The building of the Temple under King Solomon was a major undertaking, and many details are provided in Scripture.  Secular Humanists have used their odd mental process to magically assume some errors into the Bible regarding the measurements of the cast metal sea.  Of course, it all turns out to be smoke and mirrors once again.

Snopes.com, supposedly able to expose urban legends, has been double-fooled by this little piece.

Snopes.com writes: Origins:   This wonderful bit of creative writing began circulating on the Internet in April 1998. Written by Mark Boslough . . .

Snopes goes on to say that no law was passed to redefine pi to 3.0, and that Mark Boslough's writing is a spoof.  But Mark Boslough has fooled Snopes.com.

At first, it appears that Snopes.com actually was not fooled by Mark Boslough.  It almost appears that Mark Boslough was exposed by Snopes.com.  But Mark Boslough double-fooled Snopes.com and probably fooled himself as well.  Mark Boslough was actually trying to prove that there was an error in the Bible.  People who hate what the Bible demands in terms of righteousness often try to show that the Bible has one error or another, but no one has ever been successful.  So this spoof of Mark Boslough turns out to be a double-trick.  The first trick is easily exposed, and Snopes.com was sucked in by Mark Boslough in that they exposed only the fact that Mark Boslough had claimed that Alabama state legislature had passed a law to redefine the value of pi to 3.0.  This was easy to prove false, and, as with many New Age Religion tricks, the real deception was still unexposed.  You see, the purpose of the first deception was to draw attention away from the real deception.  The real deception requires a bit of knowledge of mathematics and also a bit of knowledge of Scripture.  Snopes.com lacked the ability, for whatever reason, to expose the real deception, so we will take care of that here.

Mark Boslough's article states:

"I think that it is the mathematicians that are being irrational, and it is time for them to admit it," said Lawson. "The Bible very clearly says in I Kings 7:23 that the alter font of Solomon's Temple was ten cubits across and thirty cubits in diameter, and that it was round in compass."

Of course, as you may have guessed, this statement contains a clever misquote.   Here is the actual quote of I Kings 7:23, "He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from  rim to rim and five cubits high.  It took a line of thirty cubits to  measure round it."

Notice, there is no mention of diameter or circumference, nor does it state that these are exact measurements. 

In addition, 1 Kings 7:23 is a partial quote.

kjv 1Ki 7:26 And it [was] an hand breadth thick, and the brim thereof was wrought like the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies: it contained two thousand baths.

Here is a quote from http://ad2004.com/prophecytruths/Articles/mathmystery.html

Since the outside diameter of the sea is 10 cubits, what is the inside diameter?

inside diameter = circumference / pi = 30 / 3.1415927 = 9.5493 cubits

And, since the inside circumference is 30 cubits, what is the outside circumference?

outside circumference = diameter x pi = 10 x 3.1415927 = 31.4159 cubits.

Mystery Solved, the ancient people did have an understanding of PI. In fact, there is no way other than as done in the scriptures, where someone can give two even measurements of the sea and do it with economy of language (using the figures of 30 and 10 cubits to describe all the measurements of the molten sea).

Since http://ad2004.com/prophecytruths/Articles/mathmystery.html have said it so well, there is no need to say it again.  Snopes.com remains fooled, perhaps, because they prefer it that way.

 Try a search for Terri Schiavo on Snopes.com.  You won't find any reference to this on that site--at least not as of this writing on 2/23/2005.  Isn't that interesting given the number of emails that have been circulated regarding the State-sponsored attempt to kill this woman.  It would be interesting if someone were to do a little checking on the validity of Snopes.com to see whether they are not slanted to the left.  To set themselves up as a watchdog for accuracy is a pattern of the liberals.  Maybe http://www.MRC.org could look into this.

Related Links:

Creative Stories

CREATION IS OBVIOUS

Intellectualism

Why is materialism NOT a valid assumption?

Why isn't Naturalism a valid assumption?

Uniformitarianism

Circular Reasoning

Why aren't liberal thinkers open-minded?

Is there a common theme as to the source of oppression?

How could there be a science that is based on nothing but a whim?

What about when theologians and Bible scholars use rationalized speculation?