DI Fellow, David Berlinski: “There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics”
| February 16, 2018 | Posted by kairosfocus under academic freedom, Atheism, faith, Mathematics, Mind, reason, Science, Mathematics, Philosophy and (Natural) Theology, They said it . . ., warrant, knowledge, science and belief |
He continues (HT, BA77):
>>Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time ….
… Come again …
DB: No need to come again: I got to where I was going the first time. The number four, after all, did not come into existence at a particular time, and it is not going to go out of existence at another time. It is neither here nor there. Nonetheless we are in some sense able to grasp the number by a faculty of our minds. Mathematical intuition is utterly mysterious. So for that matter is the fact that mathematical objects such as a Lie Group or a differentiable manifold have the power to interact with elementary particles or accelerating forces. But these are precisely the claims that theologians have always made as well – that human beings are capable by an exercise of their devotional abilities to come to some understanding of the deity; and the deity, although beyond space and time, is capable of interacting with material objects.
… And this is something that you, a secular Jew, believe? …
DB: What a question! . . . I have no religious convictions and no religious beliefs. What I do believe is that theology is no more an impossible achievement than mathematics. The same rational standards apply. Does the system make sense; does it explain something? Are there deep principles at work. Is it productive? >>
Food for sobering thought. END
23 Responses to DI Fellow, David Berlinski: “There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics”
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DI Fellow, David Berlinski: “There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics
I don’t have any significant disagreements with Berlinski here, but this passage has always troubled me:
Aren’t abstract entities such as Lie groups causally inert?
DS, I think he is referring to the constraints in mathematically formed natural laws. They do have impacts good enough to predict. I have suggested that logic of structure and quantity — mathematics — is core to reality. And yes that raises questions of mind at work, ever since Plato in The Laws Bk X. KF
as to;
“Aren’t abstract entities such as Lie groups causally inert?”
Darwinists/Atheists, I repeat myself, have long contended that information itself was ‘just a metaphor’, i.e. just a causally inert abstract entity.
As is usual for claims from Darwinists, advances in science have rendered that claim false
To further back up Berlinski’s claim that mathematical objects have the power to interact with elementary particles, it has now been shown that immaterial information has a thermodynamic content and that immaterial information is its own distinct entity that is separate from matter and energy. A distinct physical entity that, in spite of being immaterial, does indeed have the power to interact with matter and energy. Here are a few references that drive this point home.
In the following article, George Ellis argues for the Causal Efficacy of Non Physical entities. Of particular interest is his argument for the causal efficacy of computer programs.
Ellis goes on to persuasively argue that physical evidence for the reality of the immaterial mind is the computer sitting right in front of you
Although the preceding evidence is certainly very strong evidence for the physical reality of immaterial information, the coup de grace for demonstrating that immaterial information is its own distinct physical entity that is separate from matter and energy, is Quantum Teleportation where it is shown that the photons aren’t disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Instead, it’s the information that’s being teleported through quantum entanglement.,,,
Of related interest:
Verse:
““There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics.”
The problem with religion is that it can, and often does, contradict itself…Whereas mathematics is either right or wrong. It can’t contradict itself…
J-Mac @ 5: He is not talking about the various religions and how they contradict one another. He’s talking about the concept of something existing beyond space and time, neither coming into existence nor going out of existence at any particular point in time. Perhaps numbers are not the only such things. Perhaps there is an eternal Mind that shares those attributes.
I like his thinking!
Of related note:
Of related interest to this notion of ‘perfect’ geometric objects occupying a Platonic mathematical world,,,
,,, Is this ‘platonic’ geometric object,,:
Quote:
Truth Will Set You Free,
I get it, but I was raised in a religion where there were no maybes…It was either Catholic view or not view…
While things have changed over the years within the catholic faith, that doesn’t mean that catholic religion has no contradictions…No religion is free of that… That’s why we have religious faith…
If God exists, he has no entry in spacetime because he would have to have created it and then he would have to heave restricted himself to something he created…
BA77
Do you realize what “on related note means”? How about semirelated?
J-Mac
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BAWYAbbCQAAycy5.jpg
db writes,
No math and religion are most definitely not alike in these regards.
Jmac says, “If God exists, he has no entry in spacetime because he would have to have created it and then he would have to heave restricted himself to something he created…”
Well, that is exactly what he did when he came as Jesus, the man, restricting himself to the body of a man. See Philippians 2:5-11
Good point, Allen Shepherd @ 12.
F/N: Let’s roll the tape from the OP:
Food for thought.
KF
Sure their is.
Religious beliefs are easily varied, while mathematics, such as 2 + 3 = 5, is hard to vary. That’s why we mistakenly think that 2 + 3 = 5 is self evident.
This also assumes the idea that the initial conditions as fundamental. But why should we?
IOW, assuming the initial concisions are fundamental is parochial choice, which is unnecessarily narrow in scope.
CR @ 15:
The initial conditions being fundamental is a necessity for sane, consistent materialism; as making the initial state arbitrary kicks the door wide open for something more.
Judging by the oft recurring theme of cosmic fine tuning on this site, I doubt you’ll find much argument from your “religious” opposition on the contingency of the universe.
Jmac says, “If God exists, he has no entry in spacetime because he would have to have created it and then he would have to heave restricted himself to something he created…”
Well, that is exactly what he did when he came as Jesus, the man, restricting himself to the body of a man. See Philippians 2:5-11
Yeah.. yeah… yeah…
Was this incident before or after God as Jesus decided to pray to himself?
CR – just as a point of interest, basic addition is easily modified when the number line is converted into a circle, as happens in modular arithmetic. 2 + 3 can equal all sorts of things in a rigorous, non-contradictory way.
Think about the clock. If I start at 2AM, and add 25 hours, it will be 3AM. The clock is a number circle, and knows nothing of days. That is modular arithmetic, and it is a well-studied system in mathematics.
Continuing, here (as there is need for posting images): https://uncommondescent.com/mathematics/fun-with-the-hyperreal-numbers/ KF
CR, your strident objections to self-evidence fail. Kindly explain to us how it is not manifest to one who understands, that:
|| + ||| –> |||||
Where to suggest otherwise, e.g. that the result is 4 leads to something patently absurd like:
||+||| –>||||That is, to try to deny this SET leads to the absurdity,
1 = 0;
by way of an instructive example.
In short, self-evidence is shown.
It is no mistake.
And BTW, Error exists is also self-evident.
KF
PS: JB, redefining what + means is imposing an equivocation.
J-Mac, you know quite enough to understand what Orthodox Christian teaching is regarding God as triune. The unity and diversity refer to distinct aspects of being, so are not contradictory. Likewise, prayer NEVER informs God of our needs that he otherwise would be ignorant of. It is a relational exercise of submission and acknowledgement of Jehovah Jireh, Provider; which inter alia so changes our heart-attitude that it is safe to grant us things that would otherwise be to our detriment. For me, that I have life today is answer to my mom’s prayer of surrender. And I doubt that it is mere accident of coincidence that I literally met my wife on a visit home from school, sitting in my parents’ pew at church. Where the specific passage you tried to twist into sounding ridiculous actually points to this: obedient unto death as a servant, as in Gethsemane’s prayer, if it were possible let this cup pass, nevertheless not my will but thine be done. And more. KF
CR
“2 + 3 = 5, is hard to vary.”
If by “hard,” you mean “impossible,” you are correct. I don’t know what you hope to gain by saying that something that is impossible is merely hard.
Of course you can vary it. However you cannot do so without reducing it’s ability to explain the phenomena in question. It’s hard to vary. That’s my point.
So, a theory is not good just just because it a prediction or that it’s falsifiable. For an explanation to be good is must also be hard to vary.
2 + 3 = 5 is extremely hard to vary. Religious beliefs are not. They can be varied significantly and still explain the same phenomena just as well.
I don’t know why you find this so difficult to grasp, since I’ve applied it Paley’s rock and watch, with some level of agreement here. The watch is hard to vary without reducing it’s ability to tell time, if even at all, while the rock is easily varied without reducing it’s ability to tell time, because we can use it as a sundial.
I’m simply pointing out the same thing in respect to explanations.
Perhaps an example discussion on the Fabric of Reality list would help to clarify this….
The question asked was if is 2+2=4 falsifiable. Someone proposed the following test.
David Deutsch, the Oxford Physicist and author whom’s work the list is based on, pointed out the the problem with this conclusion.
In case this isn’t clear, given the observations of the experiment, we would assume that something was tampering with Tommy’s box, the cupcake, our neurons, etc., rather than conclude that 2+2 doesn’t equal 4. This is because the explanation that 2+2 actually equals 4, in reality, is very hard to vary. Nor can we think of a better explanation as to why 2+2=4.
Other possiblities exist, however they are based on the idea that there are laws or forces that interfere with the creation of knowledge in malevolent ways. Can we rule this out as being true with 100% certainty? No, we cannot. But neither can we rule out that 2+2 equals something other than 4. This are bad explanations.
So, to summarize, Hume showed us the problem of induction, Karl Popper showed that our use of induction in science was a myth (which caused a shift to falsification in science), and now Deutsch has pointed out that the creation of knowledge is based on seeking good explanations, which are hard to vary, not just making predictions or being falsifiable.
I have no bias against the supernatural, per se. I want is good explanations. Bad explanations are not limited to the supernatural. The claim that you can cure the common cold via eating a foot of grass isn’t supernatural, yet it’s a bad explanation because it lacks an explanation as to how eating grass cures colds.
Saying the biosphere was designed by an authoritative and inexplicable mind that exists in an inexplicable realm that operates via inexplicable means and methods is not a good explanation.