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Showing posts with the label transcendental

Math, Logic and Fundamentally Flawed Presuppositions

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"Ow!", he cried out into the uncaring darkness of the living room. "What happened?", she asked, almost concerned. "You left out a number six and I tripped over it. Can't you put those things away when you're through with them?" What a stupid concept. Numerals are not tangible objects that can be tripped over or skipped across a pond. If you write the number "6" on a chalkboard, you have a representation of the numeral six, not "sixness" itself. If you erase that number from the chalkboard, the numeral of six continues to exist. Laws of logic are also intangible. You cannot put the law of identity in your pocket. You can type it out and then delete what you typed, but deleting your physical representation of the law does not cause it to cease to exist. Atheists and evolutionists are generally materialistic in their presuppositions. That is, they claim that the only reality is the material world, those things perce...

Did Mathematics Evolve?

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Numbers. Mathematics and their laws. We use them, and most of us take them for granted. But where do they come from? Like the laws of logic, numbers are not things, they are not material. They represent material things, but the laws of math and the laws of logic transcend material things; they are concepts . Yet, they exist independently, and are not subject to time, distance and culture. Again, where did the laws of mathematics come from? Most people have heard of “evolutionary biology.” But the term “evolution” is often applied in a broader sense (gradual, naturalistic changes over long ages) to other fields of study. Some people study geology or astronomy from an evolutionary perspective. But has anyone ever studied “evolutionary mathematics”? What would an evolutionist mathematician study? Can the existence of numbers and mathematical laws be explained by a time-and-chance naturalistic origin? To answer these questions, let us first consider some background ...