Think Science .

I don’t swear too often, but I have no hesitation in saying the following:
Dan Brown is foolish for comparing religious doctrine to mathematical formalism. As far as I’m concerned, unless he can prove that he has any substantial sort of background in mathematical theory and/or practice — and I don’t mean his childhood puzzle-solving, thank you very much — he can keep his religious apologism way the hell away from philosophy of mathematics.

If Catholic theology has any mathematical equivalent, it’s the ramblings of quacks on internet fora who believe that they can “disprove the real line” or some such nonsense, who may occasionally with their techniques accidentally prove theorems which agree with standard mathematics.

Put another way: in terms of their role as tools to accomplish cryptanalysis/physics/etc versus ethical guidelines, mathematics is to catholic theology as a beautiful baroque cathedral is to a ramshackle hut that some guy can make in his back yard from spare materials. Both are forms of shelter, and both do work to some extent, but it’s insulting in the extreme to say that they are equivalent.

Even the most brilliant of catholic theologians spent much of their time writing things which were nonsense, or callously inhumane.

I cannot stress this too much: the argument made there is either deeply ignorant, or deeply intellectually dishonest. Of course, Dan is counting on the readers being deeply ignorant of mathematics, as this is par for the course — he’s looking for a ‘knowing’ chuckle from the idea of the extremely unfortunately named “imaginary numbers”, would wager. One cannot blame his audience for ignorance of complex numbers, of course; even in a more numerate society, they simply aren’t very important. But it is nonetheless ignorance that he is looking to exploit. Whether he’s also ignorant in the same way — or whether he is actually deeply dishonest in how he persues his apologetics — is mostly irrelevant; he should keep his trap shut in either case.

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