From: Dawsonzhu@aol.com
Date: Mon Feb 24 2003 - 08:25:17 EST
Peter Ruest wrote:
>Now, with respect to the actual discussion, I would assume that the
>writer of Gen.1:1 might have known pi, but certainly not to this
>precision. However, I doubt that Euler's e was known at all to John. So
>how could they just make it up, as Grattann-Guinness believes? It would
>certainly be even much harder to do than making up patterns of integers.
>And how could these transcendental numbers serve as "decorations" if
>they were not known at all, or not to the precision produced by the
>text? (Wayne, of course, I agree that it is the _content_ that makes the
>Bible meaningful.)
It doesn't seem like this was answered and I am really
not the best person to answer it. However,
It seems like the gist of the argument is that there is
no way to predict before hand which numbers to expect,
and there is a vast set of numbers to select from that
one can fit to a particular passage.
Perhaps the most famous of them are pi and e, so it
is interesting in that respect.
My own concern is that it is easy to fall prey to a lot
of skulduggery in this business. It has earned a bad
reputation because it's a gimmick used too much by
cranks in all religions to claim the superiority of
their special brand of poison over the rest.
They cannot all be right, so I think it is better to look for substance in the message than look for hidden codes
in the writing.
I know that all this sounds really incredulous of me.
What I am saying is that this kind of resistence
is what one should expect seeing how easily it has
been badly abused.
Probably Vernon's observations would get more of a
hearing if it didn't come with a similar package
like the rest of the cranks.
I suspect the intelligent design approach
that Dembski outlined could be applied to these codes:
Bible, Koran etc. It is probably more useful there
than in all this wrangling over evolution.
By Grace alone we proceed,
Wayne
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