Creationists hijack lessons

[Kennybhoy]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
LOL JK I'm one of those Torah kids.

[ninwa]

You appear to have ignored my examples of scholars who HAVE learnt science and maths from the Torah...

By "purely from a religious perspective", I assumed you meant to the exclusion of any other perspective, including mathematical.

But, alright. Please give me the source for Yochanan ben Zakkai's contributions to mathematics, I cannot seem to find it.

On one occasion he advises that mankind should seek to understand the infinity of God, by imagining the heavens being extended to unthinkable distances

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=362&letter=J#1328

A remarkable saying of Johanan's has been preserved, which is in accord with his study of mystic doctrines (Ḥag. 13a; comp. Pes. 94b). In this saying man is advised to bring the infinity of God, the Creator of the world, nearer to his own conception by imagining the space of the cosmos extended to unthinkable distances.

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=sVS4Q-QidVMC&pg=PA138&lpg=PA138&dq=Yochanan+ben+Zakkai+infinity&source=bl&ots=sT7mQqvbCa&sig=n7bOm_MXrehee3ymorAaWP8pWOw&hl=en&ei=_FdZTJeJC8rIcbDmrecI&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

The answer Yohanan gave was to describe the infinity of the distance between man and God

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=Cr4eAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA100&lpg=PA100&dq=Yochanan+ben+Zakkai+infinity&source=bl&ots=dIj5fEsa0D&sig=tf8gCbDKHH1vSUIF6gC7nrfoRIk&hl=en&ei=_FdZTJeJC8rIcbDmrecI&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCEQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Fourth, the answer Yohanan gave was an effort to describe the infinity of the distance between man and God

[kamil9876]

Man I could use some Torah right now for my graph theory problems 

[TrueTears]

oo what type of graph theory questions u doing atm? care to share

[kamil9876]

http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=357291

[Yitzi_K]

You seem to have answered your own question... infinity is a study in mathematics is it not? By exploring the concept of actual infinity, ie G-d, as opposed to the potential infinity which is the best that the Greeks could come up with, was that not an advancement in mathematics?

[Cthulhu]

You seem to have answered your own question... infinity is a study in mathematics is it not? By exploring the concept of actual infinity, ie G-d, as opposed to the potential infinity which is the best that the Greeks could come up with, was that not an advancement in mathematics?

No, because he treated it as a philosophical concept rather than a mathematical one.

[Yitzi_K]

The concept of actual infinity is certainly used. Like I said, at the time, and indeed up until Georg Cantor in the 20th century, the only type of infinity discussed by mathematicians was potential infinity, meaning the infinity of limits.

[enwiabe]

The concept of actual infinity is certainly used. Like I said, at the time, and indeed up until Georg Cantor in the 20th century, the only type of infinity discussed by mathematicians was potential infinity, meaning the infinity of limits.

Er, given that nothing was actually proferred Mathematically, how did Zakkai contribute to the study?

He said "infinity is the distance between man and god"

Tell me how that is in any way useful in deriving any sort of Mathematical formalism.

Tell me how that relates to Cantor using bijective functions mapping the natural numbers to various sets to determine countability or uncountability and then degrees of infinity (cardinality)

"I think infinity is the distance between man and god" is not a valid answer.

[Yitzi_K]

He contributed at an elemental level. In any case, that was only one example.

[enwiabe]

How's this for open-mindedness? Just yesterday (nothing is coincidence) my teacher, one of those you often rail about, said 'You can't just accept what you read in the Talmud. You have to question and attack every line and statement.'

Such an anecdote is rather churlish when you consider what you wrote just moments beforehand:

Yes, magnetohydrodynamics can be learnt from the Torah. But I don't know how, so don't ask me.

Not only have you not attempted to question such a grand and outlandish statement, you don't even bother to try.

So for your teacher, after years of brainwashing from early childhood (as soon as you could understand what was being said!) to force these beliefs on you and emotionally blackmail them into you under pain of losing your family's love, to then turn around 15, 16 years later and say "oh yeah but question everything" is analogous to subjecting a person to beatings for 15 years and then saying after 15 years, "oh yeah, but just like tell me to stop if you want to, okay?"

[enwiabe]

He contributed at an elemental level. In any case, that was only one example.

"elemental", read: didn't help in the slightest.

And if that was your only example, then it was a paltry one. When you make such absurd, outlandish claims, the burden of proof is on you, and if it can be picked apart so easily, do you not see how flimsy an argument it truly is?

[TrueTears]

I'm not interested in this debate about Torah or anything but since this involves mathematics I feel like making a few comments.

"infinity is the distance between man and god" is a proposition, it does not contribute to any mathematical proofs. Therefore there is nothing elemental about this statement that relates to mathematics. Since it is claimed to be elemental, it must contribute to some higher levels of mathematics, I can be sure that there is nothing in mathematics which builds upon this proposition.

You may those that phrase as a sentence in elemental logic eg, let p : "infinity is the distance between man and god" and q: "{insert some other proposition}" and play around with p, q but that has nothing to do with the statement itself, there is nothing mathematical about it. As far as I can see, it is just a sentence of English.

[Yitzi_K]

If I were to tell you that Pi to 4 decimal places was hinted at in the Torah, would that be of any interest to you people?

[enwiabe]

"Hinted at"

This'll be good. It'd be interesting, but by no means any real evidence of your claims