May 08, 2014
Algebraic Weeds
I’m just about ready to give
up on college classes. Seriously, no one my age should have to do Algebra. In
desperation I purchased, “Algebra for Dummies” but even then I’m still
struggling with the foreign language of mathematics. Aside from doing all the
required problems and equations, I must write a short paper exploring the
relationship of mathematics to our Christian faith. I’m to answer the question:
Did God create mathematics and men discover it or did men create mathematics as
a way to understand the amazing structure of creation? Maybe I’m too close to
the situation right now, but I can’t for the life of me think of any supporting
Scripture for either theory. What does come to mind however, is the parable of
the weeds. Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed
in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy
came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When
the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared” (Matt 13:24-26
NIV).
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2 comments:
Gail;
-----Mathematics is the language of technical truth. It is part of the information everything material innately possesses. In as much as God created a circle, He created the relationship between radius and circumference. Man only chose units for measurement and symbols for expression of those units and the processes of their correlations. To think man invented mathematics to understand the structure of God’s creation is to think man invented language to talk with God. Adam was created having language. Matter was created having math. Because man invented the shape of the symbol “1” no way demands that he invented the concept 1. He found the latter and invented the former. You might find a useful concept in the first hundred pages or so of Dr. Werner Gitt’s “In the Beginning was Information”. Any useful concept in the rest of the book is minutely interwoven within a mass of techno-bore.
-----So, here’s the rhetoric of your proof. Because man calls it a rock did he make it a rock or discover it to be a rock? When he defines the properties of water, is he making those properties or discovering them and formulating mental constructs for communicating them? When he writes the equation for the correlation between the weight of the rock and the weight of the water the rock displaces, did he invent a language for expressing the correlation, or did he invent the correlation? The rock’s density as described by the correlation between its weight and the weight of an equal volume of water existed throughout all of the five days before man was created. It is a concept man did not create, but discovered. The math of it is relationships man did not create, but discovered. To the void of the earth God added separation of waters from land, and then added lights, and then added plants, and then animals, each time doing a simple mathematical step without man’s being there to quantify it. It was quantified in God’s doing; it was measured in His seeing; it was expressed in His pronunciation of good upon it. It was simply not particularized into a thought of man, of course, because man was not yet created. Every measurement and mathematical description man has ever expressed existed as part of the information of what God measured and described before man measured and particularized its expression. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are all innately part of the dimensions of the material world. Not one of them needed particularized by man to exist, but each needed particularized for him to communicate it. Man did not create mathematics. He created a means to communicate its existence.
-----“Whence then comes wisdom?..It is hid from the eyes of all living…and [God] knows its place…When He gave to the wind its weight, and meted out the waters by measure; when He made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder; then He saw it and declared it; He established it, and searched it out.” (Job 28:20-27) Let me offer the proposition that all mathematics is a small part of God’s wisdom expressed in the form of matter. Subsequently, man noticed it and invented a yardstick to measure it while bragging to have also invented the measurement his yardstick took. He failed to notice that what he measured was as long as it was. That is the purest of math; a thing always equates to itself; the simplest image of IAM stamped into clay for containing the arrogant spirit of man. Ha, ha, chortle, chortle. It’s so easy to fall in love when you listen to God who brought forth wisdom long before He did this creation (Prov 8:22-30)
Love you all,
Steve Corey
-----Of course the wind has weight. It moves ships by the same substance expressing that weight. And the weight of it is no more than an interaction between it and the planet by a precisely equated amount of energy formulated as gravity. There’s only as much water in the oceans as there is. But God measured it there. Yet, it does not stay there. For in the decree for rain are the formulae of energy transferred from the airs of the wind into the particles of water according to a precise equation for lifting a mist into the clouds. Then when stray electrons abound in a certain place more than the exact amount of resistance to their flow by a particular path unto another exact location, they go there with a bang. It never took a man’s mind for all those relationships to be precise and specifically correlated for rendering exactly the doings they render. Everyday they do it more times in more places around this world where no human eyes see it for human minds to measure and equate it by far more than they do it where there are. And yet all their mathematics are present and exact without a human eye. Math does not need man to exist. It exists from God’s wisdom. And it needs only His eye for appreciation.
-----Within the simple being of everything there is addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and all combinations thereof. Moreover, beyond the event horizon of the black hole are concepts sealed from the mind of man and silently barking in laughter at man’s pride of knowledge.
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