That sounds ridiculous. Surely, maths; an academic art purely based on logic and arithmetic cannot possibly relate in any way, to the spiritual and interpretational themes of religion? As an atheist myself, I have also thought that there’s no reason to believe in God because we have science to explain everything in the universe, but after doing some research and reading, it has shed light on the issue; a different coloured light from a different perspective, and I hope to also help you to see things differently.
Well firstly, (just like a maths problem) we need to know what the question means. And to answer the question of does math prove the existence of God, we must define what math is. Math is about how numbers interact with each other, but how did humans discover math in the first place? We can’t see, hear, touch, smell or taste math (although four cookies minus three cookies is one delicious cookie). Therefore, math must be invented by the minds of humans. But math also explains things: it can explain anything from the number of cookies to the forces of satellites in space orbiting earth. So if math comes from the mind of humans, and explains things, then where does it actually come from? There are two main possibilities: either humans invented maths to explain what we observe in the natural order of earth, or humans discovered maths as it already governs the universe. Here is why the latter option is correct:
How many digits of pi do you know? I myself remember flexing to my friends I knew thirteen in my primary school and everybody thought I was so incredibly smart, but then I went to Wilson’s and my friends knew the first hundred digits. Every year, there are national competitions to see who can recite the most digits of pi, with the world record being 70,000 set in 2023. This shows how, just like the endless digits of pi, math is infinite. There are an infinite number of numbers from one to infinity, and even an infinite number of numbers between numbers one and two. Since our world on Earth is finite and math is infinite, maths simply isn’t from our world.
Furthermore, there is also proof that maths has a designer. For example, the Mandelbrot set has the simple equation “z=z^2 + c” with the most basic primary school algebra, but it has an infinitely repeating pattern when you graph it in the complex plane. No matter how far or wide you zoom in, you will never reach the end. And it truly frightens me to think that a little shape contains so much complexly simple information (and that it will outlive all of us until the end of space and time and the sun explodes and the whole universe restarts and…) and that humans didn’t even invent this; we discovered it by accident.
So where did it come from? Well common sense tells us that its too intricate and complex to be designed by chance, and since it’s infinite it defies the laws of nature on Earth. Maths is infinite and exists outside of nature and the only other thing that is infinite and exists outside of nature is (you guessed it) God. So the next time your Maths teacher tells you that maths cannot possibly coexist with God, tell them to think again.
