Quote:
Originally Posted by Water Bandit23
The only things I can think of that wouldn't use math are philosophy and religious studies. You would still have to know it, because of everyday life. Maybe if you become a monk or a nun, you would be free of all math.
|
Actually, math can be infinitely (ha) useful in enhancing one's appreciation for both philosophy and religious studies.
Blaise Pascal, author of Pensees, was both a philosopher and a mathematician/physicist (the Pascal computer language and the metric unit of measure were named after him). In Pascal's Wager, he uses binary logic to demonstrate the reasonableness (though not proof) of belief in God. Basically, there are 2 possibilities: God exists or God doesn't exist.
There are 2 choices of action: believe or don't believe.
The possible outcomes/results based on existence and belief are:
-------------- God exists ----- God doesn't exist
believe------- reward---------no punishment or reward
don't believe-- punishment -----no punishment or reward
If one believes, the possible outcomes are reward or nothing. If one doesn't believe, the possible outcomes are punishment or nothing. Pascal's premise was that if one were making a wager, there is no reason not to believe in a probabilistic sense – one who believes has everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Math can also provide interesting insights in religious studies. For example, Genesis 5:25 (of the Bible) reports that Methuselah was 187 years old when he became the father Lamech, and Lamech was 182 when he became the father of Noah. The Flood came when Noah was 600 years old. If you add 187 + 182 + 600, you get 969, the age of Methuselah at his death. This means that Methuselah died in the year of the flood, and possibly died in the flood itself, implying that he may not have been a very righteous man.
Math may also point to seeming discrepancies in religious records, but with further information, they often work themselves out. For example, Daniel 9:25 reports that it will take 7 sevens (49 years) from the issuing of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem to its completion, and an addition 62 sevens (434 years) from the completion until the Annointed One is "cut off" (killed).
434 + 49 = 483 years
Historically, it is reported that the decree to rebuild Jerusalem was issued in 444 B.C. If you conjecture that the Annointed One was Christ, he lived 33 years (dying in 33 A.D.) and adding the years you get:
444 + 33 = 477 years (according to the Roman calendar)
The discrepancy between 477 years and 483 years might seem to indicate that the event described as the "cut off of the Anointed One" is not the death of Christ, unless you take into account that the Roman calendar has 365.24 days/year, but the Jewish calendar (which would have been used in the writing of Daniel) is 360 days. Converting 483 Jewish years:
483 X 360/365.24 = 476.1 years (by Roman calendar). Still not quite 477, but "pretty close," especially since the 444 and 33 years may include fractional increments.
Really, I think there are fun things to discover mathematically in just about everything.