pruest@pop.dplanet.ch wrote:
> george murphy wrote:
> >
> > pruest@pop.dplanet.ch wrote:
> >
> > > > "Iain Strachan" <iain@istrachan.clara.co.uk> wrote to <vernon.jenkins@virgin.net> (29 Jun 2001 01:07:06 +0100):
> > >
> > > >[snip]
> > > > Other observations I have made subsequently involve evaluating "the =
> > > > formula" on every verse in the Torah (some 5000 verses - with a computer
> > > > program). I can confirm that the formula effectively computes a random =
> > > > varible. The fractional part of the base 10 part of the logarithm of =
> > > > the function gives a uniform distribution in the range 0 to 1, as one =
> > > > would expect. Genesis 1:1 is the verse that is closest to pi, differing
> > > > by 10^-5. If one selects an arbitrary other constant (say the square =
> > > > root of two), then one normally finds that the closest one is around =
> > > > 10^-4 distant, which is in accord with what one would expect with 5000 =
> > > > data samples. The second closest verse to pi has a difference of 10^-4;
> > > > so Gen 1:1 is an order of magnitude closer to pi than it.
> > > >[snip]
> >
> > One point that seems to have been missed in all this is the fact that verse divisions were not part of the
> > original Hebrew text of the OT or the Greek text of the NT. These divisions often seem quite arbitrary. Thus the
> > numerical evaluations of "every verse" of torah, or the rest of scripture, aren't
> > very meaningful.
> > It might be argued that this criticism doesn't apply to Gen.1:1 and Jn.1:1 because those are complete
> > sentences. But the sentence punctuation is also later and to some extent arbitrary. With Genesis, there has been an
> > extensive debate among biblical scholars about whether v.1 should be read as a complete sentence which stands as a
> > heading for the whole creation account or whether it should be read, as a number of translations do, "In the
> > beginning, when god created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void ..." (NRSV). I think Westermann
> > has made a good case for the first & more traditional reading but a decision can't be made on grammatical or
> > syntactic grounds alone.
> > It is also quite common to read Jn.1:1 as a single sentence but we wouldn't have to. One could read it as
> > "In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God and the Word was God."
> > (This wouldn't be elegant Greek, but John isn't very elegant Greek anyway.) This corresponds to Phillips'
> > paraphrase: "In the beginning God expressed himself. That personal expression, that word, was with God and was God,
> > and he existed with God from the beginning."
> > My major reason for considering this whole line of argument to be at best "mildly interesting" is, however,
> > theological, and can be stated in 3 parts.
> > 1) Getting pi from Gen.1:1 & e from Jn.1:1 yields little of theological significance. It's supposed to
> > prove that the Bible is divinely inspired but at most it could prove that those 2 verses are inspired. & one could
> > even argue from the fact that there isn't any similar mathematical correspondence for other parts of scripture that
> > _only_ those verses are inspired.
> > 2) The argument can be of value only for getting the attention of unbelievers and suggesting to them that
> > the message of the Bible deserves some consideration. Has it done so? How many conversions have begun with this
> > argument?
> > 3) If anybody does take this message seriously, it's going to be very easy for them to get the idea that pi
> > and e are the really deep level of scripture hidden below the surface details about the history of Israel & the
> > church - just as in _Contact_ pi is hidden below the primes and Hitler and
> > the plans for the transit device. & this would be disastrous theologically, for the deep meaning of scripture is
> > Jesus Christ.
> > Shalom,
> > George
> >
> > George L. Murphy
> > http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
> > "The Science-Theology Dialogue"
>
> George,
>
> thank you for your detailed comment! I basically agree with it, although
> I'll mention some reservations below. The reason I jumped in on this
> thread is that I suspected some problems with the probability
> calculations, which might lead Vernon Jenkins to reconsider the
> significance of finding pi and e in these verses, apart from the
> theological arguments (I agree with you that the most important
> arguments are the theological ones). On the other hand, I am interested
> in probability calculations for DNA and protein sequence languages, and
> perhaps these probability calculations for linguistic sentences may be
> relevant for those. But before asking the list for a reasoned judgment
> on the correct way to arrive at a meaningful probability estimate (about
> which I am not sure), I wanted to reproduce the pi and e approximations.
> By the way, adding a iota to ARCHE in John 1:1 (a subscript to the eta
> in the text), as suggested by Iain Strachan, gives a value for e correct
> within 10^-5.
>
> According to Iain, one would expect the closest hit to pi among 5000
> torah verses to be in the order of 10^-4, making the result of 10^-5
> found with Gen.1:1 truly extraordinary. I was not convinced by this
> reasoning, for three reasons: (a) an error (of a single measurement!) 10
> times smaller than expected might easily be a coincidence, as the tails
> of the Gaussian extend to infinity; (b) the value of pi was not given
> beforehand as a hypothesis to be tested, but was found accidentally
> after doing the calculation; (c) it is not known how many different
> formulas were tried (the more different ones you try, the higher the
> probability of hitting something "interesting").
To my mind the only really significant thing to this point is the fact that the same formula can give pi & e
for 2 verses which are related theologically and linguistically (since bereshith = en arche). If this is the only such
pairing then I will just assume that it's just coincidence. If there are other OT - NT pairs which show something similar
(& that leaves a good deal of leeway & needs some judicious placing of limits) then my interest level would be raised.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Dialogue"
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