Check out 1 Kings 7:23 in the Bible. You better believe it straight up says that pi = 3. Mathematicians say that pi ~= 3.14159. Who is correct? We may never know the truth.
I am teasing a bit here, of course. Since I do not think that the Bible ever claimed to be a history, chemistry, physics, geometry or mathematics text it really doesn't shake my world view all that much. I'm content to chill with the basic truths that I find within like "love your neighbor," "humans are basically good," etc.
But this is why it is so silly to present what amounts to religious nostalgia as the "other side" of a "debate" when it comes to virtually any scientific question. Is evolution a bulletproof theory? If that means it can't be improved on, than no. Of course it could be fleshed out a bit more. But only in the same way as we can always add more digits to pi. We may manage to get that 10001st digit someday, but the first six are always 3.14159.
Just because no one "knows" the exact value of pi does not mean that the Bible's view of 3.00000 might be correct. Just because we are still working on the exact lineage of the human animal doesn't mean we just might have burst from the head of Zeus.
Hat tip: a comment on a blog somewhere but I forget which.
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Bible Not A Science Text
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