Most atheists are materialists, i.e., they believe philosophically, and assert via science subverted to a materialistic worldview, that the material universe of matter and molecules is all that exists. They generally deny the objective reality of consciousness, will, mind, etc., which, according to a materialistic view can be nothing more than ill-defined emanations of a human being's molecular makeup and chemistry.
To which I say, "phooey" -- materialism makes a mockery and absurdity of all that makes us truly human.
One of the lines of argument I have been making on this blog has to do with the apparent reality of immaterial things. A committed materialist just cannot let the foot of the immaterial in the door. Once the door is opened a crack...
Anyway, to my delight and surprise I have discovered that others have made the same observation about reality, and make the same argument -- that reality consists of both the material and the immaterial.
Two such immaterial things are numbers and mathematics. Numbers exist. They exist whether or not they have a correspondence in the material world. What do I mean? Well, the number two exists, and it has a correspondence in the material world, for example, I have two feet (both left).
But what about numbers that exist for which there is no equivalence in the material world? They still exist. And they are immaterial.
I've said all of this to talk about this article that appeared recently. Seems that mathematicians at UCLA have discovered a 13-million-digit prime number.
Prime numbers are divisible by only two whole positive numbers: themselves and one. 7 and 11 are two examples (which makes going to a 7-Eleven a doubly prime experience).
Mersenne Primes (named for their discoverer, 17th century French mathematician Marin Mersenne) are expressed as 2P-1, or two to the power of "P" minus one. P is itself a prime number. For the new prime, P is 43,112,609.
It took brilliant minds and awesome computing power to discover this latest prime.
And it was there all the time, waiting to be discovered.
The question is: Who put it there?
And, in a purely materialistic universe, why should such things exist?
7 comments:
What about the laws that govern the material world? Material or immaterial?
1. It is impossible to define the atheist's outlook as a group. We don't have one beyond lacking a belief in god. But it was a nice straw man.
2. You argument that prime numbers are proof of god is...tenuous.
Tom: Well, for starters, "law" is itself a concept, and, as such, is immaterial -- and yet the belief in laws (quite apart from the instances of them) is quite persistent among human societies.
I think you could argue both ways on the laws that govern the material world.
A materialist would argue that the laws are simply intellectual formulations of the way things are. But I think that is inadequate.
A dualist would argue that the fact that the material world operates according to laws is itself an astonishing thing in an uncreated, undesigned universe, and that where laws exist, so does a Lawgiver -- this is certainly true in human societies, and so it would be reasonable to extrapolate to the universe itself.
*sigh*
Mathematics is a human invention used to model and describe certain classes of phenomena.
Prime numbers are a logical result of basic integer arithmetic - and as impressive as a multi-million digit prime is, it demonstrates nothing except the fairly obvious conclusion that an infinite set is unimaginably large.
As a proof of god's existence it demonstrates nothing. If you wish to claim that the mathematics of integers shows us God's fingerprints on the world, that's cool - but then someone is going to ask you quantify your claims.
Mgs - I would argue that mathematics is more of a human discovery than invention. 2 + 2 = 4 is true, I would argue, regardless of whether a material world exists or not, and quite apart of whether or not humans are around to "invent" it. And it would still be true should this universe cease to exist. Furthermore, 2 + 2 = 4 is true even if there are not two of something and two more of something in some concrete material sense.
All I'm arguing for is the suggestiveness of numbers and mathematics of immaterial realities. And once you have these, the materialist worldview is proved to be an inadequate and insufficient view of reality.
Math was created in Ancient Egypt as a way of keeping track of resources and taxes. That means that math arose as a means to demonstrate something in the natural (materialistic) world. Math does not perfectly describe the natural world, just look at quantum mechanics. We can only estimate things in quantum mechanics because at that level nothing is for certain.
If you were correct we could, with mathematics, calculate everything definitively. We would always know where electrons are and we could know both where a particle is and the speed at which it is traveling (Heisenberg uncertainty principle). Since we don't mathematics are without a doubt a invention by man!!
"If you were correct we could, with mathematics, calculate everything definitively. "
This simply does not follow from anything I said.
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