Civil Commotion

Today is March 14, 2015, or 3/14/15, or Pi Day to celebrants of the mysterious number π: 3.1415…

Yes, I know — it’s hokey, and who the hell cares anyway, besides engineers and math teachers and other geeks? It’s worth thinking about because π is one of the most useful numbers ever discovered — or invented, according to your point of view — and its usages and importance have evolved right along with the rest of mankind’s knowledge.

Π is defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter; if you have a circle with a diameter of exactly 1.0-foot, the distance around the circle is approximately 3.1415-feet. (I say approximately because π never resolves to an exact value; it is what mathematicians call an irrational number.) Since scientists and engineers model nearly everything as perfect instances of abstractions which don’t actually exist in nature — circle, line, triangle, sphere, catenary, and so forth — π makes an appearance in all sorts of counter-intuitive places, everywhere from chemistry to economics to cryptography.

Here is where it gets fun: If those geometric figures don’t actually exist in nature, if they are in fact human inventions created to simplify how we think about things, how is it that they are so useful for predicting so many real, physical events with great exactitude? Why do they remain useful for understanding and predicting matters that the first users of π could never have conceived?

Did humankind invent mathematics whole, or is mathematics something which is ‘out there’ and which humankind has discovered? What can it actually mean to say that the number π even exists?

The physicist Mario Livio says we started out by inventing numbers — two hands led inevitably to the concept of the integer 2, for example — but that, once invented, future mathematical work was constrained by the rules of the invention. Humankind invented two, say, but then discovered thirty-seven according to the rules created for integers. This sounds reasonable — at first — but if π is merely a tool, how can it answer so many different needs without modification? Why do entirely new branches of mathematics having no apparent relation to geometry continue to find π so useful?

This is no small matter; such questions had put mathematics in a deep philosophical crisis at the start of the last century: What is math?

Bertrand Russell argued that mathematics is a branch of logic, and co-authored with Alfred North Whitehead the 3-volume Principia Mathematica to prove it. Whether or not he succeeded remains to this day a subject of dispute, but whenever an exasperated math teacher exclaims “It’s just logic,” she is quoting Russell.

Remember the Pythagorean theorem? That the square of the hypotenuse of a right-triangle is equal to the sum of the square of its sides? That finding was disbelieved for centuries because the ancients had no concept of any number other than integers; real and irrational number were unknown to them. How, then, could the length of the hypotenuse of a right-triangle having legs equal to one be equal to the square-root of two? What could it mean to even speak of the square-root of two?

When different types of numbers were discovered, or invented, and π, insinuate themselves into even religious disputes.

And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.

1 Kings 7:23

This is quite clear: the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter is 3; inerrantists lose. “N-o-o-o,” they will answer. “Those measurements are inherently inexact and, besides, what about the thickness of the bowl? What if the diameter was measured to the outside the bowl, that is, and the circumference was measured around the inside of the bowl?” Increasing the diameter, the denominator, and decreasing the circumference, the numerator, pushes the ratio downward toward 3. Explain that the author had to mean 3, however the measurement was made, because only integers were known, or invented, at the time Kings was written, and they’ll exult that the verse then proves the divine inspiration of the text, because what else could explain that the ancients got it right?

Have I ever mentioned that the average apologist is a hopeless idiot?

So, Happy Pi Day. If you figure it all out, I’d be grateful if you let me know what you came up with.

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
I: Criticism of Religion

§243   Subject for reflection: To what extent does the fatal belief in “Divine Providence” — the most paralysing belief for both the hand and the understanding that has ever existed, continue to prevail; to what extent have the Christian hypothesis and interpretation of Life continued their lives under the cover of terms like “Nature”, “Progress”, “perfectionment”, “Darwinism” or beneath the superstition that there is a certain relation between happiness and virtue, unhappiness and sin? That absurd belief in the course of things, in “Life” and in the “instinct of Life”; that foolish resignation which arises from the notion that if only every one did his duty all would go well? All this sort of thing can only have a meaning if one assumes that there is a direction of things sub specie boni. Even fatalism, our present form of philosophical sensibility, is the result of a long belief in Divine Providence, an unconscious result: as though it were nothing to do with us how everything goes! (As though we might let things take their own course; the individual being only a modus of the absolute reality).

Rick Wiles has finally succeeded in figuring-out Barack Obama.

“I’ve told the truth about Barack Obama,” Wiles said. “I’m out of names to call him, I don’t know what else to call him. He’s wicked. He’s evil. He’s diabolical. He’s full of the devil. He’s demon-possessed. He’s Adolf Hitler reincarnated. He has inspired ISIS. He’s dreaming of leading a caliphate. He’s leading this world into world war. He’s provoking Putin. I don’t know what else to say about the man. You don’t think there’s not a target on my head?”

Wiles claimed the U.S. government is “deliberately allowing ISIS to expand its authority, its reach, its territory” because Obama plans to one day preside over the caliphate: “You’ve got a Muslim in the White House who is building a caliphate. You’ve got to deal with the Hitler that’s in the White House. You’ve got an Adolf Hitler in the White House conquering, going to war, setting nations on fire, using the power and the might of the U.S. military to accomplish his Islamic caliphate.”

[ … ]

“Their god is the Devil, they serve Lucifer, this is a Luciferian government and it’s causing bloodshed and violence all over the world,” Wiles said. “I really believe something is being set up for Barack Obama to become the head of an Islamic caliphate, he is setting up an Islamic NATO, he is setting up an alliance of Islamic nations, I think this guy has dream of being a leader of an Islamic caliphate.”

Remember: There are enough people in America who fall for this insane stuff that Rick Wiles is able to make a living at it. Worse, because they’ve been scared stupid(er), nearly all of them vote.

The 2014 General Social Survey finds that the ‘nones’ — those who don’t self-identify with any particular religion — continues to grow.

Bottom line: The number of Americans who are no longer active in religion reached a new high in 2014. Since 2012, about 7.5 million Americans more Americans don’t attend attend church. Millions also stopped identifying with any religion or praying.

Good.

The vital work of plundering deserving idiots in Jesus’ name may be interrupted if Creflo Dollar doesn’t get a new jet right away!

We are asking members, partners, and supporters of this ministry to assist in the undertaking of an initiative called Project G650. The mission of Project G650 is to acquire a Gulfstream G650 airplane so that Pastors Creflo and Taffi and World Changers Church International can continue to blanket the globe with the Gospel of grace. We are believing for 200,000 people to give contributions of 300 US dollars or more to turn this dream into a reality—and allow us to retire the aircraft that served us well for many years.

Your continued support is deeply appreciated. We love you and thank God for placing you in our lives.

Ed Young gets along just fine, by the way, with only an $8.4-million Falcon.

Just so’s you know, $65-million will pay for:

• Delivery of 13,000,000 Meals-on-Wheels.

• 52,000-months of rent in a handsome, well-maintained apartment complex, at $1,250/month.

• 5,031,000 pairs of blue jeans for schoolboys who could use them (excluding sales tax).

• 5,909,090 dresses for schoolgirls (excluding sales tax).

Those are all, in case ol’ Creflo has never mentioned it, Jesus-approved expenditures.