A question for all you mathematicians out there. . .

[connorkimbro]

Ok. This may seem a little sacreligious to some, but I'm quite curious. . . how many Jesuses (jesus's? jesi? whatever the plural of "Jesus" is) have been consumed by Catholics since the beginning of the catholic church?

I mean, according to the Catholic belief system, when they take communion, the wafer and wine actually become the body and blood of christ, right? So. . . that's got to be an awful lot of body and blood. Every sunday. For over almost 2000 years now.

Can anyone help me to figure this out? I'm not good at math. . .

[Ecthy]

depends how much the average wafer weighs, how many services have been held and how many people attended those.

let's assume 5g per wafer, 50 people per service (consider there are small and large communities) and the amount of services overall (or the amount of people attending all services) would have to be calculated via calculus. I mean you know the curve of world population and the spread of the Roman church, now get the average amount of believers under that curve and... should be hard...

[connorkimbro]

thats what i'm saying. i'm not at all good at math, so i'd really be unable to calculate this. but i really want to know the answer too, so that's why i asked for mathematicians

[Ecthy]

I'm one by high school graduation, but I'm afraid I can't quite figure it out now

[Guest]

get the data and an approximation couldnt be taht hard
we woudl need data for number of practicing christians over time, as precise as possible.

[loinburger]

Does each wafer count as a single Jesus?

If so, then you can discount the consumption of wine/blood, since you're not supposed to drink wine/blood without eating bread/flesh.

Otherwise, I'm not sure that a simple mass measurement will suffice, since Divine blood/flesh may be more/less dense than mundane blood/flesh. You can probably make up any density numbers you want, in which case I can say with complete confidence that 2/3 of Jesus have been consumed over the past 2000 years.

[Kuciwalker]

It's impossible to say, because there are so many unknowable variables.

[connorkimbro]

Originally posted by loinburger
Does each wafer count as a single Jesus?

If so, then you can discount the consumption of wine/blood, since you're not supposed to drink wine/blood without eating bread/flesh.

Otherwise, I'm not sure that a simple mass measurement will suffice, since Divine blood/flesh may be more/less dense than mundane blood/flesh. You can probably make up any density numbers you want, in which case I can say with complete confidence that 2/3 of Jesus have been consumed over the past 2000 years.

Just for arguments sake, lets say that divine flesh and blood has the same density and mundane flesh and blood.

And no, each wafer does not equal one jesus. each wafer equals a wafer sized portion of jesus (whom we will say, just for arguments sake, that he weighed approximately 200 pounds.)

[Whoha]

hmm and a wafer is 5 grams, 454 grams in a pound...

There are 18160 wafers in each Jesus. If there are a billion Christians, then 55066 Jesuses are consumed each time they all have had 1 wafer.

[connorkimbro]

Whoha. No, it's only the Catholics that count. The wafer and wine don't become body and blood for anybody but catholics (to my knowledge)

plus you didn't factor in the blood, either, just the wafer
and also how often do they take the wafer and wine anyway? right now it's once a week. . . but was it always once a week?

[Whoha]

Whats the total number of Catholics?

[Whoha]

and whats the percentage of blood as body weight

[connorkimbro]

my roommate (who is catholic) says there are 1 billion catholics in the world today

but there havn't always been . . . you see? it's much more complicated that simple figuring YOU did. Hell, I could do such easy arithmatic myself. . .

[connorkimbro]

Originally posted by Whoha
and whats the percentage of blood as body weight

hmm, i guess a doctor or some other medically inclinded person would have to answer this.

[Whoha]

ok plasma is about 4.5 % of body weight so assuming a 200 pound Jesus, 9 pounds are of blood, and 191 pounds are flesh,bone,muscle,etc.

Muscles make up between 40 to 50% of body weight so ill say 50%.

So that means that there are 9080 wafers in every Jesus.

How much wine is consumed?