The pie edition of FT and their loverly lollards was notable for having more research per square inch for any episode. Which was a touch infuriating when I couldn’t get it out and instead fell back on fallacious articles about there being “not enough time for God to write down pi*”. A much better argument would have been due to nondeterminancy, which is to say that there not being an exact definition for pi means that God does not know everything, which removes God’s omniscience in one fell swoop. And if that doesn’t do it, Quantum Physics does.
Mathematical arguments for and against the existence of God do seem to miss the point anyway, that God is a being of faith, and a lot of people have no faith in mathematics. Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem (which contains God) could also be seen to be a threat to God’s omniscience, and omnipotence: none of which will actually damage organized religion. Instead my on air quoting of pi incorrectly seems more troublesome: here it is to 1,000 decimal places.
3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751
058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679
821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284
811174502841027019385211055596446229489549303819644
288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091456
485669234603486104543266482133936072602491412737245
870066063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925
903600113305305488204665213841469519415116094330572
703657595919530921861173819326117931051185480744623
799627495673518857527248912279381830119491298336733
624406566430860213949463952247371907021798609437027
705392171762931767523846748184676694051320005681271
452635608277857713427577896091736371787214684409012
249534301465495853710507922796892589235420199561121
2902196086403441815981362977477130996051870721134999999**
837297804995105973173281609631859502445945534690830
264252230825334468503526193118817101000313783875288
658753320838142061717766914730359825349042875546873
115956286388235378759375195778185778053217122680661
30019278766111959092164201989
Can you see the face of God? Anyway, to find other things, such as yr home phone number the pi-searcher is here:http://www.angio.net/pi/bigpi.cgi
The other thing I did not get on to, because we got distracted in telling everyone how rubbish the film PI was (and still is). It was handy ways of remembering Pi, called Piems. See its like Poems, but with Pi in it. Oh, you people with so little time. Generally the Piems have words the length of the individual digits of Pi. Not sure what they do when they get to a zero.
“Now I defy a tenet gallantly
Of circle canon law: these integers
Importing circles’ quotients are, we see,
Unwieldy long series of cockle burs
Put all together, get no clarity;
Mnemonics shan’t describeth so reformed
Creating, with a grammercy plainly,
A sonnet liberated yet conformed.
Strangely, the queer’st rules I manipulate
Being followéd, do facilitate
Whimsical musings from geometric bard.
This poesy, unabashed as it’s distressed,
Evolvéd coherent – a simple test,
Discov’ring poetry no numerals jarred. “
None of which gets to the fundamental point I wanted to make that in the real world, pi does not really exist anyway, as nothing is perfectly circular. Except the logic involved in disproving God’s existence! Or indeed the little known fact that the word Pint is derived from a mathematical formula, namely Pi N T, where N and T are two now defunct units of measurement introduced in fifteenth century by Henry VIII. As befitted a God-king, seceding from Rome, he developed a measurement system based on his body. The Thumb (about two inches) and the Neck (about three thumbs). Hence a pint was defined a s PI x Neck x Thumb, shortened to Pint!
*A rubbish argument due to the “outside time” point made by Cis. However it is a thoroughly convincing argument for anyone who does not really understand infinity**
**Six nines in a row at position 762! Six numbers in a row doesn’t happen again until position 193,034!
***Which, if you follow another of my theses, is everybody.