{"id":278,"date":"2007-01-17T16:34:28","date_gmt":"2007-01-17T16:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scientopia.org\/blogs\/goodmath\/2007\/01\/17\/the-invisible-link-between-bad-math-and-bad-theology\/"},"modified":"2007-01-17T16:34:28","modified_gmt":"2007-01-17T16:34:28","slug":"the-invisible-link-between-bad-math-and-bad-theology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/2007\/01\/17\/the-invisible-link-between-bad-math-and-bad-theology\/","title":{"rendered":"The Invisible Link Between Bad Math and Bad Theology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another piece of junk that I received: “The Invisible Link
\nBetween Mathematics and Theology”<\/a>, by a guy named “Ladislav Kvasz”,
\npublished in a rag called “Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith”. (I’m
\nnot going to quote much from this, because the way that the PDF is formatted,
\nit requires a huge amount of manually editing.) This is a virtual masterwork of
\ngoofy clueless Christian arrogance – everything truly good must be Christian, so
\nthe author had to find some way of saying that mathematics is intrinsically tied to Christianity. <\/p>\n

This article actually reminds me rather a lot of George
\nShollenberger<\/a>. His arguments are similar to George’s: that there’s some
\nintrinsic connection between the concept of infinity and the Christian god.
\nBut Kvasz goes further: it’s the nature of monotheism in general, and
\nChristianity in particular, which gave us the idea of using
\nquantifiers<\/em> in predicate logic. Because, you see, the idea of
\nquantifiers comes from the idea that existence is not a predicate, and the
\nidea that existence is not a predicate comes from a debate over an invalid
\nproof for the existence of god.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In fact, he comes up with a list of five different areas where he claims
\nthat the influence of Christianity (or at least monotheism) allegedly fundamentally changed mathematics:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Infinity. He claims that the modern concept of infinity is fundamentally
    \ndifferent than the pre-Christian one, and that the reason for that is
    \nthat the acceptance of an infinite god makes it more natural to accept
    \nthe concept of an infinite number.<\/li>\n
  2. Randomness. He claims that the modern concept of randomness is something
    \nnew, because before Christianity, fate and chance were considered to be
    \none and the same; but after Christianity, people see fate as the province
    \nof god, but things like gambling are governed by randomness.<\/li>\n
  3. Unknowns. He claims that the concept of a symbolic representation
    \nof an unknown value as a variable in algebra is an intrinsically
    \nmonotheistic notion. He can’t tie this one to christianity, because
    \nwe know that the word algebra comes from the name of an Muslim scholar,
    \nso he drops back to monotheism.<\/li>\n
  4. Space. He claims that prior to Christianity, the concept of “space” independent of the things that occupy it is an intrinsically Christian notion. This one he doesn’t even really try<\/em> to defend in terms of Christianity; he really just asserts that it’s part of the same thing as the
    \nconcept of infinity, and since infinity is Chistian, space must be as well.<\/li>\n
  5. Motion. Again, the same deal as space. Without space, you can’t really have a mathematical study of motion; since the mathematical concept of space relies on the concept of the monotheistic god, that means that mathematical
    \nstudy of motion is therefore christian.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This stuff is frankly silly beyond words. I had to stop several times while reading the paper, because I simply burst out laughing at the sheer goofiness of it! I mean, take a look at this passage from page 114:<\/p>\n

    \nNow we come to the third common feature of the above-mentioned changes. Let
    \nus first take the notion of infinity. While for the ancients apeiron was a
    \nnegative notion associated with going astray and losing the way, for the
    \nmedieval scholar, the road to infinity became the road to God. God is an
    \ninfinite being, but despite his infiniteness, he is absolutely perfect. As
    \nsoon as the notion of infinity was applied to God, it lost its obscurity and
    \nambiguity. Theology made the notion of infinity positive, luminous, and
    \nunequivocal. All ambiguity and obscurity encountered in the notion of
    \ninfinity was interpreted as the consequence of human finitude and
    \nimperfection alone. Infinity itself was interpreted as an absolutely clear
    \nand sharp notion, and therefore an ideal subject of mathematical
    \ninvestigation.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    It’s hard to take this seriously. Pre-christian mathematicians didn’t
    \nunderstand infinity, because they viewed it as an unknown with negative connotations, but because of their belief in god, the wonderful christian
    \nmathematicians were able to see it as a definite positive but unknowable. Right, Ladislav. Just back away from the keyboard slowly, and go with these nice men in white monks robes, OK?<\/p>\n

    It gets worse when he starts talking about algebra. One of the really
    \ndreadful things about this train-wreck of a paper is that it pretends that
    \nmathematics started with the Greeks – so if the Greeks didn’t know it, then it
    \nwas unknown before monotheism. But much of the best of early math had nothing
    \nto do with the Greeks. Algebra may have been introduced to the west by Muslim
    \nscholars, but it was invented in India.     Brahmagupta<\/a>, who I wrote
    \nabout in my article about     zero<\/a> quite
    \ndefinitely worked with the roots of what became known as algebra, roughly 1000
    \nyears before algebra was known in Europe. The Arabic scholars learned it when
    \nthe Caliph of the Arab empire invited one of the students of Brahmagupta to
    \ncome to Baghdad to teach Hindu astronomy sometime around 700AD. But our man
    \nLadislav doesn’t let little things like his own ignorance get in the way of a
    \nnice piece of Christian propoganda.<\/p>\n

    This bit caused me to spray soda out through my nose. I can’t even comment
    \non it, it’s just too much.<\/p>\n

    \nA similar tension between the ontological definiteness (necessary for the
    \napplication of arithmetical operations) and epistemological indefiniteness is
    \ncharacteristic in the notion of the unknown in algebra. The unknown is unknown
    \nfor us, finite beings. For God there are no unknowns at all. As soon as he
    \nlooks at the formulation of an algebraic problem, he immediately sees the
    \nvalue of the unknown. He has no need to solve the equations, because due to
    \nhis omniscience, he immediately knows the solutions. Thus, in a way similar to
    \nthe case of the theory of probability, in algebra too, the ontological
    \nambiguity, which prevented the Greeks from mathematicizing this area, was
    \ntransformed into an epistemological ambiguity, having its space, and motion.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Whew, got past that one without any more soda on the keyboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Another piece of junk that I received: “The Invisible Link Between Mathematics and Theology”, by a guy named “Ladislav Kvasz”, published in a rag called “Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith”. (I’m not going to quote much from this, because the way that the PDF is formatted, it requires a huge amount of manually editing.) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fundamentalism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4lzZS-4u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.goodmath.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}