****Here’s a question for you to think about. Could God create a circle whose circumference is exactly 3.0000 times its diameter? What would that circle look like? And if he could not, why not??****
The answer to this will be rather lengthy, Notary. I’m sorry for that but you’re the one who opened this can of worms.
I appreciate this opportunity to defend the Bible. What you are really doing with this question is playing “Bible Gotcha”, hoping that I’m not aware of what is said in 1Kings 7:23 and its parallel passage in 2 Chronicles 4:2. That way I’ll come up with an answer and you can hang it around my neck with a hearty “haha”. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Notary. What I’m going to do is explain this passage to you.
This is one of the most commonly used by non-believers along with this one: “The Creation accounts in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are not the same, which one is correct.” (Incidentally, I’ll gladly help you with that one as well.... just let me know)
It really helps if you actually study the Bible and go back to the original Hebrew (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament).
The 1Kings passage says: “Now he made the sea of cast metal ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in circumference.”
Before I dig into this one let me just ask you this, Notary. If you put a kiddie pool in your back yard and your neighbor asked you how big it was, would you say “it is 10 ft. across and 30 ft. around” or would you say “it is 10 ft. across and 31 ft. 4.159265358979 inches around”?
I’ll play your game anyway. If you read a little further, 1 Kings 7:26 says “it was a handbreadth in thickness, and its rim was like the rim of a cup, like a lily blossom. It held two thousand baths.”
A cubit is a very imprecise measurement.... the length of the forearm between the elbow and the end of the middle finger. A handbreadth is also imprecise, the distance between the thumb and the pinky. For engineering purposes, the cubit and the handbreadth description would be inappropriate but for giving someone a general idea, they would do the job.
However, if you would like to pretend that they are intended to be exact, perhaps you’ll agree that the discrepancy could be found in the “handbreadth” thickness.
The Bible is filled with idioms, similes, metaphors, hyperbole and all the rhetorical devices that we use today. Those of us who believe in the inerrancy of scripture and study the Bible will go back to the original language to find out the writer’s intent. Just as we have many words in English that can be used to describe something (just visit your nearest thesaurus) they did too. One of the keys when looking at a difficult passage is to look at the word that was used and also the words that were not.
A lot of Bible scoffers like to say that it is a “flat earth” book. They repeat this because others have said it and they never bother to investigate what it really says. The Bible does use the phrases “the ends of the earth” and “the four corners of the earth”. As you know, these are metaphors and they are commonly used even today. Those scoffers choose to ignore Isaiah 40:22 which says: “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers” This passage is clearly describing the shape of the earth and is not metaphorical. Incidentally, Isaiah was written about 700 BC. Anaximander was the first (after Isaiah) to posit a round earth. He did it in the 3rd century BC.... some 400 years later.
I want to make a couple of points to you about math (since you brought it up), science and scripture.
Amos 9:6 -
The One who builds His upper chambers in the heavens
And has founded His vaulted dome over the earth,
He who calls for the waters of the sea
And pours them out on the face of the earth,
The Lord is His name.
This passage (along with others that can be found in Psalms, Job & Jeremiah) describes the Hydrologic Cycle. The book of Amos was written about 700 BC. The Hydrologic Cycle was discovered by science in the 17th Century... if you’re counting, that’s about 2400 years later.
Psalm 102:25-26 -
25 In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
26 They will perish, but you remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
Like clothing you will change them
and they will be discarded.
This passage says that the heavens and the earth will wear out like a garment, a perfect description of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Psalms was written about 1000 BC, the 2nd Law was discovered in the 19th Century by Rudolf Clausius. That’s about 2900 years later.
Believe me when I tell you that I can give you many more examples just like these.
Leonardo Da Vinci said: “No human investigation can be called true science without passing through mathematical tests”.... so I’ve got one for you.
Hemoglobin is a protein that carries oxygen through our blood cells to our tissue. Suffice it to say that without hemoglobin we would assume room temperature.
There are 20 Amino Acids used in the building of life. For hemoglobin (or any other protein) to function properly they must be sequenced properly.
High School math has taught us that the probability of getting the first one right by random (and thus evolutionary) processes is 1 in 20. The probability of the second one is also 1 in 20, making the probability of getting the first two 1 chance in 400. There are 287 Amino Acids used in building hemoglobin. When you multiply that out the odds of getting hemoglobin are 1 in 2.5 X 10^373. While I’m not a mathematician, I understand that number has 373 zeros in it.
Hemoglobin in but one protein. There is some disagreement about the number of proteins in the human body but on the low end it is 10,000.... what you saw there with hemoglobin has to happen at least 10,000 more times. I don’t care if the Universe is a trillion years old, it is not enough time.
One last thing I want you to think about as you chase the sexual reproduction stuff I asked in an earlier post. Please be honest with yourself.
An unfertilized egg is rejected by the mother and will not implant. A fertilized egg will. The difference in the two obviously comes from outside the mother’s reproductive system. It is the baby that signals the mother “It’s ok to implant this one”. Please contemplate that from an evolutionary perspective and the sheer enormity of the odds against that.
There is a Creator, Notary. If you’d like to know Him, I can help you with that.
Blessings, Notary.
Not at all, sorry if you got that impression.
I was not aware of those verses at all.
Rather, I was using the value of pi as a surrogate for all the universal constants which govern physics (and which are sometimes used as evidence of intelligent design)
Could God have created the universe so that pi=exactly 3?
And if so, would a circle look the same in that universe as it does in ours?
Or is the concept of pi=3.14159.... over and above the power of any creator to modify? And in that case, are there other natural principles which are similarly immutable?
I think you both might be surprised to know how many atheists and agnostics find that the idea of a universe created in six days, less than ten thousand years ago, is one of the major walls between them and the Christian faith.
How many of them have seriously investigated the claims of Christ, but when told that to be Christians they must accept the Bible as literal and inerrant even when it touches upon biology, astronomy, and geology have said "Oh. All right then....." and quietly walked away.
As I said, you might be surprised by that. Or maybe not.