Pi 3.0 Instead of 3.14 Is an Intelligent Design Litmus Test
The White House has labeled as “ridiculous” and “beneath the dignity of a response” questions about whether President Bush believes the value of the mathematical constant Pi should be 3.0 instead of the widely accepted value of 3.14167.
The question arose after Bush told a group of Texas newspaper reporters that he thought intelligent design should be taught in public schools along with the theory of evolution to explain the origin of humankind and all other forms of life on earth.
Many fundamental Christians believe the theory of evolution is wrong and that something as elaborate as humans and other life must have been planned by a greater force, such as God.
They also believe that the correct value of Pi should be 3.0, since any intelligent designer putting together the universe would have dictated that a key mathematical constant like Pi be a whole number, like 3.0, and not a decimal fraction like 3.14167 that can be carried out to an infinite number of decimal places.
Moreover, they point to biblical references to the great temple of Solomon built in 950 BC that suggest 3.0 as the value of Pi. (I Kings 7,23 and II Chronicles, 4,2)
“Such a ridiculous question about the President is beneath the dignity of a response,” a White House spokesperson said yesterday. When asked if President Bush planned to issue a public statement affirming his belief that Pi is 3.14, the spokesperson said, “We will have no more to say on the subject.”
Deliberations by the National Synod for Intelligent Design, a fundamental Christian advocacy group that studies intelligent design, have occasionally stalled over arguments about Pi’s value.
The Synod’s theologians, many of whom are also mathematicians, have had fierce debates about how a super intelligent and all-knowing being could have created something as wondrous as the universe and all life and then pasted it together with a mathematical constant that is not a whole number. How could the very glue of the universe be based on a decimal number that apparently is infinite in its number of decimal points?
In the end, the Synod’s theologians decreed that Pi’s value should be 3.0 carried out to six decimal points, or 3.000000. Belief in that value for Pi has become an intelligent design litmus test for true believers.
In his group interview with the Texas newspaper reporters, Bush said that while curriculum decisions should be made by school boards and not by the federal government, he believes intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories.
“Both sides ought to be properly taught . . . so people can understand what the debate is about,” a transcript quoted him as saying. “Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought…”
A spokesman for the National Synod for Intelligent Design thanked Bush for his support. “It’s a natural follow on that an educated man like the President will see the logic behind the true value of Pi being 3.000000,” he said.