Re: [OT] Good, evil and religion [WAS] Re: A way to compile 3rd party modules into deb system?

[Florian Kulzer <florian.kulzer+debian@icfo.es>]

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 23:02:11 -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez wrote:
> On Sat, May 12, 2007 at 04:01:39AM +0200, Florian Kulzer wrote:

[...]

> Actually, sort of.  The issue was that someone pointed out that the
> Bible "redefined" pi to be 3.  My point was that if people want to
> criticize the Bible for not being scientific enough, they need to also
> evaluate the context in a scientific light.  If we are speaking in a
> scientific context, then the numbers thirty and ten, without any further
> evidence to the contrary, need to be assumed to be only significant to
> one digit.  This is what I was (and I imagine many students were)
> taught.  That is, you cannot assume greater precision for your
> measurements than your "instruments" allow.  In this case, have words
> recorded on paper.  The point is we don't know.

If it is that important for you to argue for the technical correctness
of 1king7:23 then you can even concede two significant digits in "ten"
and apply the usual error propagation to get from a diameter of 10±0.5
to a circumference of 31.4±1.6, which is better written as 31±2. (I hope
the plus/minus signs are reproduced correctly). This range obviously
includes "thirty". Whether that is "good enough" if one assumes that the
bible is literally the word of the all-powerful and all-knowing creator
of the universe is probably just as much a matter of faith as is
believing in this creator in the first place. Therefore I will shut up
about this now.

-- 
Regards,            | http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
          Florian   |