Precision, Accuracy, and Fundamentalism

Fundamentalists believe the Bible is absolutely true in every possible way. This includes both precision and accuracy. In so doing, they have utterly sunk the Bible as a reliable source of information about anything. It’s their fault, not the Bible’s fault.

Every sample of observations, and therefore every statement, has a margin of error associated with it. Statisticians assume that, somewhere out there in the universe, there is a true value for everything, whether it is the population of the Earth or the value of pi. (I am, of course, excluding things about which we can be absolutely sure, such as 2 + 2 = 4.) The population of the Earth is constantly increasing, and its true value at any moment can only be estimated. The value of pi is an irrational number; it is 3.14, followed by a literally infinite number of digits. We can never know what all of those digits are. Using computers, mathematicians have figured out the value of pi to trillions of digits—and they are still exactly zero percent of the way to the end. Other examples are endless—the length of a day, for example. Not only is it impossible to calculate the exact length of a day down to infinite fractions of a second, but it is constantly changing. The Earth, hundreds of millions of years ago, used to spin faster. A day, a billion years ago, was about six of our hours long.

Not that you would notice, of course. These “constant” values change very slowly.

Which brings up precision and accuracy. Precision is the narrowness of the estimate. Accuracy is how close the estimate is to the true value, which can often not be known. Scientific notation gets around this problem. Scientific notation is a number multiplied by 10 raised to a certain (positive or negative) power. If we say that pi is 3.14, what we mean is that pi is 3.14 x 10⁰. It is precise to three significant figures. This is more precise than saying that pi is 3.1 (which is 3.1 x 10⁰, precise to two significant figures) or that pi is 3 (which is 3 x 10⁰, precise to one significant figure), though all three statements are accurate. The circumference of a circle is pi x the diameter.

This opens up a funny story in the history of Bible-science conflict. Somewhere in the historical portion of the old testament, the Bible says that Solomon’s temple had a big bowl near the entrance; its diameter was one cubit, and its circumference was three cubits. No problem. This statement is accurate, though not precise. For one thing, there has never been a perfectly standardized cubit. But to one significant figure, pi is 3. What’s the problem?

Apparently some fundamentalists got hold of this and claimed that, based on the Bible, the value of pi must be 3.33, with the threes continuing forever; this is the value of 10 divided by 3. Therefore, they claimed, 3.14 was the wrong value of pi, according to God’s word. Critics of the Bible said that this proved the Bible was wrong. Whatever. The Bible is correct that pi is 3, to a first, and only a first, approximation.

The above story sounds apocryphal to me. But there are some very real examples, with serious consequences, that come from fundamentalists taking Biblical statements that are accurate to a first approximation and forcing them into a precision that was never intended.

The major example I can think of right now is the statement in Genesis 1 that when God created humans, “male and female created he them.” This is a generally accurate statement, as true of humans as of most (but not all) other animal species. In Bible times, nobody knew about genes and chromosomes, but a genetically accurate statement would be that males are XY and females are XX, regarding the sex chromosomes. Accurate as a first approximation, that is. The Y chromosome is important because it has the SRY gene that switches on a cascade of genetic events, resulting in maleness.

But everyone who has taken a genetics course knows that there are a lot of exceptions. There are lots of kinds of alternative genetic arrangements, of which Klinefelter’s and Turner’s syndromes are just two examples. In many cases, the people with these syndromes are not completely male or completely female. But, all told, people with these syndromes make up less than one percent of the species. Klinefelter’s, for example, affects one out of 660 people.

Then there is the story of the guevedoche, which is a Dominican Spanish word for penis at twelve. To be a male, you need functional juvenile testosterone and adult testosterone genes. If an XY individual has a defective testosterone gene, the male characteristics will not develop, and this person may identify all her life as female. But what happens if the juvenile testosterone gene is defective, but the adult testosterone gene works just fine? This person, genetically XY, grows up as a little girl and then, at puberty, turns into a man. The guevedoche man is not completely male, because a great deal of female development has already started before the adult testosterone kicks in. The Dominicans have grown accustomed to these “third gender” people. A similar event independently occurred in New Guinea, where the third gender people are called turnim-men in pidgin.

And then there is the story of the man who had a completely functional SRY gene. But, in one of his parents or ancestors, this SRY gene had translocated (along with its promoter) onto his X chromosome. He was XX, but was entirely male, and did not suspect there was any problem, until he found out he was sterile. Can you imagine being the doctor who, after genetic tests, had to tell him, You are a woman?

Guevedoche, turnin-men, and male women with a translocated SRY gene are very rare, compared even to the sex chromosome syndromes. Let us use one percent as an estimate for all of them.

The Bible is accurate that the human species consist of males and females—that is, it is correct 99 percent of the time. This makes it accurate, though only precise to two significant figures (9.9 x 10¹ percent). But fundamentalists assume that the statement is one hundred percent precise (1.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 x 10² percent). Therefore, anyone who identifies with a gender that is not completely male or completely female must be lying, or evil, or perhaps a product of the Devil’s genetic engineering. This is not simply some curiosity. These fundamentalists want to control our government and our education and base it on Biblical fundamentalism—that is, fundamentalism with specious assumptions of precision. They hate this one percent of humankind, and all the rest of us who wish to welcome this one percent—and all the rest of the nonbinaries—into the fold of our friendship.

Fundamentalists make this assumption, that truth consists of an infinite number of significant figures, for nothing else in their lives. They do not say that if a jar of mayonnaise, labeled at 32 fluid ounces, contains only 31.9 fluid ounces, it is a lie. Their male-female belief is only one example of their dangerously wrong ways of thinking. God—and pi—save us from this, especially in places, such as Oklahoma where I live, where they have a great deal of political power.