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The Spike [or Victoria University College Review 1961]

[introduction]

Man conforms to the archetype of his own free will he is constantly choosing himself as he is.'

'It is not when you realize that nothing can help you — religion, pride, anything. It's when you realize that you don't need tiny aid.'

—J. P. Sartre

I Traversed the Dark Wood and entered the Tomb of Silence. I unwrapped the sacred bandages and discovered beneath a plaster-cast of a Baroque face; beneath some battered flowers flung from the speeding sports-car; beneath the roll of blank microfilm discovered on a lonely country road; beneath the Poet's identification papers and a treatise by Heurtebise on the Zone Intermediaire — a remarkable document, the contents of which are here revealed for the first time.. .

*

There are three Possibilities: the Mathematician is freer than God; God is freer than the Mathematician; and they are both equally free. We will prove by a simple argument that only the first of these possibilities is tenable, and interpreting 'freer than' to mean 'transcending' (in the absence of any other definition of transcending) we will answer the leading question by 'yes'.

We will prove that the concept God' no longer extends to the frontiers of our imagination, and that His attributes, where they are defined, are simply the redundant equivalents of Mathematical expressions. Finally, we will ask, if God is to be thus transformed into a Mathematical Symbol, why retain the idea at all — why not just keep the Mathematics?

Before we outline the main argument, it might be wise to define our terms. A 'Mathematician' is an existent who studies and creates Form. God' is an abstract (non-physical) existent having properties analagous to those of the Universe. The latter definition is justified in the following way: we look at the laws of the Universe, e.g. PV equals a constant, and we say 'This bears the mark of a God'. In other words, we infer His existence (if we care to do this at all of course) from a group of finite, particular laws characteristic of the Universe. Therefore God must have some property in common with the Laws. Hence the definition.