Truth and Numbers

I've been reading and listening to podcasts in every spare moment, taking in a ton of new information.  When I haven't been doing that, I've been rolling it all around in my head, trying to process it.  Here are a few points that have stood out to me in the last day or two.

Denominations

I heard the other day on the Atheist Experience podcast that there are 38,000 distinct Christian sects.  They didn't cite the source of that number, and I am not sure how a sect differs from a denomination, but I don't think it really matters as far as the point that it led me to.  This wikipedia page sufficiently demonstrates that there are lots of subgroups within Christianity, and if you look at the timelines, you can see that over time, we end up with more subgroups, rather than less.  Supposedly the Bible is the one source of truth on this planet, but over time believers of the bible fragment further and further as they interpret it differently.

On the other hand, you have science.  Science attempts to discover all that can be known about the world we live in.  What hit me over the head the other day is how significant it is that science does the exact opposite of what Christianity does.  On the timeline, you see convergence rather than divergence.  That is to say, there are not 38,000 different beliefs on the law of gravity.  As far as I know, there are not even 2 different beliefs on gravity.  We just have the one.

So with Christianity, they started with the whole and absolute truth (The Bible), and over time they drift and drift apart, where in Science, they started with hypothesis and theories, and they gradually zero in on a single thing that we can all agree on.

Sure, you can find examples in science today where there is disagreement.  But over time, do you think the number of views on any given theory will increase or decrease?

Another thing I wonder.  Have Christian sects/denominations ever merged?  Have 2 groups ever decided that they did, after all, agree on a point, and that their division was no longer necessary?

Pi

While reading Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation, I was actually surprised to find something I never knew was in the Bible before.  It makes a significantly poor use of Pi in two places.  Additionally, in the two locations it describes containers of the same dimensions, but gives two significantly different calculations of the volumes of those containers.  Not what I would expect from divinely inspired texts.  Here are the two verses:

1 Kings 7:23-26 (New International Version)

 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 around it. ²⁴ Below the rim, gourds encircled it—ten to a cubit. The gourds were cast in two rows in one piece with the Sea.
 ²⁵ The Sea stood on twelve bulls, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south and three facing east. The Sea rested on top of them, and their hindquarters were toward the center. ²⁶ It was a handbreadth in thickness, and its rim was like the rim of a cup, like a lily blossom. It held two thousand baths.

2 Chronicles 4:2-5 (New International Version)

² 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 around it. ³ Below the rim, figures of bulls encircled it—ten to a cubit. The bulls were cast in two rows in one piece with the Sea.
 ⁴ The Sea stood on twelve bulls, three facing north, three facing west, three facing south and three facing east. The Sea rested on top of them, and their hindquarters were toward the center. ⁵ It was a handbreadth in thickness, and its rim was like the rim of a cup, like a lily blossom. It held three thousand baths.