How Could Most Mathematicians Believe in Heaven, But Not in God?

Epigraph:

He is the First and the Last, and the Manifest and the Hidden, and He knows all things full well. (Al Quran 57:3)

We have created the heavens and the earth and all that is between the two in accordance with the perfect truth (mathematics) and wisdom. (Al Quran 15:85)

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

Most humans die in the religion that they are born in. From this at least we can conclude that most of us do not examine evidence very rationally. Is it true for the best mathematicians as well? Jim Holt wrote for the New York Times in 2008:

A physicist, a biologist and a mathematician walk into a bar. Bartender says, “Any of you believe in God?” Which of the three is most likely to say yes? Answer: the mathematician. Mathematicians believe in God at a rate two and a half times that of biologists, a survey of members of the National Academy of Sciences a decade ago revealed. Admittedly, this rate is not very high in absolute terms. Only 14.6 percent of the mathematicians embraced the God hypothesis (versus 5.5 percent of the biologists).

But here is something you probably didn’t know. Most mathematicians believe in heaven. Not a heaven with angels, but one populated by the abstract objects they devote themselves to studying: perfect spheres, infinite numbers, the square root of minus one and the like. Moreover, they believe they commune with this realm of timeless entities through a sort of extrasensory perception. Mathematicians who buy into this fantasy are called “Platonists,” since their mathematical heaven resembles the realm of the Good and the True described in Plato’s “Republic.” Some years ago, while giving a lecture to an international audience of elite mathematicians in Berkeley, I asked how many of them were Platonists. About three-quarters raised their hands. So you might say that mathematicians are no strangers to belief in the unseen. (Of course, mathematicians don’t drag their beliefs into the public square, let alone fly planes into buildings.)[1]

Read on and in the words of Sir Francis Bacon, “Read not to contradict … but to weigh and consider.”

I have only a one liner for these mathematicians, who do not believe in God, while believing in heaven and then a few articles with a few videos where good mathematicians explain my line and some more.

The one line is that mathematics formulae and equations are like thoughts and these only exist in a conscious mind that can write them on paper, if paper and pen exist. If universe does not exist paper, pen or computers do not exist. If consciousness does not exist, mathematics cannot be imagined and nothing exists. Nothing comes out of nothing: ex nihilo nihil fit.

Now my previous articles:

Laws of Nature and Mathematics are not Eternal or Platonic

Are the Mathematicians Looking for God, When They Worship Mathematics?

Movie: Ramanujan: A Prophet of Mathematics Born in a Hindu Family

The Quran: Have the humans been created from nothing, or are they the creators?

The 75% mathematicians, who are Platonists, do believe in the unseen. They find mathematics to be not contingent and they believe it to be necessary, based on the simple fact that we and our universe exist. What I have shown them in a simple argument above is that mathematics cannot be the ultimate necessary reality, as it requires some consciousness to imagine and conceptualize. In other words mathematics is contingent and cannot be necessary.

This makes some ultimate consciousness a necessary existence, to make mathematics and the rest of the reality possible. In other words, according to the vote of the 75% mathematicians, mathematics was necessary and I am now replacing it with some ultimate consciousness, which the Abrahamic faiths call God.

Reference

  1. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/books/review/Holt-t.html#:~:text=Only%2014.6%20percent%20of%20the,Most%20mathematicians%20believe%20in%20heaven.

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