As we've mentioned now and then, our 10th-grade homeschooling textbook, World History and Cultures In Christian Perspective, is very much a product of the Reagan era; even though its most recent version was published in 2010, it maintains the aggrieved tone of the Moral Majority types who helped Reagan come to power. There are some changes; for instance, the longish section on Grenada we discussed
Then your friends got suckered. The 90s case was an April fools joke; see <a href="http:\/\/www.snopes.com\/religion\/pi.asp" target="_blank">snopes</a>. There are persistent claims that Christianists somewhere got, or almost got, a law passed fixing pi as 3, but it&#039;s never happened. The closest was the <a href="http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Indiana_Pi_Bill" target="_blank">Indiana Pi Bill</a>, which wasn&#039;t religiously inspired, and didn&#039;t actually specify a value for pi. It was so incoherent that it implied several different wrong values for pi, none of which was 3.
Incidentally, &quot;the bible says pi is 3&quot; is a really lousy anti-biblical argument. The thing being described in 1 Kings 7:23 and 2 Chronicles 4:2 was &quot;a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other ... a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.&quot; They should have written &quot;a line of thirty-one and a bit cubits&quot;? Thirty is good enough for government work. Oddly, believers have expended a fair amount of effort trying to prove the bible is exactly right without claiming pi is 3. The most popular argument goes back to <a href="http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rabbi_Nehemiah" target="_blank">Rabbi Nehemiah</a>.
I &quot;contributed&quot; to Conservapedia for a few months, until I was spotted, banned, and had all my edits reverted. I was quite proud of my article on Gabriel&#039;s Horn, which I claimed had a volume of 3 cubic cubits. They&#039;re very fond of the banhammer over there, but given the known parodists who&#039;ve infested the site, they probably still have a few.
Yeah, my somewhat deranged uncle tried explaining that to me once, but he prefaced the explanation with &quot;Reagan was a genius&quot; so I kind of tuned him out after that.
Out of curiosity, I got hold of one (Bob Jones U, rather than A Beka; &quot;Precalculus for Christian Schools&quot;). The main text is rather boringly straightforward, but the sections on Math and Scripture have some nice snippets of wackiness. Here are a couple of exercises (both with the heading &quot;Maximizing&quot;, for some reason).
Quote the words of Christ to show that it is impossible to do mathematics without Him.
Give a Bible verse to prove that no field of knowledge can have another foundation for truth other than Christ.
Here&#039;s another fun exercise:
How does Romans 1 describe the describe the ungodly approach to math?
I have no idea how the poor student is supposed to answer that. I&#039;ve just read through Romans 1 (it&#039;s only 32 verses). There is a lot of fulminating against the ungodly, particularly gay men and women who &quot;did change the natural use into that which is against nature&quot;, but not a single thing I can connect to mathematics. Maybe the KJV left out the bit about unnaturally trisecting angles.
I wonder if the authors of these books know that the words &quot;Communism&quot; and &quot;Community&quot; have the same origin. I think they suspect &quot;compassion&quot; of guilt by association.
It was one of those socialist, European Airbuses, so a valid target.
Dobbs help me I did.
Then your friends got suckered. The 90s case was an April fools joke; see <a href="http:\/\/www.snopes.com\/religion\/pi.asp" target="_blank">snopes</a>. There are persistent claims that Christianists somewhere got, or almost got, a law passed fixing pi as 3, but it&#039;s never happened. The closest was the <a href="http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Indiana_Pi_Bill" target="_blank">Indiana Pi Bill</a>, which wasn&#039;t religiously inspired, and didn&#039;t actually specify a value for pi. It was so incoherent that it implied several different wrong values for pi, none of which was 3.
Incidentally, &quot;the bible says pi is 3&quot; is a really lousy anti-biblical argument. The thing being described in 1 Kings 7:23 and 2 Chronicles 4:2 was &quot;a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other ... a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.&quot; They should have written &quot;a line of thirty-one and a bit cubits&quot;? Thirty is good enough for government work. Oddly, believers have expended a fair amount of effort trying to prove the bible is exactly right without claiming pi is 3. The most popular argument goes back to <a href="http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rabbi_Nehemiah" target="_blank">Rabbi Nehemiah</a>.
I&#039;m not comfortable talking about King Solomon&#039;s unit.
Alternation of generations!
Hands off, King Solomon&#039;s mine!
OMG! My worries are over with!!!
I &quot;contributed&quot; to Conservapedia for a few months, until I was spotted, banned, and had all my edits reverted. I was quite proud of my article on Gabriel&#039;s Horn, which I claimed had a volume of 3 cubic cubits. They&#039;re very fond of the banhammer over there, but given the known parodists who&#039;ve infested the site, they probably still have a few.
Yeah, my somewhat deranged uncle tried explaining that to me once, but he prefaced the explanation with &quot;Reagan was a genius&quot; so I kind of tuned him out after that.
Of course, they could just call it Math for Dummies.
No mention of that Polish guy - SAINT POPE?
Missing from this fine story: and animated GIF of Reagan smacking Angie Dickenson. Here&#039;s a clip from &quot;The Killers.&quot; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/wat..." target="_blank">" rel="nofollow noopener" title="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af0Yei2sAbE">https://www.youtube.com/wat...
Out of curiosity, I got hold of one (Bob Jones U, rather than A Beka; &quot;Precalculus for Christian Schools&quot;). The main text is rather boringly straightforward, but the sections on Math and Scripture have some nice snippets of wackiness. Here are a couple of exercises (both with the heading &quot;Maximizing&quot;, for some reason).
Quote the words of Christ to show that it is impossible to do mathematics without Him.
Give a Bible verse to prove that no field of knowledge can have another foundation for truth other than Christ.
Here&#039;s another fun exercise:
How does Romans 1 describe the describe the ungodly approach to math?
I have no idea how the poor student is supposed to answer that. I&#039;ve just read through Romans 1 (it&#039;s only 32 verses). There is a lot of fulminating against the ungodly, particularly gay men and women who &quot;did change the natural use into that which is against nature&quot;, but not a single thing I can connect to mathematics. Maybe the KJV left out the bit about unnaturally trisecting angles.
I wonder if the authors of these books know that the words &quot;Communism&quot; and &quot;Community&quot; have the same origin. I think they suspect &quot;compassion&quot; of guilt by association.
To keep to their biblical principles, they should use abacuses (abaci?) rather than calculators.
I dunno...so far it seems pretty obscene.