Easy As Pi To Refute

21 June, 2007. 406 words.

Here’s something I’ve never seen before: I saw a link on Waldo’s blog to a post showing that the Bible says Pi is 3.0.

I typically don’t believe the hysteria that Christianity is “under attack,” but I have to admit this looks like a pretty clear attempt to agitate Christians for no particular reason. (Not by Waldo, that is; by whoever came up with this Pi thing.) I’m not a believer in the inerrancy or infallibility of the Bible, but even so, I can still poke a lot of holes in this Pi logic.

Here’s the “controversy:” We know Pi as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, or 3.14159. However, I Kings 7:23 reads:

He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim [diameter] and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it [circumference].

To a person looking for ways to make fun of Christians, this indicates that God meant for Pi to be thirty cubits divided by 10 cubits, or 3.0. However, if you go back a little bit in the text, you find that the “He” referenced in the passage is a bronze-worker named Huram, who I guess is King Solomon’s engineer. So right off the bat we’ve wiped out the idea that “the Word of God” says Pi = 3.0. Even if you believe in the literal word of the Bible, the literal words are just a description of an object that Huram built. Huram is clearly not God, so he probably goofed up and made a slightly oval-shaped Sea (whatever a “Sea” is). The literal words do not say that the “circular shape” is supposed to be a perfect mathematical circle, either. And it certainly doesn’t say anything about Pi or ratios or division of any kind. It doesn’t say, for example, “And lo God said unto Huram, all perfect circles shall have a circumference of 30 cubits and a diameter of 10 cubits and that ratio shall be known unto you as Pi, go forth and build your temple decorations thusly.”

I like science and all*, but this is one of the lamest pro-science (or anti-Christian) arguments I’ve ever seen. If this were the only evidence against Biblical inerrancy, I’d have to score it for the faithful.

I’m one of those weirdos who does not think science and religion are mutually exclusive.

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