The question of whether a god exists is heating up in the 21st century.
In 2014, the proportion of the US who didn't believe in God was 33 per cent while in the UK it was 39 per cent.

Despite the growing disbelief in a higher being, Robert Nelson, a Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland explores how his belief in God is rooted in logic and science.



In 1960 the Princeton physicist – and subsequent Nobel Prize winner – Eugene Wigner raised a fundamental question: Why did the natural world always – so far as we know – obey laws of mathematics?

As argued by scholars such as Philip Davis and Reuben Hersh, mathematics exists independent of physical reality.

It is the job of mathematicians to discover the realities of this separate world of mathematical laws and concepts.

Physicists then put the mathematics to use according to the rules of prediction and confirmed observation of the scientific method.

But modern mathematics generally is formulated before any natural observations are made, and many mathematical laws today have no known existing physical analogues.

Einstein's 1915 general theory of relativity, for example, was based on theoretical mathematics developed 50 years earlier by the great German mathematician Bernhard Riemann that did not have any known practical applications at the time of its intellectual creation.

ARE ATHEISTS DYING OUT?
A controversial new study has claimed that atheism is on the verge of dying out.
Researchers from from the US and Malaysia found that since religious groups preach against contraception, they tend to have more children than those who label themselves as atheists.
The team sampled more than 4,000 students attending different colleges in both the US and Malaysia, who were asked about their beliefs and number of siblings.
In Malaysia, Muslim families had an average of 5.89 children and 4.29 in the US.
The second most fertile parents in Malaysia were Hindus with 4.01 children – but this was a small sample of only five students.
Atheists living in Malaysia had an average of 3.67 children and parents of US students that were also not part of a religious group had 3.04.
Christians living in the US had 3.11 children and Catholics had 3.42.

In some cases the physicist also discovers the mathematics. Isaac Newton was considered among the greatest mathematicians as well as physicists of the 17th century.
Other physicists sought his help in finding a mathematics that would predict the workings of the solar system.
He found it in the mathematical law of gravity, based in part on his discovery of calculus.
At the time, however, many people initially resisted Newton's conclusions because they seemed to be 'occult.'


Modern mathematics generally is formulated before any natural observations are made, and many mathematical laws today have no known existing physical analogues

How could two distant objects in the solar system be drawn toward one another, acting according to a precise mathematical law?
Indeed, Newton made strenuous efforts over his lifetime to find a natural explanation, but in the end he could say only that it is the will of God.
Despite the many other enormous advances of modern physics, little has changed in this regard.
As Wigner wrote, 'the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.'
In other words, as I argue in my book, it takes the existence of some kind of a god to make the mathematical underpinnings of the universe comprehensible.

Maths and other worlds

In 2004 the great British physicist Roger Penrose put forward a vision of a universe composed of three independently existing worlds – mathematics, the material world and human consciousness.
As Penrose acknowledged, it was a complete puzzle to him how the three interacted with one another outside the ability of any scientific or other conventionally rational model.

How can physical atoms and molecules, for example, create something that exists in a separate domain that has no physical existence: human consciousness?
It is a mystery that lies beyond science.
This mystery is the same one that existed in the Greek worldview of Plato, who believed that abstract ideas (above all mathematical) first existed outside any physical reality.
The material world that we experience as part of our human existence is an imperfect reflection of these prior formal ideals.
As the scholar of ancient Greek philosophy, Ian Mueller, writes in 'Mathematics And The Divine,' the realm of such ideals is that of God.
Indeed, in 2014 the MIT physicist Max Tegmark argues in 'Our Mathematical Universe' that mathematics is the fundamental world reality that drives the universe.
As I would say, mathematics is operating in a god-like fashion.


In the article, Professor Nelson questions how physical atoms and molecules can create something that exists in a separate domain that has no physical existence

The mystery of human consciousness

The workings of human consciousness are similarly miraculous.
Like the laws of mathematics, consciousness has no physical presence in the world; the images and thoughts in our consciousness have no measurable dimensions.
Yet, our nonphysical thoughts somehow mysteriously guide the actions of our physical human bodies.
This is no more scientifically explicable than the mysterious ability of nonphysical mathematical constructions to determine the workings of a separate physical world.

Until recently, the scientifically unfathomable quality of human consciousness inhibited the very scholarly discussion of the subject.
Since the 1970s, however, it has become a leading area of inquiry among philosophers.
Recognising that he could not reconcile his own scientific materialism with the existence of a nonphysical world of human consciousness, a leading atheist, Daniel Dennett, in 1991 took the radical step of denying that consciousness even exists.
Finding this altogether implausible, as most people do, another leading philosopher, Thomas Nagel, wrote in 2012 that, given the scientifically inexplicable – the 'intractable' – character of human consciousness, 'we will have to leave [scientific] materialism behind' as a complete basis for understanding the world of human existence.
As an atheist, Nagel does not offer religious belief as an alternative, but I would argue that the supernatural character of the workings of human consciousness adds grounds for raising the probability of the existence of a supernatural god.

THE FEAR OF DYING
A new study conducted by Oxford University has found that those whose religious behavior was driven by 'true belief' enjoyed lower levels of death anxiety.
Those who were motivated to believe by pragmatic conditions such as social or emotional benefits reported higher levels of death anxiety.
However, researchers also discovered that 18 percent of people who deem themselves religious were more afraid of 'the end' than non-religious people.
Experts said these findings complicate the old view, that religious people are less afraid of death than nonreligious people.
They have suggested that atheists may find comfort and death or people who are just not afraid of death aren't compelled to seek religion.

HOW BELIEF IN GOD AFFECTS THE WAY YOU THINK...

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