All posts by Wintery Knight

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William Lane Craig on the unexpected applicability of mathematics to nature

 

You might remember that Dr. Craig used a new argument in his debate with Lawrence Krauss in Melbourne, Australia.

My notes on the debate record it thus:

The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics:

  • The underlying structure of nature is mathematical – mathematics is applicable to nature
  • Mathematical objects can either be abstract objects or useful fiction
  • Either way, there is no reason to expect that nature should be linked to abstract objects or fictions
  • But a divine mind that wants humans to understand nature is a better explanation for what we see

And now Dr. Craig has expanded on it in the Q&A section of his Reasonable Faith web site.

The question:

Dear Dr Craig

Firstly can I thank you for all your work. My faith in Christ has been enormously strengthened through studying your work in apologetics in particular and I have grown in confidence in my Christian witness.

My question relates to numbers and mathematics as a whole. On the Defenders podcast you state that as God is the only self-existent, necessary being, numbers and mathematical objects, whilst being useful, don’t actually exist as these too would exist necessarily and independently of God. If this is the case, how can it be that mathematics is so easily applied to the natural world? Surely if mathematics only existed in our minds, we would expect to see no correlation between it and how the physical world actually is?

Michael

United Kingdom

Excerpt from the answer:

As philosopher of mathematics Mary Leng points out, for the non-theistic realist, the fact that physical reality behaves in line with the dictates of acausal mathematical entities existing beyond space and time is “a happy coincidence” (Mathematics and Reality [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010], p. 239). Think about it: If, per impossibile, all the abstract objects in the mathematical realm were to disappear overnight, there would be no effect on the physical world. This is simply to reiterate that abstract objects are causally inert. The idea that realism somehow accounts for the applicability of mathematics “is actually very counterintuitive,” muses Mark Balaguer, a philosopher of mathematics. “The idea here is that in order to believe that the physical world has the nature that empirical science assigns to it, I have to believe that there are causally inert mathematical objects, existing outside of spacetime,” an idea which is inherently implausible (Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998], p. 136).

By contrast, the theistic realist can argue that God has fashioned the world on the structure of the mathematical objects. This is essentially what Plato believed. The world has mathematical structure as a result.

This argument was also made by mechanical engineering professor Walter Bradley in a lecture he gave on scientific evidence for an intelligent designer. You can read an essay that covers some of the material in that lecture at Leadership University.

Excerpt:

The physical universe is surprising in the simple mathematical form it assumes. All the basic laws of physics and fundamental relationships can be described on one side of one sheet of paper because they are so few in number and so simple in form (see table 1.1).

[…]It has been widely recognized for some time that nature assumes a form that is elegantly described by a relatively small number of simple, mathematical relationships, as previously noted in table 1.1. None of the various proposals presented later in this chapter to explain the complexity of the universe address this issue. Albert Einstein in a letter to a friend expressed his amazement that the universe takes such a form (Einstein 1956), saying:

You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world to the degree that we may speak of such comprehensibility as a miracle or an eternal mystery. Well, a priori one should expect a chaotic world which cannot be in any way grasped through thought. . . . The kind of order created, for example, by Newton’s theory of gravity is of quite a different kind. Even if the axioms of the theory are posited by a human being, the success of such an enterprise presupposes an order in the objective world of a high degree which one has no a priori right to expect. That is the “miracle” which grows increasingly persuasive with the increasing development of knowledge.

Alexander Polykov (1986), one of the top physicists in Russia, commenting on the mathematical character of the universe, said: “We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it.” Paul Davies, an astrophysicist from England, says, “The equations of physics have in them incredible simplicity, elegance and beauty. That in itself is sufficient to prove to me that there must be a God who is responsible for these laws and responsible for the universe” (Davies 1984). Successful development of a unified field theory in the future would only add to this remarkable situation, further reducing the number of equations required to describe nature, indicating even further unity and integration in the natural phenomena than have been observed to date.

The whole paper that started this off is called “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics”, and it is a must read for advanced Christian defenders. You can read the whole thing here.

New study: break-ups are harder for men than for women

I found a new 2024 study that is related to male-female romantic relationships! A lot of people think that men are less committed than women, but if you look at the data, men initiate fewer divorces than women, and they take break-ups a lot harder than women. And lesbian couples have the highest rates of divorce! Let’s take a look at the data.

Here’s the report on the new study, from the New York Post:

Breaking up is hard to do — for men, anyway.

That’s because males care more about being in a relationship than females, a new study set to be published in Behavioural and Brain Sciences found, according to PsyPost.

Researchers at the Humboldt University of Berlin are pouring cold water on the popular belief that gals are more desperate for a partner — saying that guys are more likely to experience loneliness after calling it quits, and are less likely to see the silver lining to the situation.

The team analyzed more than 50 scientific studies on gender differences in heterosexual relationships to come up with their findings.

Women are more likely to initiate divorces than men:

The results could explain why men are less likely than women to initiate a break-up when in a steady relationship — 70% of divorces are initiated by women, the experts stated.

Men are also more likely to search for a partner and to be focused on entering into a serious relationship — perhaps because they have more to gain.

“We know from numerous studies that women typically receive more emotional support from their social environment than men. Therefore, heterosexual men are more dependent on their partners to fulfill their emotional needs than heterosexual women,” Iris Wahring, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

“In short, steady relationships are psychologically more important for men than for women.”

If you look at the instability rates of lesbians, they have the highest rates of relationship instability of any relationship arrangement.

During the five years of marriage, lesbian spouses have twice the risk of divorce compared to heterosexual marriages. Only after 25 years of marriage this difference seems to be gone, the study shows. Same-sex male couples only have an 8 percent higher chance of getting divorced than heterosexual couples in that same period. Senior researcher Ruhne Zahl Olsen is not surprised by the results. They have been the same in other countries, he says to Aftenposten.

[…]For the survey, 5,187 same-sex couples and marriages entered between 1993 and 2018 were examined.

This is important, because in lesbian relationships, it’s two women. So, you can’t blame the high rate of instability / divorce on any man. There isn’t any man there to blame!

Anyway, I thought this new study would be good for men. Men are always getting beaten up and blamed for everything. But not everything about men is bad. I don’t mean the top 20% most attractive men, who have so many options that they don’t have to be nice to any particular woman. I mean the vast majority of ordinary men who just work and live quiet lives. They are the ones who are good at commitment.

Something to think about for those who are wondering “where are all the good men?”. Men are good, you just have to choose the good character ones.

The pipeline from divorce to school shootings

There was a recent school shooting in Minneapolis, MN, so in this post, I’ll reflect on how to prevent more school shootings. People on the left say that we need to confiscate the weapons owned by law-abiding people, so that only the criminals and police will have guns. People on the right want to allow adults at the schools to train and carry weapons. But I have a different idea: let’s ban divorce.

First, how many of the shooters are from divorced homes? This new article from The Federalist is very popular, and it has a lot of data. It starts off by mentioning that the Minneapolis school shooter’s parents were divorced. But he’s not the only one!

It says:

A 2018 international academic study found a strong link between childhood separation from parents and an “elevated risk for later violent criminality.” (The study specifically excluded children with deceased parents.) A subsequent nationwide analysis bolstered these results, finding a strong association between two-parent households and cities with markedly less crime. Indeed, nearly every school shooting in 2013 involved young men with divorced or never married parents.

“The social scientific evidence about the connection between violence and broken homes could not be clearer,” says Brad Wilcox, Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and considered a leading authority on marriage and family.

Westman’s parents divorced in 2013. Westman would have been about 12, on the cusp of adolescence. After the split, Westman, a biological male who later identified as a woman, bounced from school to school. And dad remarried — the shooter’s manifesto mentions the step-mom.

So, when arguing social issues, it’s not good to argue from one case here and one case there. We need a study that covers all the cases. If you don’t use a study, then people will always say “well, I am special, I won’t end up like that one person”.

More data from the article:

Decades of research also demonstrate solid connections between divorce and single-parent households, on the one hand, and other serious child outcomes, on the other. For example, boys in single mother households have twice the rate of juvenile delinquency. Divorce increases the risk for depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicide, which can be particularly acute during adolescence. The evidence Westman left behind exhibited deep levels of stress, self-loathing, and hate. Westman alluded to school suspensions and smoked marijuana. Then, after killing two children, Westman committed suicide, just like the Sandy Hook and Colorado school shooters.

If you’ve ever spoken to a police officer or read a book by J. Warner Wallace, then you’ll know that a huge majority of men in prisons were raised fatherless.

The article says:

According to a central finding from a 2024 marriage report, “young men from non-intact families are more likely to land in prison or jail than they are to graduate from college.” Westman appears not to have even graduated from high school. Still, divorce rates remain high, marriage rates plummet, and innocent children die.

One of the things that people on the left like to do with studies is to say “well, this study is not applicable because it doesn’t look at a large enough sample size” or “this study is not applicable because it doesn’t look at a long enough time period”. That’s what they love to do with studies of fatherless kids. But some of the studies cited in that article are about over a million children, and over decades of time. So, you can’t dismiss these studies.

So, the next time that you get into a discussion about school shootings, ask the people on the secular left if they are willing to ban no-fault divorce. Typically, they will say no. Most divorces are initiated by women, and people want women to have divorce as an option. We don’t expect women to have to do the work to measure the man and then take responsibility for their choices. Society wants women to have a “get out of accountability free” card, just like they do with abortion. But as you can see, making divorce easy causes a lot of problems for children.

Now, some feminists will say “do you expect women to stay in unhappy marriages?” And the answer to that is, of course not. I think that the person who initiates the divorce should leave the marital home with the clothes on their back. Not one penny of family money, and no more access to kids, except if the remaining parent agrees to it. The parent who remains should keep everything. That would end divorce pretty quickly, and all the problems that arise from the fatherlessness that divorce causes. What do you think?