What turned you?

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I am sure they have explanation for this

"The Bible is not a geometry text."

"They didn't have calculators back then."

"The Bible is a spiritual guidebook."

"Pi equals 3. The rest is a lie, just like evolution."

"Satan has put doubt in your heart."

"That is a theological question. This is Sunday School."

And this golden response:

"Pi was 3 back then, but sin and corruption have caused it to decay to the value that it is now, and it is still changing."

I've explained this here before.

I'm not convinced that i ever truly believed.

I used to engage in a lot of magical thinking. Religion was one aspect of that, and mormonism plays to that pretty well.

I figure this is why i am not militant at all. I suspect that a lot of atheists rage against their programming. I do not believe i was ever successfully programmed.

Ah, this sounds similar to what happened to me. I had things happen almost on a worse scale. The youth pastor would literally say introversion is bad and ungodly. And the strategies were just...ridiculous. He'd literally say stuff like "oh, go to bars, because people are more receptive while they're drunk." He got mad at me too, for not bring a THIRTY year old friend to the college aged youth group, even though first off he had work, and second off....he was 30. Specifically he wanted me to bring him to HIS youth group, it's not like Sunday service would be enough.

Ironically as hell, the youth group was called "Connect" and oddly, my biggest problem was, connecting with the people there. My pastor, the main pastor, not the youth pastor, main pastor was a good man, imo, despite this fault (and we all have faults), his son has NVLD. I got a NVLD diagnosis years earlier I just ignored. He isolated himself in the house, etc, displayed very typical "Aspie" behavior. At the time, people not his family were living in his pastor's house, and it probably caused him to melt down. I should know, because I'm under the same circumstances in my house, and I'm probably doing worse than he did. Everyone in the church just thought the stereotypical crap people say about Aspergers "Oh he just needs to get out of his shell..." that type of thing. But yeah, similar things happened to me eventually as happened to him in the past. Now he's agnostic. Me, I kept the faith, I guess.

Now, I'm on the road to becoming an Orthodox Christian, as first off, theologically it makes much more sense, Orthodoxy prays for the dead, believe in the possibility of God just having mercy on all the souls of everyone. It's not a guarantee, but it's something that's hoped for, not that God condemns everyone to hell. As people in general, we can't ask for God's justice, we can't AFFORD God's justice, we can only ask for his mercy, on everyone. And God will judge everyone rightfully, as he's God, and he knows the hearts of everyone. Lastly, all of God's punishment, isn't just because God's pissed or something, it's corrective in nature.

But, besides theologically, I think Orthodoxy, as a general tradition or whatever, has a much higher appreciation for introverts/Aspies/etc. People are praised as saints in Orthodoxy for becoming hermits, and people are also praised for being Evangelists, too. Orthodoxy sees the pluses in both. But so many saints were hermits who just completely shut themselves off from the world, and there's still currently Orthodox hermits, and there's still a rich tradition in monasticism in Orthodoxy, again, people who avoid the world and not participate in it. And in general from what I see, the type of convert it attracts is usually a bit more intellectually oriented and not all "touchy feely" and emotional and stuff.

I don't know, I'm finding Orthodoxy a much better fit for me than the Evangelical Charismatic kinda church I was in, with almost the exact same problems as you happening. So I don't know if you still believe in God, etc, but it's just a thought, as I had pretty much the exact same thing happen to me, and yeah...

lol. it should be as simple at that. suppose that is more or less a much summarized version of my story. took me 4 more years than you to turn on that switch

I was raised a catholic and found it impossible to believe since I was 12 years old.
Catholic school made me realize that hypochristians were worse than the nonexistent Satan.
I was not Christian enough for those bastards. They quoted scriptures after slamming my head into the wall.

It makes absolutely no sense to believe in such lies.
At the age of 15 I became an agnostic.
Now I have realized that nature and god were the same exact thing.
Right now I consider myself to be a pantheistic deist or even possibly an agnostic.
Death terrifies me because I know that there will probably be no afterlife.
Ignorance really is bliss.

By your argument, Pi isn't really 3.14 either.

If Pi = 3 is wrong, what's the correct value of Pi then?

3.141592653589793238462643383279... YW.

A more correct description would have read something like, "He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line that was a number of cubits equal to twenty-two of seven parts of the line across to measure around it." This is the old 22/7 approximation, which yields a value that is 99.96% of the correct value (which is surprisingly adequate for circumnavigating the Earth), instead of one that was only 95.49% of the correct value (which can't even be used to get the dimensions of a bathtub right).

The Gregory–Leibniz series converges so slowly that nearly 300 terms are needed to calculate π correctly to two decimal places.



Maybe those Bronze-Age people were just too lazy to figure things out for themselves, and that's why the person who recorded 1st Kings 7:23 stopped at 3 ... or maybe they just ran out of fingers.

Of course, there is always the excuse that the currently-known value of Pi (to something like five trillion digits) is "just a theory", but theories are meant to be improved upon. So why should it be an affront to improve upon the Biblical value for Pi?

Biblical scholars may do well to recant and accept that the Bible is just a collection of bloodthirsty stories (Genesis included). The only other alternative is to stand strong in face of the whole world of scientific knowledge and maintain that Pi = 3 (no more and no less), teach this error in secular schools, and continue to watch as more scientifically-minded cultures produce more scientists, engineers, and mathematicians than those who believe that the Bible is the complete and inerrant word of God.

Here is a quick chronology of the value of Pi:

~1900 BCE: Babylonians determined that Pi = 3
~400 BCE: The earliest know Biblical accounts reiterate that Pi = 3
~240 BCE: Archimedes determines that Pi = 3.1485
~480 CE: Tsu Chung-Chih determines that Pi = 355/113 = 3.1415926
~1530 CE: al-Kashi determines that Pi = 3.14159265358979
1706: John Machin correctly calculated Pi to 100 decimal digits by hand.
1807: William Shanks correctly calculated Pi to 527 decimal digits by hand.
1947: D. F. Ferguson correctly calculated Pi to 808 decimal digits using a mechanical desktop calculator. This is the first recorded instance of the use of anything other than pen, paper, compass, and rule to determine Pi. Since then, Pi has been calculated to over 5 trillion (5,000,000,000,000) digits!

Science is always correcting and improving itself, while the Bible has remained essentially unchanged for about the last 2000 years. Scientists will admit when their claims are approximations, while Bible-believers will claim that the Bible is the "complete and inerrant Word of God".

Yes, according to the rules of current mathematics.

But the ancients had their own rules and ways with mathematics. So shouldn't we judge whether they were wrong or not in mathematics based on their own ancient rules rather than impose our modern ones?

And again, you say Pi = 3 is an error. But we're talking about a value that can't be written down on paper precisely.

I mean, if I were to ask you how old you would be, you would always give me an answer that's not entirely correct. If you tell me the number of years you've lived, that still wouldn't be your exact age because there's always going to be some decimals which you've discarded ... even if you mention the number of months and days and such.

Even your height, you wouldn't be able to give me a value that's exactly correct. Always going to be decimals being discarded.

So might as well just say Pi = 3 or Pi = 3.14 (like a lot of modern schools tend to do).

Also, keep in mind decimals may not have existed back then (if I'm mistaken here, please correct me). How were they going to say 3.14?

Uh.... the rules of mathematics are the rules of mathematics. It doesn't matter when or where you are. Saying pi =3, just 3, is wrong no matter where or when in time and space you are (unless you want to get in to separate dimensions or some such, which doesn't really apply here).

Also, decimals have always existed. They may not have known about them, but that just makes the biblical value of pi=3 wrong.

Maybe you should reread my post again because you're making the same argument that Fnord did ... which I already addressed in the post you quoted.

What's the exact value of your height (metric system)?

No clue what my height is in metric and nothing to measure with.

The thing is, 3 is just not accurate enough to be considered correct. 3.14 can be used to build things with a degree of accuracy (I've done it), 3 can't. It's a useless number.

Perhaps, but the point that I neglected to make is that the Israelites constructed this "Sea" according to instructions that were allegedly given to them by God Himself. If that is the case, then wouldn't such an omniscient being have given more precise dimensions? Even 10 cubits across and 31 cubits around would have been more accurate. 10 by 31 and four-tenths of a cubit would be even more so. 3.14 is an acceptable value, given the size of the item.


I am saying that Pi = 3 is more in error than 3.14 or even 3.1 - either of which would give a more than adequate working value for Bronze-Age craftsmen.


That's why I usually say something like, "I was 54 years old on my last birthday".


That's why I say "I am about 6 feet tall." If pressed for a more exact measure, I ask them to measure me.

Which brings up another point: the Bible does not use any approximations in these measurements, but clearly states them in specific values.


Or we could say that Pi is approximately 3.14, and provide reference to more precise values, like This One.


Correct. The first known use of the decimal point was by Jesuit Father Christopher Clavius in 1593, in his "Tabula Sinuum".


As I've already posted: "He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line that was a number of cubits equal to twenty-two of seven parts of the line across to measure around it." Even "And he made the molten sea of about ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and the height thereof was about five cubits; and a line of about thirty cubits did compass it round about.", or "And he made the molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and the height thereof was five cubits; and a line of thirty-one and four-tenths of a cubit did compass it round about." would make more sense.

But no, the Bible is not about making sense; it is about justifying violence against foreigners, the conquest of their lands, and the violation of their women (not to mention the overarching misogyny of the Biblical leaders).

The excuses given by modern bible scholars for these facts have always seemed both lame and contrived.

It was obviously very useful for the ancient Hebrews.

In the distant future, 3.14 may no longer be considered accurate enough either. Doesn't mean it's not a fair value to consider for our modern usages.

For most of the software that I write, a single-precision value is sufficient (3.1415927). Double-precision is needed only when I'm using re-iterative processes (3.141592653589793).

39 decimal digits would only be necessary if measuring a circle the size of the known universe with the precision of the diameter of a quark particle.