Name
Mathematics is founded on measurement, observation, induction and deduction from the physical realm. A location in space can be given a name because God created space. The Gospel of John opens with the claim, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the the Word was God." The Bible also claims that creature Man was made in the image of God. It is revelation knowledge that the capacity to name objects is given by God. This was also the very first command given to the first male, Adam. He was brought the creatures of the field and told to name them.
Some scholars criticise this explanation of origins as "God of the gaps." These scholars have not heeded Francis Bacons warning in his Novum Organum. Bacon gave a solid base for the scientific method by focusing his scholarship on interpreting natural phenomena. If the interpretation could not be demonstrated in nature, then it should be discarded. Knowing how something works and demonstrating how it works should not be confused with knowing its origins. Bacon, the Christian scholar, was a motivator for research into the secondary causes and effects of nature, for God uses means to demonstrate his divine power and wisdom. No amount of exploration of the things visible and invisible that God made will ever reveal the person of God.
Naming things is vastly different to Plato's notion of an Ideal given Form. There is not an eternal realm of knowledge from which mathematicians and others can pluck their ideas and give them form. The architecture and processes of the molecules that gives form to muscle and tissue and bone contain a host of mathematical ideas because the originator is all-wise and used a host of mathematics to produce all things.
Mathematics is not an arbitrary system created by men. However, Mathematics does involve the creation of names for things already in existence. The name 'one' is not a title for any specific object, but it is still a name for something that exists.
Naming something gives us the capacity to interact with it. Naming for the first man was more than giving an abstract tag to an entity; naming for Adam also implied ownership and responsibility. This ownership and responsibility still exists for all Adam's descendants.
This explanation for the appearance of Mathematics makes a lot more sense than a singularity of infinite mass and infinitesimal volume exploding to bring matter into being. The complexity of speculations about dark matter and dark energy have not even come close to giving a rational explanation for space and location. The idea that time goes back to the time of an "Big Bang" where all known physics is not applicable is simply not good science nor is it good mathematics. The physical data like the laws of motion and thermodynamics all point back to an uncaused cause. The sociological data all point back to an originator of morality and justice; to one who is without evil or injustice. The biological data points to a living being that brought all life into being. The genetic data strongly suggest that the information for every living organism had to be completely in place before there could be any respiration and reproduction. Last, and not least, the biblical data, the Old and New Testament is quite definite about the existence of God, the uncaused living, righteous being who spoke the universe into existence.
The common rejoinder, "Who made God?" is not really worth answering, because it is clear that the questioner has not understood the meaning of the term 'God'. God is uncreated. God is not physical. God has no beginning. God is outside time and matter means Of course we cannot fathom this possibility, but God has revealed himself. The uncreated being has no creator.
Those who ask the question provide no explanation for matter and energy to be present in a singularity and then the uncaused explosion bring eventually stars and living matter into existence. The speculation of the Big Bang Theory came as the result of the accumulation of data that showed quite clearly that the universe is not eternal. Scholarly excursions into dark matter, dark energy and antimatter seem to want to return to the notion of an eternal cosmos,
Words, whether as poetry, music, mathematics or literature are our way of understanding what God has done. Kepler declared when describing his achievements in modelling the movement of the planets in orbit around the Sun “The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.” [1]
The existence of numbers provides a testimony of what God has already done in forming material objects out of nothing. The descriptions of trajectories of space objects is only attempting to provide a platform of communication in order to describe what God has already spoken into existence in the heavenly bodies.
The codification that is evident in every cell is far more sophisticated and intricate than anything our mathematicians can currently decipher or imitate.
It is becoming more clear with all the explorations into the realm of the atom that the spatial orientation in every molecule and atom is far more precise and controlled than the tools of probability allow us to describe at present.
Perhaps the greatest of all is the planning tools evident in the Godhead where not only the materials of the universe were designed and made manifest, but the workings of civilisations have been planned in minute detail so that one lone Israelite should fulfil a plan determined in the counsel of God before time began. Our current tools of project management are very primitive indeed in comparison to the magnitude and foresight evident in the Godhead.
[1] Found on http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/79396.Johannes_Kepler, but could not trace this quote to any particular work of Kepler’s.
Mathematics is founded on measurement, observation, induction and deduction from the physical realm. A location in space can be given a name because God created space. The Gospel of John opens with the claim, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the the Word was God." The Bible also claims that creature Man was made in the image of God. It is revelation knowledge that the capacity to name objects is given by God. This was also the very first command given to the first male, Adam. He was brought the creatures of the field and told to name them.
Some scholars criticise this explanation of origins as "God of the gaps." These scholars have not heeded Francis Bacons warning in his Novum Organum. Bacon gave a solid base for the scientific method by focusing his scholarship on interpreting natural phenomena. If the interpretation could not be demonstrated in nature, then it should be discarded. Knowing how something works and demonstrating how it works should not be confused with knowing its origins. Bacon, the Christian scholar, was a motivator for research into the secondary causes and effects of nature, for God uses means to demonstrate his divine power and wisdom. No amount of exploration of the things visible and invisible that God made will ever reveal the person of God.
Naming things is vastly different to Plato's notion of an Ideal given Form. There is not an eternal realm of knowledge from which mathematicians and others can pluck their ideas and give them form. The architecture and processes of the molecules that gives form to muscle and tissue and bone contain a host of mathematical ideas because the originator is all-wise and used a host of mathematics to produce all things.
Mathematics is not an arbitrary system created by men. However, Mathematics does involve the creation of names for things already in existence. The name 'one' is not a title for any specific object, but it is still a name for something that exists.
Naming something gives us the capacity to interact with it. Naming for the first man was more than giving an abstract tag to an entity; naming for Adam also implied ownership and responsibility. This ownership and responsibility still exists for all Adam's descendants.
This explanation for the appearance of Mathematics makes a lot more sense than a singularity of infinite mass and infinitesimal volume exploding to bring matter into being. The complexity of speculations about dark matter and dark energy have not even come close to giving a rational explanation for space and location. The idea that time goes back to the time of an "Big Bang" where all known physics is not applicable is simply not good science nor is it good mathematics. The physical data like the laws of motion and thermodynamics all point back to an uncaused cause. The sociological data all point back to an originator of morality and justice; to one who is without evil or injustice. The biological data points to a living being that brought all life into being. The genetic data strongly suggest that the information for every living organism had to be completely in place before there could be any respiration and reproduction. Last, and not least, the biblical data, the Old and New Testament is quite definite about the existence of God, the uncaused living, righteous being who spoke the universe into existence.
The common rejoinder, "Who made God?" is not really worth answering, because it is clear that the questioner has not understood the meaning of the term 'God'. God is uncreated. God is not physical. God has no beginning. God is outside time and matter means Of course we cannot fathom this possibility, but God has revealed himself. The uncreated being has no creator.
Those who ask the question provide no explanation for matter and energy to be present in a singularity and then the uncaused explosion bring eventually stars and living matter into existence. The speculation of the Big Bang Theory came as the result of the accumulation of data that showed quite clearly that the universe is not eternal. Scholarly excursions into dark matter, dark energy and antimatter seem to want to return to the notion of an eternal cosmos,
Words, whether as poetry, music, mathematics or literature are our way of understanding what God has done. Kepler declared when describing his achievements in modelling the movement of the planets in orbit around the Sun “The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.” [1]
The existence of numbers provides a testimony of what God has already done in forming material objects out of nothing. The descriptions of trajectories of space objects is only attempting to provide a platform of communication in order to describe what God has already spoken into existence in the heavenly bodies.
The codification that is evident in every cell is far more sophisticated and intricate than anything our mathematicians can currently decipher or imitate.
It is becoming more clear with all the explorations into the realm of the atom that the spatial orientation in every molecule and atom is far more precise and controlled than the tools of probability allow us to describe at present.
Perhaps the greatest of all is the planning tools evident in the Godhead where not only the materials of the universe were designed and made manifest, but the workings of civilisations have been planned in minute detail so that one lone Israelite should fulfil a plan determined in the counsel of God before time began. Our current tools of project management are very primitive indeed in comparison to the magnitude and foresight evident in the Godhead.
[1] Found on http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/79396.Johannes_Kepler, but could not trace this quote to any particular work of Kepler’s.