This piece is in reference to the Bible equating PI to 3 as opposed to the true mathematical value of 3.1415.... The verse in question is found at 1 Kings 7:23.

In a previous post, one contributor said that it is OK for his god to round off pi to 3 as opposed to running it out 3.1415... or higher. That the margin of error is only 4.46%. He also claims that this is not that important. This is true (actually it is a little more... closer to >4.7%) when we are only looking at pi. What about things where we use pi to determine the value of other things?

For the sake of simplicity, I will round pi off to 3.1415. This is actually lower than what pi is, but as it has no determined value, we must cut it off somewhere. I am here going to show that 3.0 is not a valid rounding off point for such an important figure - ESPECIALLY for a god of such order and incredible design.

If we are measuring according to this god's calculation, the circumference of a circle with a diameter of 4 would be 12 feet. In actuality, it is >12.566. The difference is close to 4.7%.

Is this an acceptable margin of error?

If it is, we can remove nearly a full chapter of Mark - let's say the first half of chapter 1 (which includes a "fulfilled prophecy" of Malachi 3:1 which makes John the Baptist into Elijah) and the half of chapter 11 which has Jesus entering into Jerusalem.

Let's remove 1.4 chapters of Matthew. Shoot. Can the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Half of Matthew 27 and all of Matthew 28.

Let's kill 1.2 chapters of Luke - how about most of the sermon on the mount... er... sermon on the plain.

More than a chapter of John just got blown away. We can start with every verse that makes the claim that Jesus is god. Kill the whole 'logos' thing. Never really cared for John 3:16. You can decide what else to kill there.

From Paul, we can kill 1 Corinthians 15. Romans 7 is toast. I am sure that there is some other important doctrinal things that we could squeeze into 10%.

Other letters? We can dust the "all scripture is inspired" rubbish from 2 Timothy 3:16. We can find plenty more and still be within the 10% thing.

Revelations? Well... who but the most whacked out of fundies takes that serious, anyway.

I am wondering if we are now starting to see how important a tighter margin of error for the Bible is than for anything else...

Cygnus

** This has been edited to remove some of my attrocious math... (SG)