Question Some would consider mathematical patterns found in nature, such as the Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Ratio, as indications of a higher deity, God if you will. Is this a sound belief?

Accepted:
August 19, 2006

Comments

I don't see how one could reasonably suppose there was an argument here for the existence of God. But belief in God need not be based upon any sort of argument or even be something for which one has reasons in the usual sense in which one has reasons for beliefs. A belief in God might have more in common with aesthetic judgements than with theoretical ones. If so, then perhaps the suggestion would be that such mathematical patterns are part of what constitutes the basis for the aesthetic response in question.

Whether that would be "sound" is hard to say. Aesthetic judgements are not beyond criticism (unless you regard aesthetic judgements as not really judgements at all but on a par with mere expressions), but the criticism of aesthetic judgements is slippery territory.

The foregoing may well require that belief in God be something very different from belief that God exists. This suggestion—or, rather, a generalization of it—is the subject of an exceptionally interesting paper by Zoltán Gendler Szabó, "Believing in Things". (The link there may soon stop working, as Zoltán has moved from Cornell to Yale.)

I guess I would like to know from someone who thought such things were indications of the workings of a deity what sorts of patterns would count to them as not being indications of a deity. I'm inclined to think that some sort of order is a simple requirement of there being a universe at all, and so it seems that some indications of such order--whether highly complex or simple--would inevitably be evident in that universe. As a result, it is difficult for me to see why some particular patterns would indicate anything religiously significant--after all, it is not as if the patterns themselves are divine signatures or fingerprints or the divine equivalent of DNA evidence. That one can have a religious response to such things, as Richard Heck proposes, I don't doubt; but that such a response is somehow rationally supportable, I do doubt.

Question Some would consider mathematical patterns found in nature, such as the Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Ratio, as indications of a higher deity, God if you will. Is this a sound belief? Accepted:August 19, 2006

Question Some would consider mathematical patterns found in nature, such as the Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Ratio, as indications of a higher deity, God if you will. Is this a sound belief?

Accepted:
August 19, 2006