Mathematics a religion?

An ancient murder
Ranveer Singh
Department of Mathematics
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
Contact no. (office): 04-829-2124
February 20, 2018

Abstract
Can Mathematics be a religion? Even if it can should we consider it as a religion? A short story in
this article suggests that once Mathematics was indeed a religion. But it had few fatal consequences too.

1 Mathematics and religion

There are no universal definitions of Mathematics and religion. More often, a religion is thought as a belief
system. Currently, there are roughly 4,200 religions in the world. Thus we may assume that there are
numerous different belief systems. So, ‘There is only one God’ can be believed true in a religion while false
in some other. But can it be ever possible with the Mathematics? Can 2 + 3 be other than 5? Precisely, can
there be different notions of the Mathematics? This question strikes me quite often. I think everything in
this universal is time and space dependent. Your love, feelings, genes, culture, norms, laws, flora and fauna
etc, change with time and space. Even physics behaves differently depending on the space. Can Mathematics
be time and space dependent? Can 2 + 3 = 5 be ever altered? I guess the answer is no. It can be considered
as an absolute truth, an absolute belief. Which implies that Mathematics can be the supreme religion. In
fact, existing religions are highly dependent on Mathematics. Great thinkers and scriptures like Yajurveda
(c. 600 BCE) have highlighted its importance and purity 1 . Moreover, all the motivational philosophies fail
for Mathematics. By infusing strong motivation and working hard can make someone a top religious leader,
a doctor, an engineer, a scientist but not a great Mathematician, thus competition is redundant here. Now,
I put the same question again. Can Mathematics be a religion?
An eminent Nobel Laureate Bertrand Russell wrote:
“If a religion is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Gödel has taught
us that, not only is Mathematics a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one.”
Hold on. There are basic assumptions in the Mathematics too, these are known as axioms. Axioms are
never proven, these are taken as truth. ‘Two parallel lines on a plane never meet’ or ‘when an equal amount
is taken from equals, an equal amount results’, are examples of axioms. In the story coming up will see that
if axioms are inconsistent it can lead to a blunder. However, up to some assumptions, we can agree that the
Mathematics is best eligible to be a religion. But the point to ponder is that if Mathematics is considered
as a religion will it be able to maintain its supremacy? will it be able to refrain from dogmas, superstitions,
hypocrisy?

B
√
2
1

A 1 C
1 http://platonicrealms.com/quotes/topics/science

1
2 The story
In ancient Greece, the Pythogoreans considered Mathematics as a religion 2 . Apeiron and Peras were their
Gods. Apeiron in greek symbolizes infiniteness while Paras refers to finiteness. They considered infinite as
evil and finite as good. Thus, the Greek people liked the things which were finite while hate those which
were infinite.
It was well known that the rational numbers could be written in the fraction pq of two integers, a numerator
p, and denominator q ̸= 0. And, the numbers which cannot be written in this form are irrational numbers,
they have an infinitely non-repeating pattern of digits after the decimal points. Thus due to this infiniteness,
according to them, there were no irrational numbers. Which led to an axiom for the non-existence of irrational
numbers. Anything finite was rational. Thus, any line segment of finite length was considered rational.
Once they came across the right triangle of base√and height each of unit length. Using their famous
Pythagorean theorem, the√hypotenuse was of length 2 units. But the hypotenuse was of finite length,√so
they had a theorem that 2 is rational. Later they found a proof (like given below) which shows that 2
is actually irrational. Then they understood that their axioms were inconsistent and hence the proofs which
they did use those axioms could not simply be trusted. The worst thing was the fact that the irrational
numbers were existing which
√ according to them were considered evil. So they kept hiding the proof and
did not publish it, and 2 was still rational in the society. Truth cannot be hidden for long. Finally, later
somebody considered that this was not ethical and would not be better for their future, hence let out the
proof. Unfortunately, he succumbed to the hypocrisy. They killed that whistle-blower.

Moral: Although best eligible to be a religion, Mathematics should always be seen as it is. Else dogmas,
hypocrisy, superstitions are inevitable in this too. Fortunately, it is free from all these elements, otherwise,
we would have seen a war between groups on the Millennium Prize Problems like P ̸= N P . Let it flourishes
as usual and keep enlightening the generations.

√
3 2 is irrational
√
Theorem 3.1. 2 is irrational.
√ √ p
Proof. Let us prove it by contradiction. Assume that 2 is rational. Let us write 2 = q in a lowest
fractional terms. On squaring both sides we get

2q 2 = p2 ,

which implies p2 is even and hence p is even. Let p = 2t, for some integer t. Then

2q 2 = 4t2 ,

that is,
q 2 = 2t2 ,
p
which implies q is also an even integer. As p, q are even they both a common factor 2, hence cannot be the
√ √ q
lowest fraction of 2, which contradicts our assumption. Thus 2 is irrational.
Few more comments: The set of rational numbers is a countable set, while the set of real numbers is
uncountable. Hence, almost all real numbers are irrational, which bizarrely contradicts what Pythagoreans
√
had thought earlier. Some typical irrational number are Euler’s number e, π, golden ratio ϕ = 1+2 5 , square
roots of natural numbers other than of perfect squares.

2 http://bit.ly/2sCiEpe (Lecture 2)