quote:
Originally posted by blitz77:
So you expect the bible to have pi to whatever number of digits? Anyway, we ourselves use just 1 letter- pi! Whatever happened to rounding off anyway-scientists use rounding off a lot.
This isn't one which the vast majority of people will lose any sleep over , except perpaps the biblical literalists who seem to work overtime tying themselves in knots trying to reconcile biblical inerrancy and biblical literalism
"And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about."
1 Kings 7:23 KJV
Incidentally, I'm not sure why biblical literalists seem to prefer the King James version. Is it easier to determine the correct meaning of a version written in a language 400 years old?
So, using blitz77's logic, does the story mean than the diameter was inerrantly 10 cubits and the circumference was rounded off to 30 cubits? Wouldn't 31 be a better rounding off? Or, was the circumference inerrantly 30 cubits and the diameter rounded up to 10 cubits? Or should we read the literal meaning of the verse that the circumference was 30 cubits and the diameter 10 cubits and therefore pi has to be wrong because the bible says so!
Using blitz's same rationalisation, was it 6 days of creation or maybe 5 and a bit, or did the divinity slip in some overtime on the sixth evening? Did it rain for 40 days and 40 nights, or was it approximately 5 weeks with some light showers preceding it? Was it inerrantly 7 pairs of clean animals or approximately?
"22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died." Genesis 6 KJV
Or approximately everything died? Maybe a few got through?
I'll leave blitz to give us the rounded off inerrent answers.