George,
If I restrict myself to your exclusion of temporal considerations, the
answer is "Yes." But this is like the infamous "Have you quit beating
your wife yet?" I contend that a proper view of the deity recognizes that
the Creator is never surprised, indeed, cannot be surprised, whether by
what is being studied in complexity theory or by the free choices of
human beings. My question was posed to show that mathematics is a human
activity, a task taken on by a subcreator.
Dave
On Mon, 03 Sep 2001 22:27:02 -0400 george murphy <gmurphy@raex.com>
writes:
> "D. F. Siemens, Jr." wrote:
>
> > .....................................
> > If God created mathematics, which ones among the various
> alternatives?
> > Integer arithmetic, real numbers, imaginary numbers, mixed numbers
> (and
> > the sophisticated analytical ways to handle the latter), infinite
> > numbers, modular numbers (in infinite variety). Absolute geometry,
> > Euclidean, Lobachevskian, Riemannian, analytic, and various
> extensions in
> > terms of dimensions and techniques, etc. Newton's fluxions,
> Maclaurin's
> > redoing these as geometric theorems, differential calculus,
> integrals,
> > partial differentials, and a variety of more sophiticated
> versions. What
> > is provably true in some of these is provably false in others. And
> Goedel
> > and others have proved that there unprovables. Is the deity behind
> this
> > confusion, along with complexity theory (aka deterministic chaos)?
> On
> > what basis can you render a decision of divine involvement?
>
> It seems to me that posing the question in this way is kind
> of like
> challenging a person who aserts that Shakespeare was a playwright to
> say
> whether he wrote "Richard the Third" or "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
> Or put the matter another way. Eliding for the moment all
> questions
> about God's relation to time, do you really think that when Bloyai &
> Lobachevsky discovered non-Euclidean geometry, Gd said, "Boy, I wish
> I'd
> thought of that !"?
>
>
> Shalom,
>
> George
>
> George L. Murphy
> http://web.raex.com/gmurphy/
> "The Science-Theology Interface"
>
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