Off line discussions on Vernon's claim lead me to try to summarize it in a
way that may show more clearly why I do not think it is of significance.
The claim seems to be as follows:
1. Assume the denary system is divinely inspired, based on arguments from
nature in that humans and some animals have five digits on each extremity.
Pandas, horses, etc. don't count.
2. Assume the present-day known text of Genesis 1 and John 1 are known
without question to be in a certain form, one in Hebrew; one in Greek.
3. Assume direct dictation of these two scriptures to the authors by God.
4. Assume a certain numeric equivalence between certain Hebrew characters
and numbers and do the same for Greek.
5. Assume a certain mathematical transformation.
6. Use the mathematical transformation on the numeric equivalents of
Genesis 1 and John 1 and observe that the results are pretty close to pi
and e, two fundemental mathematical constants.
7. Claim from all this that God designed things that way.
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What do I find preposterous about the above?
1. Claims that the denary system is somehow "divinely inspired" seem to be
based on wishful thinking, and not on any real grounds. If true, one would
expect to find consilience with other natural facts or theological
arguments; these are not present. The Babylonians got along, it seems with
a system based on 12. Computers do well with the binary system. I used to
work with the IBM 650 computer which used a bi-quinary system. It was as
reliable as any other in the 1950s.
2. I'm not an expert on ancient texts, but I expect that variants of both
Genesis 1 and John 1 exist. If true, the claimant would have a number of
texts to choose from "until it came out right."
3. Direct dictation of any part of scripture "by God" is problemmatical.
4. Direct numeric equivalences are a "fun" thing to do -- are they
inspired? Maybe. I have never seen an analysis of any that was in the least
convincing, and I've encountered many which were sheer balderdash. I recall
as a young Christian reading one that showed, convincingly, who the
anti-Christ was. The logic was air tight. I could not find a fault with it.
Except that I read the book, published in the 1930s, in the 1960s, and the
identified anti-Christ was Mussolini.
5. There are thousands of possible mathematical transformations that can be
tried. The one used is a simple one, of course; there are still many simple
ones. Why THIS simple one? No answer.
6. There are thousands of possible "fundemental mathematical constants"
that might have resulted. Yes, pi and e are among the most interesting of
these. But neither pi nor e is subsequently tied to anything else
theologically. Both are expressed approximately (of course, they have to
be; I know that). But why to that particular degree of approximation? No
answer.
7. Therefore, the claim fails, at least for this person. To establish any
degree of credibility, the questions I have above need to be addressed.
Burgy
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