gordon brown wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Feb 2001 Dawsonzhu@aol.com wrote:
>
> > It is exactly this "book of facts" view that gets me into
> > quibbles with athiests about why pi = 3 in the Bible.
>
> The verses on which this claim are based are I Kings 7:23 and II
> Chronicles 4:2. The reasoning assumes that the diameter and circumference
> mentioned are of the same circle. However three verses later in both
> passages a thickness is given. This is such that if the diameter is taken
> to be the outer diameter and the circumference the inner circumference,
> the computed value of pi is a good enough approximation for the people of
> that day to accept both the diameter and circumference as being
> sufficiently accurate measurements.
There is no reason to invoke any arguments about thickness &c.
Pi = 3 to one significant figure. Cf. the exchange in _The Once and Future
King_ when somebody asks how 150 men could be seated at a roundtable. Merlin
replies, "It would have to be about 50 yards across. You do it by
two-pi-r." Does anyone think that White should have had him say "It would
have to be about 47.7465 .... yards across? (Roman engineers used pi =
25/8 even though they knew that 22/7 was more accurate because eighths were
easier for them to work with.)
Such questions indicate a more serious problem than that,
however, the notion that every sentence in the Bible is a revealed
"teaching". (As in "Jesus taught in Mt. 19 that Moses wrote the
Pentateuch.") Skeptics can then ask "Why does the Bible teach that pi = 3?"
It doesn't.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
>
>
> Gordon Brown
> Department of Mathematics
> University of Colorado
> Boulder, CO 80309-0395
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