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Tony Backhouse says, “People may never know the answer to “Life the Universe and Everything” but abandoning science obstructs understanding”.
In reply to the Sydney Morning Herald front page story “He’s not the son of god, just the support act” (May 28, 2011) I would like to clarify a tenet of seeking a literal interpretation of scripture. That is, if read from a mathematical perspective, the Molten Sea of King Solomon’s Temple (I Kings 7 or 2 Chronicles 4) measures 10 Cubits in diameter and thirty cubits all around (circumference), therefore Pi equals the rational number 3. Those of you who advanced to high school mathematics and may have been taught to use the rational number 22/7 – 3.1428571428571 (as an approximate) – should have deduced that the Molten Sea either had a smaller diameter or a larger circumference by greater than one cubit.
The Pythagoreans were a cult who hypothesized that everything in nature could be explained rationally, but upon discovering that the constant Pi – 3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971 6939937510 5820974944 5923078164 0628620899 8628034825 3421170679…..(to 100 decimal places) – is in fact irrational, decided to conceal this fact with mysticism which ultimately led to the civilization’s demise; are we making the same mistakes again?
More recently, Werner Heisenberg was able to use the statistical analysis of probability to shed new light on sub-atomic particles, but to Albert Einstein quantum mechanics seemed somewhat irrational. He summed it up up by stating “God does not play dice”, indicating his unwillingness to merely accept this analysis of something that is seemingly unknowable.
People may never know the answer to “Life the Universe and Everything” (the title of a book by Douglas Adams) but abandoning science obstructs understanding. By all means adhere to any religion that suits you, but apply logic to your daily life as we all share one planet from which there seems no mortal escape. We should make the most of our lives for our children’s future.
6 Comments
Sometimes when you look at matters objectively or in other words see the big picture, it is hard to win the debate because simple dogma is more concise.
The most effective formula employed to obstruct science has to be Tony Abbotts GBT.
Forget religion.
It seems absurd but so often “economic rationalists” dance to an illogical tune and argue that their agenda is “Rational” just because it is concise.
For those outside of Australia, Pru refers to our Conservative “Liberal” Party Opposition Leader and his standard line used in criticism “Great Big (new) Tax” – conveniently forgetting that he and his party were responsible for Australia’s Biggest Tax ~ the GST and New Tax System introduced in July 2000.
This “Tax Mix Switch” destroyed much of the repair service industry especially thousands of jobs in the labor intensive trade of electronics repairs ~ now virtually everybody is forced to be a salesman for mostly dumped imported products.
Values for Pi in the Bible are given in or as, a series. Solomon’s Sea gives an approximation of 3 ie the case Tony cites. God’s name El, (1 + 30 in Hebrew) or 31 is (there are no decimal points in Biblical Hebrew) 3.1
The name Shaddai (Shin-Daleth-Yod or 300 + 4 + 10 = 314) gives an approximation of 3.14
The first verse of the Bible gives a calculated value of Pi which is accurate to several decimal places (3.1415. . . . (cf http://homepage.virgin.net/vernon.jenkins/Pi_File.htm)
The same verse, as written by Moses, consists of 7 words, whose first letters when read as numbers (cf Psalm 119 for the Hebrew alphabet) are 2, 2, 1, 1. 5, 6, 5. Add those up and you get 22 – ie the opening verse of the Bible gives us 22/7 — the high school approximation for Pi.
The same verse can be divided into two halves – one half (letters 1 – 14) consists of 3 words, while the second half (letters 15 – 18) consists of 4 words. The formula for the volume of a sphere (4/3 Pi* Radius Cubed) is there at the beginning of the Bible.
As mentioned above, the opening letter is a 2, And the last letter is a 90. Those two numbers represent the two original elements ( H and He), which are the two elements in the first row of the Periodic Table. 90 more elements were added in the “factories” we know as stars or suns as the universe expanded and stars “went super-novae”, collapsing and then exploding. The 92 elements naturally occurring in the Periodic Table are what the Bible refers to in its opening verse.
“da Cubit”, or the biblical one anyway, which was 17.6 inches, is 1/3600 of a mile (1760 yards). It was useful when used with calculations in degrees (360 to a circle), which is why measuring units involving 60 turn up in ancient cultures as far apart as Sumeria and China.
The reason for giving values for Pi in a series (what the Bible does) is to teach that the Pi is irrational = that numbers are just approximations of a value that can never be given exactly.
Tony makes a valid point about dogma clouding things — church agendas have often been to discourage people from using their brains, so the sort of stuff that God intended as just general knowledge for all humanity eg what is loaded into the opening verse of “da book”, never gets taught from a pulpit.
Oops – I meant “letters 15 – 28″ for the second half of the verse, ie the FOUR words.