Bede

But surely an inability to round would be a lack of omnipotence? By rounding pi God is showing the awe inspired Israelites he can do second grade math, which is probably more than they can manage.

Exactly how many significant figures of pi should God, in your opinion, have used? Perhaps it's all down to the scribe he was dictating too.

GOD: OK, take this down. The Diameter was 3.14159..... cubits.

SCRIBE: Hang on. What's with this point thing?

GOD: It's a decimal point.

SCRIBE: What's a decimal point? For that matter, what's a decimal?

GOD: Oh scrub it. As a concession to fallen humanity we'll just call it three.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

ceb

Wow, this topic has taken off! (That's a bit embarrassing, in a way...)

If anyone is still interested, I actually remember where I heard this, and it was on T.V. sometime between 1986 and 1988, on the Morton Downey, Jr. show! :notworthy

(You know, now that I think about it, it's perfectly likely that my memory is incorrect, and it was an atheist who was saying the Bible was wrong, but it seems to me that it was as I said in my first post).

Llyricist

Too bad that relates to the actual pasage......not at all.

should have been more like:

GOD: OK, take this down. It was 10 cubits from brim to brim.

SCRIBE: Right....

GOD: And almost 31 and a half cubits around.

SCRIBE Right....


Framing the argument in terms of pi being 3 or 3.1415927....... is mischaracterizing the problem as it is written in the text.

nermal

Just curious, but I've read the statement several times in this post: approximation is not perfection. Stated as if it were an indisputable fact.

Can someone please defend this statement? Why can't there be a perfect approximation?

Ed