Let Them Eat Pi


Long, long ago, when gods were gods
The things they did defied the odds;
They vanquished armies, stopped the sun,
Delivered plagues and thought it fun.
And those who saw were not deceived–
There was not doubt, so they believed!

But now, it seems, we’ve been misled;
If those gods lived, by now they’re dead.
We find god now (don’t ask me why)
By looking in a piece of pi.

Just a quick comment on the “evidence for god” kerfuffle (to go along with the mile-high Jesus of last week). It seems we no longer look for a God Of The Gaps. The current deity du jour is The Incredible Shrinking God, who once performed miracles and now hides in equations.

One wonders if it is the same god at all.

Comments

  1. says

    That would be the same old god who allows a person to inflate their importance by association. The point of a celebrity cult is that followers can transfer responsibility, dress up and buy stuff; organisers can transfer responsibility, wield power and sell stuff. The celebrity itself is a minor detail and can be shrunk or expanded to fit anywhere. Sorry, I enjoyed the poem, and had intended to quip in lightsome mood. Ah, well.

  2. says

    The problem with looking for divine messages in the digit expansions of irrational numbers is that, even if you stuck to one translation system and one language, you could eventually find anything. It's like the infinite monkeys with typewriters who will someday write Shakespeare. Speaking of Shakespeare, I'm reminded of the supposed hidden messages in the Bard's plays which indicate Francis Bacon really wrote them. It is possible to find such "messages" using techniques like anagrams, but playing by the same rules one can find claims that Shakespeare wrote the plays after all. Best to put aside such cryptographic play and look at the external evidence– or common sense.

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