Comments

  1. Wylann says

    Hah. The engineer in me wishes to see a small part of the world given to people like that (then safely cordoned off by people who do evil secular math…..).

  2. notyet says

    I am a “non-traditional-student” in that I am 57 years old and an undergrad. Yesterday I was involved in a group project with an impressively intelligent young man. I asked about his previous education and was informed that he had been home-schooled and when I inquired deeper he admitted that he was a YEC. I felt a huge sense of sorrow at the waste of a good mind and got him to agree to looking at some of my so-called-proof for evolution and “billions of years”. Aronra’s falsehoods of creationism series will be my first salvo and we will see how it goes from there. The somewhat obscured point of this diatribe is that this cartoon is not too far off the mark. Speaking with an intelligent young college student that accepts Noah’s Ark as history is a sobering experience that should never happen in this country (outside of Texas) (sorry Aronra) and a reminder that our work is nowhere near done.

  3. Trebuchet says

    @1: The engineer in me wishes I hadn’t met so any YEC engineers over the course of my career.

  4. Pierce R. Butler says

    However, trinitarian doctrine tells us that 3 = 1; therefore pi = 1.

    I would like to see some Riemannian mathematician work out a full-fledged geometry starting from that premise…

  5. lorn says

    Pi=3 means that we are going to have to modify all the fundamentalist’s tires.

    A 24″ wheel needs a roughly 3″ section cut out to make them Biblically correct. They won’t hold air and the ride gets a little rough when they hit the missing section but fundamentalists need to consider that a small price to pay for faith. A badge of honor for the true believers.

  6. StevoR : Free West Papua, free Tibet, let the Chagossians return! says

    @ ^ Lorn : And road hazard to the rest of us?

  7. StevoR : Free West Papua, free Tibet, let the Chagossians return! says

    If God had wanted us to …

    – cure smallpox,

    – stop women dying in childbirth so much,

    – fly aircraft

    – land on the Moon

    – Send spacecraft to explore all the planets in the solar system

    – improve quality of life for everyone by labour saving devices, engineeering, and more

    – abolish slavery and genocide and make all genders and orientations equal in opportunity and human rights

    You’d think he’d have made sure “His” holy book was correct – about maths and so much more wouldn’t you?

    Maybe God gave us our brains and mathematical skills an made the universe logically consistent so we could , um, proof read , check and correct his work?

    Or y’know do much better than that and conclude a few things about it like the Biblical Diety’s non-existence?

    Or maybe we were “meant” to live biblical lives, miserable ones with slavery and gender inequality, without spacecraft topLuto and mars and elsewhere and Moon landings and antibiotics and medicine and almost all other technology and science which depends on maths being, y’know, right. If we were meant to do that – well, i glad we’ve ignored those cruel and ridiculuous limitations.

  8. StevoR : Free West Papua, free Tibet, let the Chagossians return! says

    And thinking of proof reading things .. sigh. Guess y’all get the gist anyhow, sorry.

  9. johnhodges says

    If Pi were 3, then circles would be hexagons. No need to cut a section out. But the ride would still be kind of rough.

  10. stever says

    I’m surprised that nobody has pointed out that that I Kings passage does not specify that the vessel (whatever the hell a “molten sea” is; that has to be one of the KJV’s notorious mistranslations) was circular. An ellipse can have a minor diameter that’s exactly one third of its circumference. That still doesn’t explain why no outbound spacecraft ever crashed into the “firmament” or encountered the “waters above.”

  11. StevoR : Free West Papua, free Tibet, let the Chagossians return! says

    Off topic sorry but think some may want to know :

    Edward Snowden will be interviewed on Aussie SBS TV’s Datelineprogram screening now.

    Link :

    http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/about/id/601800/n/Snowden-Speaks

    Excerpt :

    “Edward Snowden believes that some US officials would like to see him shot dead or poisoned, but he says he can still sleep easily at night, because he did what he needed to do.

    The whistleblower’s thinking is revealed in his first full-length television interview, to be screened in an Australian exclusive on Tuesday’s Dateline.

    In a secret location in Moscow, he speaks candidly to Hubert Seipel from German broadcaster NDR about the far-reaching surveillance details he leaked, the treason charges he faces, and his life in exile in Russia.”

  12. says

    I want to know why this supposedly rational god chap created irrational numbers in the first place.

    It would be so much better for all concerned if π actually were 3 and if e were also 3.

    Of course Euler life would have been much more boring. :-(

  13. magistramarla says

    I’m a little concerned that Stephen hasn’t posted in several days.
    I hope that it is because he’s so busy doing his training for a new job.
    Does anyone have any insider knowledge?

Leave a Reply