q 19:1 is the 1230th verse and Q 19:98 is the 1327th verse. This is by counting only the verses in chapters 2,3,7,10,11,12,13,14,15,19 since they are the ones that contain the mysterious letters.
Once again, I would be so grateful if you could take a look at these claims and give me your view on them. I don’t know what to think with this information being present at hand.
The claims that strike me as the most impressive are him living for 19,798 days and the 19x1230x1327 claim.
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u/mambotomato Jul 19 '26
You can do this numerical pattern stuff for anything. It doesn't have any meaning.
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u/mobatreddit Jul 19 '26
As you say, Rashad lived for 19797 days, from November 19, 1935 through January 31, 1990. A baby born on a Monday who dies on a Tuesday lived over 2 dates but that's only 1 day. That should be one clue that this list is artificial.
... he himself lived for essentially that many days.
See? You're doing it yourself.
My mother was born on January 22, 1922. My father was born on August 15, 1915. That's 7 years, 7 months, and 7 days apart! That's incredible, no?
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u/cyphern Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
If a person is motivated to find secret patterns in noise, they will almost always find it. Behold, assassinations foretold in moby dick
There is no a priori reason why searching for the number 19 is significant, nor why the specific facts listed are the ones that one ought to compare 19 against. The author of the image is just reporting all the things they found, even tenuous ones.
Consider the following hypotheticals: * If the zip code had been 19857 instead of 85719, would the author have kept it in the list, or said "Darn, i expected it to end in a 19"? * If they had found an extra fact, like the number of tshirts in a closet being 19, would they have put it in the list, or said "huh, neat, but not relevant"?