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To: FredZarguna; RobbyS
Not tossing in on the side of either the Popes or the Catholic Church or even RobbyS, but you're misreading that verse as 3 = π. Here's a thorough explanation: http://www.purplemath.com/modules/bibleval.htm
66 posted on 02/17/2015 2:04:13 PM PST by 1010RD (First, Do No Harm)
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To: 1010RD
No, I'm not misreading the Bible verse, you are. And so is the author of the blog page at PurpleMath [which, incidentally, the principal author's good grades at many fine community colleges notwithstanding, has a number of errors which I have pointed out to her and FReepers who've tried to use her as an authority in the past.]

In order to arrive at her conclusions, she has to make assumptions about the diameter(s) of the bowl, not even the slightest hint of which are stated in the biblical passage in question. By fudging the inside diameter of the bowl, [which we do not know, and which she does not have any reason to use, speculate about, or guess at] she miraculously arrives at 3.14 as the value of π.

This is preposterous. It's akin to the ridiculous rationalizations that Commie mathematicians used to publish from time-to-time justifying an absolutely incorrect "proof" that Marx once published that "demonstrated" that continuous sequences of functions must converge to continuous limit functions. No, they don't. Marx became an "economist" because he was a failure as a "mathematician" and no amount of retrofitting makes him a decent one.

And similarly, no amount of fudging makes The Bible a truthful mathematical or scientific guide.

PurpleMath's tortured attempt to salvage The Bible's reputation requires no less than 1400 words, two diagrams, and numerous silly assumptions all of which are demolished with a very simple observation: No real bowl produced in the ancient world would be uniformly circular. Furthermore, that point is mooted anyway by the fact that no measurement performed using hand measures [spans, cubits, etc.] would have been accurate to more than one significant digit even if the bowl were hand-thrown on the Potter's Wheel of Yahweh Himself. Therefore, the idea that a measurement of it would yield a value even near π let alone one with three significant digits[!] is pure jury-rigged horse manure.

67 posted on 02/17/2015 11:04:27 PM PST by FredZarguna (O, Reason not the need.)
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