According to mathematics, what is the probability God does or doesn't exist?

Einstein said this: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”

That would depend on the parameters of the god in question.

The way that science works is that you have to make a statement that is falsifiable and then perform an experiment that is capable of showing the statement is false. If, despite all your efforts, the statement still holds, then it is tentatively accepted.

The problem with the God hypothesis is that it is not falsifiable. God is simply the representation of what we don’‘t know. Before Newton, God moved the planets. Before Darwin, God crafted each species. God keeps on shrinking. Since there will always be things that we don’t know, there will always be something for God to do, even if it is just to enforce the fundamental laws of physics and perform the occasional miracle when nobody is watching. However, by this very definition of God, proving existence or non-existence is in principle impossible.

I always go with
Y=1 x (0.5 / (3000 + X + Z))
Y: probability that a particular god exists
3000: number of gods that have been known to be worshipped on this planet
X: number of gods that have been worshipped on this planet but are as of yet unknown
Z: number of gods that have been or are still worshipped by alien civilisations in the universe.

@Seek_Kolinahr
The OP has capitalised “God”, therefore he refers to the abrahamic god, ergo the equation applies in full.
If we assume another 3000 unknown Human gods and, because the universe is really, really big, a trillion alien gods, the probability that the abrahamic god exists is 5×10^(-13).

The part of my equation dealing with the question “does some sort of god exist” is the 0.5, a coin flip.
But of course, I only chose that for simplicity’s sake, because that is not at all accurate, because it assumes complete ignorance of the workings of the universe.
However, we have learned a lot about the universe, and every bit of knowledge that we have acquired implies a universe without the need for a god, and as such the base probability of there being some sort of god(which then has to be split by the number of possible gods) is in reality much much lower than 0.5.

Watch

According to Stephen Hawking, none.

((-1)+(-2))k= A
{ -1 and -2 represent the two premium question. k represent knowledge and A represents the singular answer which satisfies both questions }

When ? is added to the entire equation then the it becomes
(((-1)+(-2))k=A)?

{ ? represent doubt which ask a further question which place the entire equation in jeopardy }

Expanding the equation:

((-1)+(-2))k?=A?

(-1)k?+(-2)k?=A?

{ here we see the result of doubt which every single thing in the original equation become questionable, even the the first question and second }

So this is what makes up our world, doubt is the premium thing, which negates every answer including the Truth the answer of answers, thus we believes lies and that Lie.

It employs knowledge in its service in forever asking questions then alienating it from its answer thus creating more questions thus concluding that there are more questions than answers.

Now the wise becomes foolish and knowledge becomes ignorant.

Nevertheless whosoever is willing to adopt the simplicity of a child and discern the first question and the the second question which is a representation of the first.
And the two inseparable by the fact that they share the same answer.

Whosoever preserve this answer will preserve himself and would know the answers to all things including and especially the question of God/TRUTH.

I’d say 50/50 chance since it can’t be proved or disproved.

The probability cannot be assessed, even with @ragingloli‘s formula.

A Bayesian inference is one way of determining how much evidence is required to change your opinion. It follows the general scheme of:

“Old Belief (Prior Probability)” + “Data” = “New Belief (Posterior Probability)”

In more technicality:

P(God|Event) = P(Event|God) * P(God) / P(Event)

In general, this means if you are already very certain that God exists, then it will take a lot of evidence to convince you otherwise. If you are already very certain that God does not exist, then it would also take a lot of evidence to convince you otherwise.

In other words: The strength of evidence for God depends on how likely it is for God to exist in the first place. Since we do not know the original probability, we cannot determine the strength of the evidence.

Statistically speaking there is a vanishingly small probability of any gods existence..

I’d reckon most of us would say that the likelihood that Wodan fathered the Norse Gods and created the Universe is extremely slim. Nor would we be likely to accept that Amon Ra is a Charioteer God with a flaming chariot called the Sun that he drives across the sky every day, or that Atum in Ennead’s semen became the primal components of the Universe. I think we can come close to ruling out the African claim that Mbombo vomited the world out when feeling a stomach ache. To me, all these and thousands more claims of the sole creator god seem to have, to borrow @Neodarwinian‘s phrase, ”...a vanishingly small probability… of being true. And yet each of these ridiculous sets of claims led millions of humans to accept them based on not one shred of evidence.

Imagine if someone told you they had a unique ability to see ghosts, and that the ghost of Elvis Presley was standing right beside you at that very moment, holding your hand. Would you believe them simply because they asserted it as true? You wouldn’t be able to categorically disprove it, but what probability would you assign to the accuracy of their claim? Near zero, I should hope.

As @Seek_Kolinahr noted above, the probability you might assign to a god has to do with what claims are being made about that god. Since there have been thousands of sole creator gods posited, each with different creation stories attached, no more than 1 such claim can be accurate, and all could easily be equally false.

If you want to confine our probability assignment to the Christian Trinity with a son that was born of a father but existed infinitely long with that father, and that constantly intervenes in cause and effect, yet leaves no visible traces of so doing, then @Neodarwinian‘s vanishingly small probability comes into play. There is just too much that science can test about the claims for such a god that doesn’t come out in the wash to give any more credibility to that creator claim than to the ones for Zeus or the American Indian Great Rabbit Nanabozho.

Mathematics is a diverse field of study. I’m sure you could find a formula to prove, or in fact disprove most things. It’s all in the formula and I would think that it depends upon the opinions or polarized leanings of the mathematician. Just like a computer does as it is programmed to do, math will answer questions based upon how the question is written. That just to say, I don’t think it’s the correct medium to answer your question as there are simply to many variables.

Well if there was an answer to the question we wouldn’t have to ask the question therefore some of us could quite with the charades. :-)

@DWW25921 I will accept that when you come up with the formula to prove that 2 + 2 = 1. I’m not talking about hand waving solutions were you arbitrarily decide you want to deal with infinities being added or some such. What’s a serious mathematical formula to prove that simple arithmetic is anything other than what we learned it was in grammar school?

@KaY_Jelly I don’t see the question as a charade at all. It’s an interesting question precisely because it leads us to realize that some claims asserting a particular god are clearly quite unlikely to be true—meaning they have a very high probability of being false. On the other hand, the idea of some universal force or law that preexisted and ordained the Universe but that remains aloof and watches it run its course, or an eternal Universe which is itself pure intelligence, these ideas of god have a considerably higher probability of being true.

@ETpro It’s an interesting question, I’ll give you that. I did my best with it. Honestly, that’s all I got.

@ETpro The question is not a charade. That is not what I meant. If there actually was or is an answer to the question there would be no need for our charades. Therefore we wouldn’t have to figure out what is what and who is who, there would be no need for the math or even religious groups or secularism and so on and so forth because we would just know and we would be all knowing then wouldn’t we. That’s all I meant. The question itself is a very good question.

@KaY_Jelly There most definitely are answers to the question. Suppose I tell you the following story:

I thought nothing of it when I bought the old, well-worn toaster at the Goodwill Thrift Store. It was in the back with the junk they couldn’t sell up front for a higher price. I needed a toaster and it was only a buck back in the back, so I bought it.

When I got it home I plugged it in and popped a slice of bread in it to see if it still worked. There was a blinding flash, and I suddenly realized that the old toaster was god, and I was in the immediate presence of the divine. I have never before felt such an all-encompassing feeling of total love and infinite wisdom. Then the toast popped up and I received the anointing of the tha Holy Toast and from that moment on, signs and wonders followed me everywhere I went.

I am sure you would not assign a high probability to that story being true. It makes specific claims that are actually testable. Do signs and wonders follow me everywhere I go. No, they do not. So that claim, at the very least, is false. What is the likelihood that something manufactured by man 13.8 billion years after the creation of the Universe was in fact responsible for creating the Universe, but could only work its wonders when plugged into a 120 volt 60 Hz. AC circuit? Slim to none. A far more plausible explanation of my story would be that I was either playing with your head, or had taken leave of my senses and was reporting what, to me, had been a very real hallucination.

I’m sure that, for the short list of creator deities I mentioned above, you would agree that most of them are extremely unlikely to exist. Their prophets and priests make claims for them that are demonstrably false. I suppose there could be a creator who delights in lying to his creation, but that strikes me as unsatisfying. So priests who posit gods that clash with observed facts are, to my thinking, probably putting forward false claims. Thus, the probability of the god they are selling actually existing is slim to none. There are some religions that leave the definition of god very open, and to me, because they don’t make specific claims and thus don’t clash with observed facts, they stand a better probability of being true.

@flip86 that was very nice. But it seems to revolve around a Bayesian, which means the initial calculation is only as good as the prior probability. Bayesian is really good at iteration as more evidence comes in, which in this case is doubtful. Given that, it wholly relies on the prior probability, which is a function of the preconceived notions of the guy running the formula.

I am religious and believe in God but do not feel it is up to scientific debate because a god who exists outside the universe, which the judeochristian position asserts, is really not falsifiable. I feel no need to “convert the heathen” because I feel that their position is just as tenable as my own, perhaps more so given the lack of empirical evidence. I feel it is ok to be religious as long as you don’t brandish it like a club because
1) that seems to go against the central premise of western religions: don’t be an ass
2) I can’t recall where, but I seem to recall reading some anthropology or sociology popular press that intimated that human beings have a need for religion. So I don’t feel bad about indulging in that need as long as it doesn’t impact anyone else negatively.

@ETpro OK but where is the math in that? My answer was to completely eliminate the need for the math, and thus eliminating our desire to prove one way or another because without a logical mathematical equation or even a world wide mass grande vision for evidentiary purposes you yourself are just going on into charades again.

There could be a more plausible explanation, but it would be after the fact. Suppose I were to tell you a story about Lucia, Francisco, Jacinta, I think the story becomes a little more believable than the toaster..

I find it funny that in 2000 the Vatican released secrets that were given to the girls and the “errors of Russia”, given what’s happening today.

BTW, a “radiating beam” coming from your toaster is not classified as a serious apparition by at least the Catholic church. If you want to know which ones are taken seriously, go here.

@KaY_Jelly You think that the story about the Fatima Apparition is more plausible than the revelation from my divine used toaster. Perhaps you think that because a large number of people claimed to have witnessed at least some of the Fatima apparitions. Good. That’s exactly my point. Without being able to quantify the probability for a given religious claim with any precision, we still can say something meaningful about which claims are more likely to be valid, and which are less likely. Yes, it’s fuzzy math, but probability calculations often are fuzzy.

If my story about the radiating beam from the used toaster were not just a fabrication to make a point, had it actually happened to me and affected me as described, do you think I would care what the Catholic Church had to say about it? As a believing Christian, do you care what the Grand Imam of the Al-Mu‘izz li-Dīn Allāh Mosque of the Fatimid Caliphate, arguably the top religious leader in all of Islam, thinks of the claim that Jesus was the Son of God?

Interestingly, both the top Mosque in Cairo and the apparition in Russia involve Fatima, but if one claim is valid, the other is obviously invalid. They cannot both be valid claims, as each invalidated the other. They could both be invalid claims.

@ETpro Well we could argue religious and non religious rationality all day long, I can tell you that I have personally come to know that I do not hold the catholic church in high regards nor do I hold Islam in high regard and when it comes to logic for me I believe that Jesus was God and I can pick apart why I think other religions are not logical, but I do not want to get into that.

You end making the statement that “They could both be invalid claims.” While this is true, they also could both be valid, or one a hoax and one valid.

As I’ve already said trying to figure out which is the real God is tricky for some people.

or they could both be nonsense.

Assuming that God either does or does not exist (and that these are the only two possible options) then the probablility that God does or does not exist is 1, since the question is expressed as a tautology.

@rexacoracofalipitorius what you said is precisely the complement of what @ragingloli said

50–50 shot. I’d take those odds to Vegas.
Strictly according to your question:
God exists (Universe was designed) = p’
No god (We are a happy accident) = p
p+p’ = 1.

My gut feeling is that the probabilities are more like p’ = .6 & p = .4

@KaY_Jelly No, they are mutually exclusive assertions. Both cannot possibly be true. But both could be false.

@ARE_you_kidding_me The same logic would make the likelihood of flying reindeer, pink unicorns, and dancing fairies a 50–50 shot as well.

I think the moment we can proof that God exists, like having an address somewhere in Amsterdam or Washington, for instance, will be the moment we all stop caring.

Prayer would be like paying taxes.

@ETpro No, it does not. The probability of pink unicorns is 0.0, flying reindeer have a higher probability ~.00001 since we can catapult them and dancing fairies the probability is variable depending on where you live and what kind of bar you frequent. There is ample evidence for design in the universe even if you don’t wish to acknowledge it. There is PLENTY of room for the big bang, evolution and random accidents in a created universe. Non-theological of course. Theology has a probability of ~.0000001 of being 100% true and a 100% probability of being at least partially true even if it is just the historical context that is true. This whole argument people get into about god…no god, creation…accident is all grey, it’s never going to be as black and white as believers and nonbelievers would like to believe so they can sleep at night.

There is a 100% probability that God exists. God is in charge of all that we don’t know. Science is about knowledge and power. Religion is about mystery and powerlessness. Since there will always be things we don’t know, God must exist. However, as I pointed out above, God’s scope of action keeps diminishing. God is dying of irrelevance.

@LostInParadise That’s a valid assessment, spot on actually.

@ARE_you_kidding_me The evidence for Pink Unicorns and the evidence for a creator deity are equal. I have studied cosmology in some depth, and there is no evidence for a designer. Just positing the need for a designer to get complexity leads to the question, who designed the designer, because the designer would need to be far more complex than the design. You can say the designer was eternal and needed no designer. I can say the Universe is eternal and needed no designer.

So we have the fact that the Universe could be eternal. It is also true that it could come from nothing, and by that I really mean nothing, as in no time, no space, no matter and not even any laws of physics. Interestingly, if the Universe came from nothing, the laws of quantum mechanics would require it to be exactly as we observe it. This Universe is the only one that could come from nothing.

In fact, we can’t even prove that any universe exists. You might be the only thing that exists, and you might be holding this conversation with yourself. Or we might all have poofed into existence 3 minutes ago complete with memories, and perceiving a universe with history that never actually happened. We could be part of an eternal multiverse. There are an infinite number of possibilities for a universe, but only one of them is right, and there is no compelling reason to assume the right one has anything to do with a god.

And as to flying reindeer, testing reindeer by pushing them off buildings, or cliffs, or launching them with catapults doesn’t prove they are incapable of flying. It only establishes that at that moment, they didn’t want to fly.

@LostInParadise Ah yes, the ever shrinking God of the gaps. In fact, that is exatly the god that @ARE_you_kidding_me is asserting.

@ETpro I’m not talking about holy ghosts or whatever. Like @LostInParadise said, the idea of god is much like a placeholder. We don’t know. To claim that you do know one way or the other is absurd. We are still talking about this universe anyway, getting in past that…. hell, anything goes.

@ETpro When you are looking at something like creation, or abiogenesis; where you honestly have no idea what did it, to claim you are 50% confident (I won’t even ask why you set your bar at 60%) is absurd. You don’t know. That is all that can be said with any confidence. We once were certain that the world was a flat plate floating in a sea held up by God, and surrounded by seven spheres of the heavens, with each of the planets visible to the human eye in its own sphere, the sun in its sphere, and the stars and heaven in the the 7th sphere. God moved all those spheres around the flat Earth.

But we found out none of this is remotely close to true. People like Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein and many more explained how just about all the complexity we see works today, and how it arose. Looking at something you do not understand and saying magic is doing it is no explanation at all. Just saying “I don’t know… Yet.” is all I see as justifiable. Saying God did it is claiming to know what you don’t know. It may turn out God did trigger the Big Bang. Is so, let’s find out. Let’s not claim we know what we don’t know because of some fear of the unknown.

@LostInParadise

” Science is about knowledge and power. Religion is about mystery and powerlessness. ”

Huh?

100% probability?!?

So, statistically speaking, a sure thing?

Yes, using my definition of God as the cause of all that we don’t know.

<—religious

@LostInParadise your god will get smaller as time goes on. That seems like a raw deal.

@LostInParadise

So, a metaphor.

I will use rutabaga as the ” cause ” of all that we don’t know.

Cause????

@drhat77 , @Neodarwinian You both seem to have the basic idea of what I am saying. If we don’t know what causes something then we can define God as whatever the cause is. For those things whose cause we know, there is no need for God to interfere. We know the scientific laws affecting a good part of what goes on. What does that leave God as being able to do? Less and less as time goes by. With so much accounted for, God is losing relevance. For those who would disagree, I ask two simple questions. What is it that God does? What do you personally do that is different because of your belief in God?

I see you are a non-believer. So am I. What I am saying is that there is no way of showing that God does not exist. We can, however, question the relevance of God. Put in simplest terms, what difference does it make whether or not God exists?

@ETpro I think enough evidence for design in mathematics alone has been found to warrant a P of .6. We actually do know some things that are hard but not impossible for simple chance. The old something out of nothing does not hold water for me at least not in this universe. Why is there a blueprint (math) then? Iterate Z=(Z^2)+C a few million times and see if you can’t see something lurking behind the scenes. I’m 60% on the fence.

@LostInParadise

” What I am saying is that there is no way of showing that God does not exist. ”

I do not ” show ” (prove) negatives but require positive evidence.

”. Put in simplest terms, what difference does it make whether or not God exists? ”

As a scientific question, everything. As a moral question it make a great deal of difference to the delusional types that justify anything in this nonentities name.

Every single facet of our human society exist and functions by the concept of singular authority by which they have their own identity. otherwise nothing in our society will work.

Now the individual will choose, submit and identify himself with that which he considers his Ultimate Authority. Whether that authority is identified as rock, or as an elusive ideology…..
This authority has his God.

Thus the Idea “God” permeates every facet of the human experience even those in denial cannot escape this.

@Neodarwinian , Suppose that E=mc^2 is part of God’s plan. How would knowing this make any difference? The formula’s usefulness remains the same. There would be no additional capability we get from knowing that it was God’s idea.

Suppose that all the people who die in natural disasters are chosen to do so by God. How would knowing this make a difference? To the casual observer, there is no observable pattern. The good appear to be taken along with the evil.

I could continue in this vein. All this talk about the existence or non-existence of God is completely insubstantial. If believing in God makes theists happy, then let the believe. They do have to contend with the fact that, due to our increasing knowledge, the things that we can ascribe to God covers a narrowing field.

That mathematics exists and can explain the operations of the universe is surprising and makes it possible that some sort of God exists. If there were nothing but chaos then God would be unimaginable.

@flutherother

” That mathematics exists and can explain the operations of the universe is surprising and makes it possible that some sort of God exists ”

Non sequitur.

@ARE_you_kidding_me There is NO evidence in the fact that Math exists to imply design. An eternal universe would also have to be ordered around math. The point is that claiming something outside time, space, energy and mass actually is responsible for everything within the universe is less logical than simply admitting “I don’t know.” It’s a massive violation of Ockham’s Razor. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.

Math may exist. If it does, we do not know why. That’s all we can say. In actual fact, we can’t even say math exists. I tend to be a mathematical realist, and based on your assertions I am guessing you are too. But we really don’t know.

Math exists because humans invented it. it is a language, devised by humans to describe the behaviour of the world around them.
The universe does not obey the laws of physics, or the theories they are contained in. The laws are a description of how the universe appears to work.
A bird needs no calculations to fly. The sun does not need calculations to do its nuclear fusion. They just do.

@ETpro Oh, math does exist we don’t invent it, we discover it. I’d be less inclined to believe in design if there were not odd things like pi,fractals and the like. Even then I’m no where near 100% I’m just 10% or so over “i don’t know”

” Oh, math does exist we don’t invent it, we discover it.”

Some agree with this statement, some don’t. So, how to garner the evidence supporting one or the other concept?

” Math exists because humans invented it. it is a language, devised by humans to describe the behavior of the world around them.”

Many think this the default position.

@Neodarwinian True it is a language we use (base 10), we also use others: base 2, base 8&16…. Does not matter how you describe it, the relationships are real, Mandelbrot & Julia sets are real…and freaky.

Also I forgot to add that you may want to rethink the idea that animals don’t use math, “they just do.”

Dolphin study

Pigeons are brilliant.

So how do we know we actually invented math?

@ARE_you_kidding_me As I said, I am a math realist right with you. The difference between us, and others who assert their inerrant grasp of reality and myself is that I actually recognize how much I really do not know. I recognize the inerrancy of claims to inerrant knowledge.

The various algorithms that produce various fractals are fascinating, and they tend to approximate things we observe in the natural world, but only to approximate. They fail miserably to match the complexity we actually see.

@Kay_Jelly What an amazing leap of logic. Math lets us display beautiful numerical relationships, therefore God did it. Why the Trinity and not Yahweh or Allah, or Brahma? Why not the mathematicians who actually figured out these neat relationships in base 10, and who understand there would be a completely different set of meaningful relationships in base 12, or 2, or 16, or 8.

@ETpro “Math lets us display beautiful numerical relationships, therefore God did it.”

Well that is a diluted half truth of what I wrote. I never said specifically “GOD DID IT”.

And I was never saying that math pointed to God specifically. As I said, does God elude us or doesn’t he? We do not have the answer, to either God existing or not, but yet you talk very specifically like God does not exist and like I am wrong for pointing out the obvious <that part we could do away with :), but I also talk very specifically like God does exist because of my faith but as we know there is more than one very real side to this as you also pointed out:
“Why the Trinity and not Yahweh or Allah, or Brahma?”
and which maybe you failed to notice that I pointed out as well
“So there are some very possible real equations for that, one is that He is the true creator and He has not made the equation discoverable for us or He has and some people just choose to not see it, or there is no creator and there is no equation for Him.”

How do you specifically know that God doesn’t give us the knowledge of mathematics we have? What if you choose not to see? How do I specifically know that He doesn’t? I have faith that he exists and each time I learn more about the Christian God His words and the story and the meaning of existence make more sense to me, and I am sure you can say the same thing for atheism and anyone can say the same thing for their own personal belief system.

I personally find logic in the Christian God not any of the others, I am repeating myself like a broken record here, but that is why I believe He exists and He for me is the one true creator, I am not speaking for anyone else, so if someone else wants to believe it is Hare Krishnah then let them argue with that logic, to me it is not logically sound, just like to you my faith in Christ is not logically sound, but I could argue logically with you about it or illogically until I am blue in the face and that will get us nowhere because we are not here to convert each other are we?

It is now becoming about proving a point and about us being right fighters, and at first I went into this with good intentions but now the lines are blurred, and thanks to @KNOWITALL who made me realize in another post that there is no point to this. And all on my own I realized that I can’t be a soldier for God if I keep acting like I am the devils advocate.

I would much prefer to discuss mathematical philosophy than religion. Related to the question of whether mathematics is discovered or invented is the question of the universality of mathematics. Does the same mathematics exist in any possible universe? Suppose there is some universe where the laws of physics are completely different from those in our world. Would they have the same mathematics. Since mathematical statements are reducible to logic, that is equivalent to asking whether logic is universal.

@KaY_Jelly You didn’t need to claim that math pointed to God. The link you posted was about nothing but that. I do not talk like God does not exist. I have said over and over and over that I simply am not going to believe that something exists because some ancient desert nomads said so. I am open to evidence.

Unlike you, I find the logic of the Christian God among the most suspect of any asserted creator deity. I see far more logic in ancient Hindu and Buddhist religious texts. If there is a God, I am nearly certain that the ideas they espouse about the creator come closer to the truth than any of the Abrahamic Religions.

@LostInParadise The reason I am a math realist is that I am confident that, if we were to contact an intelligent alien life form in this Universe, we’d quickly agree after suitable definitions were in place that 1 + 1 = 2. I am not so certain what we’d face in meeting an intelligence from a universe with different fundamental laws.

@ETpro OK. I understand.

This specific question is about math and God in math, so the video was a specific answer to the question. I’m sorry if it didn’t please you logically.

But to sum it all up on the logics for me that you were talking about if religion had a math code and that code was logic then for me Buddhism doesn’t mathematically work because the end result of Buddhism is to rid oneself of all desires but to have do that one first must have the desire to do so..to me that is not logical, I’m sorry.

@KaY_Jelly Actually, I find the math beautiful and satisfying. The symmetry of it pleases me a great deal. Looking deeply into math and science provides me a sense of grandeur and inspiration like nothing else I know of can do—the same sort of feeling that deeply religious people feel when they think they are in the presence of something holy, or an epiphany. It’s just that I don’t see how the film’s producer makes the leap from the beauty of the math to, “Thus, there obviously is a God and it’s the Trinity.”

Interesting thought on Buddhism. I have some serious problems with its logic as well.

My appreciation of math is as close as I get to a belief in God. What I find so fascinating and baffling is that there are two aspects to math.

Firstly, it is a set of self-contained abstractions. You could look at it as a set of games. Axioms provide the rules. You play the game by using the axioms to prove theorems.

Secondly, math applies to the real world. In most cases the real world provided the initial motivation for the mathematics, but the mathematics can be applied to so much more than the aspect of the real world that first provided the motivation. Consider numbers, which are one part of mathematics. Numbers were invented to count livestock and bushels of grain and to measure the area of property. Later it was found that numbers can be used to measure all kinds of things – such as weight, temperature, radiation and probability. Further on it was found that these measured aspects of the real world obeyed certain relationships such as conservation of energy and E=mc^2.

It is as if the mathematics provides a set of possible templates and the real world is forced to choose from them in order to work. Those who say that math is invented are attempting to shrug off what truly is a great mystery, what the physicist Eugene Wigner called the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.

@ETpro

” It’s just that I don’t see how the film’s producer makes the leap from the beauty of the math to, “Thus, there obviously is a God and it’s the Trinity.” ”

Yes, non sequiturs are hard to ” see! ”

@Neodarwinian Indeed they are. Because by definition, they really aren’t there to see.

Some people deny God’s existence because of a commitment to materialism. Some reject faith in God because of personal experiences. Some simply see no use for God. Some come from a religious background and purposefully reject it for various reasons. Some see faith and science as mutually exclusive. Then there are those who simply don’t bother thinking about God.

Although some may choose try to use mathematics to prove or disprove God, there is no mathematical equation that can figure out whether or not God exists. In short, someone’s belief or non-belief in God is built on some foundational choices. The most foundational choice of all is to exercise belief in God by faith.