One of the claims regarding the Quran is there is a checksum on it.

What is a checksum? Well it’s an integrity check, a way for an author to sign or “seal the envelope” in order to indicate that the message has not been tampered with. A very simple checksum would be for example if I put the total word count at the bottom of this article. When you get to the bottom you can see if the number matches the words in this article and you can confirm its correct. However this wouldn’t be very tamper proof as you could change all of the words and maintain the same number in order to still pass the checksum. A better checksum would be to assign each letter a value (A is 1, B is 2 and so on) and then put the total at the end. This would be better, but it’s still very weak as someone could tamper with it as long as they kept the same number of letter uses the same it would still pass the checksum. Nevertheless the point should be clear.

To claim that the Quran has a type of checksum on it is quite weak. Let’s take a look at one particular claim about the Odd/Even Binary Miracle of the Quran as described here:

Performing A Checksum On The Quran – Maths Miracle



If Allah was intending to make this a checksum or integrity check, wouldn’t there have been far more clear and better ways to do it?

How impressive is this really?

First of all, why doesn’t the Quran simply have half the verses with odd number of ayat and half with even ayat? This would be impressive, especially if it was every other surah being odd/even.

Why do we have to add the Surah Number to the Number of Ayat to get this result (Lets call this “magic numbers”)? Seems arbitrary doesn’t it. Let’s just say it’s because “Allah” wanted us to make sure the correct Surah Number had the Correct # of Ayat, so you have to add them. Are we hunting for something here, or is this really the intention of the author? Not sure how we were expected to figure out that we need to add these two seemingly arbitrary numbers together, but okay, whatever, let’s grant that.

Second of all, there is no rhyme or reason or pattern to the magic numbers.

The first few: 8, 288, 203, 180, 125, 171…. They are not even in a pattern

If this was really Allah trying to give us a message, what would have been impressive is if the verse counts (or “magic numbers”) were in Fibonacci sequence, or the Golden Ratio, or Prime numbers…

Even in nature we are able to find such beautiful patterns appearing.

But instead we see no such thing just arbitrarily scattered numbers, half of which are odd and half of which are even. Given that each magic number must be odd or even and randomly distributed, you would expect approximately 50% to be odd and 50% to be even anyway. It’s not that surprising.

Do you think the supreme creator of the universe couldn’t come up with a better way to sign his final revelation and protect it from corruption? How about sending multiple identical copies to different Prophets – one to Australia, one to China, and one to the Middle East. Checkmate atheists.

Third of all, there is nothing amazing about 6555 and 6236. They are just the totals we come up with. Which means that we don’t have to keep these totals, as long as if we change the ayah counts, the total remains.

The problem is that this so-called checksum is vulnerable to severe modifications.

1. For any of the 57 totals that are even, you can go ahead and change the number of ayat in there to an arbitrary number. So for example for Surah 1, you can change the number of verses from 7 to 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, etc…

You can do the same for Surah 2, but using even numbers: 286, 288, 300, 302, 306, …

When you do this, you will modify the even total and the “checksum” is still intact.



2. You can shuffle around the surahs. Infact there are billions and billions of possible changes you can make to these numbers and still make it work out.

The conditions are that you need to swap the odd totals with other odd totals. For example, if you swapped the ayah count of Surah 1 (Fatiha) with Surah 6 (Al Anam) both the 6555 and 6236 total will still match.

If we break down the data into four groups, we have: odd surahs with odd number ayat, odd with even, even with odd, and even with even. So looking at the total number of swaps we can perform using a basic permutations calculator in excel

Type Surahs Unique Ayah Counts Possible orderings OddOdd 27 20 2.16049E+24 OddEven 30 28 1.32626E+32 EvenOdd 27 24 1.81481E+27 EvenEven 30 25 2.21044E+30

That last column that says E+ means that is how many zeros are in the number.

So the first one is saying there are 2,160,490,000,000,000,000,000,000 possibilities

So there are billions and billions and billions and billions of possible combinations that would lead to the exact same 6555 and 6236 totals.

This is not what you call a checksum. It’s just begging the question.

You can play along with the included Excel file and change the numbers to see how this works.

And I have published the source for a computer program that you can run that will shuffle the numbers or play around with my results.

I have included a list of 1000 results with different ayah counts which still give the exact same 6555 and 6236 total. If someone runs this a million million times they will get a million million different results that still work.

Miracle? Hardly

Also see The so-called mathematical miracle of the Quran post.

Further Reading: Debunking the Odd/Even Miracle in the Quran

Quran Odd/Even Data:

6555 6236 6555 6236 Surah Number of Verses Surah+Verses Odd Total Even Total 1 7 8 0 8 EVEN 2 286 288 0 288 EVEN 3 200 203 203 0 ODD 4 176 180 0 180 EVEN 5 120 125 125 0 ODD 6 165 171 171 0 ODD 7 206 213 213 0 ODD 8 75 83 83 0 ODD 9 129 138 0 138 EVEN 10 109 119 119 0 ODD 11 123 134 0 134 EVEN 12 111 123 123 0 ODD 13 43 56 0 56 EVEN 14 52 66 0 66 EVEN 15 99 114 0 114 EVEN 16 128 144 0 144 EVEN 17 111 128 0 128 EVEN 18 110 128 0 128 EVEN 19 98 117 117 0 ODD 20 135 155 155 0 ODD 21 112 133 133 0 ODD 22 78 100 0 100 EVEN 23 118 141 141 0 ODD 24 64 88 0 88 EVEN 25 77 102 0 102 EVEN 26 227 253 253 0 ODD 27 93 120 0 120 EVEN 28 88 116 0 116 EVEN 29 69 98 0 98 EVEN 30 60 90 0 90 EVEN 31 34 65 65 0 ODD 32 30 62 0 62 EVEN 33 73 106 0 106 EVEN 34 54 88 0 88 EVEN 35 45 80 0 80 EVEN 36 83 119 119 0 ODD 37 182 219 219 0 ODD 38 88 126 0 126 EVEN 39 75 114 0 114 EVEN 40 85 125 125 0 ODD 41 54 95 95 0 ODD 42 53 95 95 0 ODD 43 89 132 0 132 EVEN 44 59 103 103 0 ODD 45 37 82 0 82 EVEN 46 35 81 81 0 ODD 47 38 85 85 0 ODD 48 29 77 77 0 ODD 49 18 67 67 0 ODD 50 45 95 95 0 ODD 51 60 111 111 0 ODD 52 49 101 101 0 ODD 53 62 115 115 0 ODD 54 55 109 109 0 ODD 55 78 133 133 0 ODD 56 96 152 0 152 EVEN 57 29 86 0 86 EVEN 58 22 80 0 80 EVEN 59 24 83 83 0 ODD 60 13 73 73 0 ODD 61 14 75 75 0 ODD 62 11 73 73 0 ODD 63 11 74 0 74 EVEN 64 18 82 0 82 EVEN 65 12 77 77 0 ODD 66 12 78 0 78 EVEN 67 30 97 97 0 ODD 68 52 120 0 120 EVEN 69 52 121 121 0 ODD 70 44 114 0 114 EVEN 71 28 99 99 0 ODD 72 28 100 0 100 EVEN 73 20 93 93 0 ODD 74 56 130 0 130 EVEN 75 40 115 115 0 ODD 76 31 107 107 0 ODD 77 50 127 127 0 ODD 78 40 118 0 118 EVEN 79 46 125 125 0 ODD 80 42 122 0 122 EVEN 81 29 110 0 110 EVEN 82 19 101 101 0 ODD 83 36 119 119 0 ODD 84 25 109 109 0 ODD 85 22 107 107 0 ODD 86 17 103 103 0 ODD 87 19 106 0 106 EVEN 88 26 114 0 114 EVEN 89 30 119 119 0 ODD 90 20 110 0 110 EVEN 91 15 106 0 106 EVEN 92 21 113 113 0 ODD 93 11 104 0 104 EVEN 94 8 102 0 102 EVEN 95 8 103 103 0 ODD 96 19 115 115 0 ODD 97 5 102 0 102 EVEN 98 8 106 0 106 EVEN 99 8 107 107 0 ODD 100 11 111 111 0 ODD 101 11 112 0 112 EVEN 102 8 110 0 110 EVEN 103 3 106 0 106 EVEN 104 9 113 113 0 ODD 105 5 110 0 110 EVEN 106 4 110 0 110 EVEN 107 7 114 0 114 EVEN 108 3 111 111 0 ODD 109 6 115 115 0 ODD 110 3 113 113 0 ODD 111 5 116 0 116 EVEN 112 4 116 0 116 EVEN 113 5 118 0 118 EVEN 114 6 120 0 120 EVEN

What do you think?