I once read a book by Jason Lisle — it might have been his “Ultimate Proof of Creation”, or maybe “Logic and Faith”, I can’t really remember, it was such a tedious droning bore — and was unimpressed. If you claim to be using pure logic to determine the nature of the universe, and arrive at the conclusion that your idiosyncratic, culturally determined religious mythology is literally and perfectly true, it’s safe to say that you’re doing something wrong.
He’s up to the same tricks again. He’s now giving lectures on the Mandelbrot set, taking people on tours of fractals, and using the prettiness and complexity to announce that obviously, God created math, therefore Jesus is your Lord and Savior. I don’t know…I’ve had lunch with the late Benoit Mandelbrot, and he was more syncretic than that — round, pink, and white-bearded, like a fusion of Jehovah and Buddha.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to sit through the entire dreary video of happy clappy Jebus plus elementary fractal mathematics, because Spencer Hawkins made a list of all of Lisle’s logical fallacies. Very nice, very clear. Too bad the guy who now works for the Institute for Creation Research while claiming expertise in logic won’t comprehend it.
Was it “Logic and Faith” or “Logic and Fail”?
Pure logic is just a part of mathematics. You can’t use it to find out things about the history of the universe.
I read one of Lisle’s books, too. It was Taking Back Astronomy. However, astronomy was still safely the possession of real scientists even after Lisle trotted out such tired arguments as lunar recession proves a young universe. It was pathetic.
It amuses me to think how contemptuous Mandelbrot would have been of Lisle’s attempt to twist fractals into evidence for jejune apologetics. Benoit did not suffer fools gladly.
His “pure” logic works in a Christian whorehouse.
It would appear that Lisle knows precisely fuck all about the rich field of the philosophy of mathematics. He seems to assume the Platonist position that mathematical “truths” exist independently and are discovered, and from this derives that the truths were created by his particular invisible friend. Even if we ignored the entire rest of the ontological spectrum of mathematical philosophy, which ranges all the way to “mathematical truth is what mathematicians collectively deem it to be” (the social constructivist position championed by Paul Ernest and others), there still isn’t a line from the assumption of a Platonic ideal of a pre-existing ideal landscape of true propositions waiting to be proved to the necessity of some being to create this landscape.
Mandelbrot was a fun guy. I went to a lecture he gave where he began by saying that he was conceived in Germany and born in France so he was, on average, Belgian.
I went to a Mandelbrot lecture where I thought he came across as a pompous windbag, but maybe that wasn’t typical.
“I went to a Mandelbrot lecture where I thought he came across as a pompous windbag, but maybe that wasn’t typical.”
Benoit Mandelbrot was a pompous, obnoxious gimp. Comparable to Stephen Wolfram maybe. Just read the introductory chapter of “The Fractal Geometry of Nature”. I dare you not to vomit all over yourself afterwards.
I find that the quickest way to debunk ‘proofs’ of this type is to replace the word “God” with “Santa Claus” and demonstrate that the ‘logic’ still works…
Or the Invisible Pink Unicorn or The Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Using the Kalam Cosmological argument or Aquinas’s First Cause, you can easily “prove” the existence of The Invisible Pink Unicorn.
I thought this was just another example of religious nutjobbery until I saw this:
and now I’m jealous.
@vytautasjanaauskas(#7):
What are your stakes? And how do I claim them? I’ve done it several times.
tsig
Please don’t do that.
vytautasjanaauskas
And that’s an ableist slur. Please don’t do that either.
phlo:
“Santa Claus” or any other nonsensical, magical entity. Or cryptids even. I think it illustrates the point quite nicely in the vast majority of cases involving god logic, yet it seems to never be clear enough to the people who really want to Believe anyway. Because for them its special pleading all the way done. You can’t show that their logic proves anything and everything and is therefore worthless, because their logic applies only to God and God alone. Hell, that’s basically entirely what the “God is a necessary being” or the ontological argument exists for: God is so special that He has to exist by definition and this isn’t the case for anything else so don’t even try to poking at the logic to see how it works.
To paraphrase Hitchens, even if everything he said about “universal mind” is true (and it isn’t), all of his work is still before him.
Why the Christian god and no other god? Why not Xenu?
#13 Yeah the “someone intelligent made the universe proves MY religion is the right one” meme is pretty tiring. I have never heard of anyone bridging that gap.
Universal Mind therefore The Matrix.
Seems to me he’s about 15 years too late to be using fractals. They were everywhere in the ’90s, but I can’t think of the last pop culture thing that used them.
Jason Lisle’s analysis is excellent. I’m repeating the link in the hope of driving more traffic to this well-written piece:
http://unbelieversradio.com/2014/09/dr-jason-lisle-mathematics-proves-god/
@16
“I can’t think of the last pop culture thing that used them.”
You mean like one of the lyrics of “Frozen”?
Q: What does the “B.” stand for in “Benoit B. Mandelbrot”?
A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot.
I talked with Mandelbrot on more than one occasion and met him in person at a math meeting where he was speaking. Yes, he was full of himself. It helped that he was tall and bulky and tended to be surrounded by adoring acolytes (who were probably eager to touch the hem of his garment). Still, he had certain bragging rights, even if he did tend to oversell the significance of fractals. For example: stock prices are chaotic? Let’s model them with fractals? Sure … but it does no one any good. Mathematically they continue to be fascinating, but their theoretical importance has been fairly well plumbed (even if they caused Wolfram to go a little nuts).
Kevin Kehres #13
In my view, even better.
^^:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/06/lucy-lawless-bring-back-xena_n_3712318.html