Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mathematics and God

This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep (no consensus). Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:59, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mathematics and God

A hopelessly POV list of quotes where mathematicians proclaim their belief in God. Not encyclopedic. I've done the transwiki just now. Delete. Dmcdevit·t 08:33, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

• Delete Pages like this shall not be left undeleted!--Exir Kamalabadi^{Criticism is welcomed!} 09:41, August 7, 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Not encyclopedic, very one-sided. Yes, I believe in God, but I don't believe in POV quote lists. =P Xaa 09:47, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. per above. I don't see how such a list could be useful to anyone. Mistercow 10:26, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
• Emphatic Delete, a list of quotes by delusional superstitious mathematicians is no use to anyone jamesgibbon 14:04, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete per above. Any list of quotes is unencyclopedic, unless it has been redefined recently. Pavel Vozenilek 16:55, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, transwiki to wikiquote - I do think by mathemeticians about God are interesting, but it is a... collection of quotes... Sirmob 18:10, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete Perhaps the author might elaborate on how 1 = 3 ? Dunc|☺ 18:23, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as POV. Possible for wikiquote, though. Eclipsed 22:15, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
• 'Delete. Interesting but POV nevertheless --Dysepsion 23:40, 7 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete as POV. Very one-sided and not informative in any way. 22:47, 7 August 2005 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.177.98.109 (talk • contribs)
• Keep. I fail to be persuaded by any of the arguments above. It is not just a list of quotes; quotes are given for about half of the people mentioned. It is indeed POV, but that is not a valid ground for deletion in my reading of WP:DP. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 11:07, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
  • … and rename per CSTAR below. Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:28, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
• Rename. The name itself is POV. Mathematics and deities or Mathematics and religion would be more appropriate, I think. --CSTAR 15:18, 8 August 2005
• Keep but Improve. I agree with CSTAR that the title is POV, as is most of the article. However, I believe that with an overhaul, it could be a valuable article. I suggest the moving of this to Wikiquote and the construction of an article dealing specifically between spiritual beliefs of mathematicians and ideas relating math and religion. The Swami 09:44, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep but Improve. There is a long history of mathematicians speculating on the nature of god - speculation is their job - and the idea of god is entangled with the idea of infinity which mathematicians can be said to have a particular viewpoint on. Care needs to be taken with deciding whether the quoted mathematicians are truly talking about a deity which they believe in or whether they are using the term 'god' as a shorthand for a non-religious concept. -- Spondoolicks 10:09, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, but move to something like "Mathematicians and God" --Henrygb 15:15, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete not encyclopedic. ~~~~ ( ! | ? | * ) 20:29, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep Seems like an interesting topic to me, and could be expanded upon. For example I think I might add Paul Erdos's quote about God's book of theorems, perhaps Einstein's quote that God doesn't play dice. Would perhaps be better as a list, and could stand a bit of cleanup. I see no valid reason for deleting this article. Certainly POV is not a valid reason, POV is fixable, only articles which can't be fixed are to be deleted. Please read Wikipedia:Deletion policy. At any event, the content should definitely be preserved somewhere. Paul August ☎ 19:17, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
• Keep Georg Cantor made great contributions to mathematics, which he himself related to GOd in an interesting way, which could definitly be described in an encyclopaedic style. (Article could use some improvement, though.) --R.Koot 19:49, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep after some cleanup. Oleg Alexandrov 23:43, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
• Merge with Mathematical beauty, which already has some God-related stuff along with more general content. SpuriousQ 01:06, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep but Rename. It's interesting and recurring topic (I don't get how a collection of opinions can be POV). By the way, where does the quote "natural numbers are from god, everything else is by man" come from? Samohyl Jan 05:06, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

I believe it's due to Leopold Kronecker. Dmharvey Talk 12:29, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

• Keep. Cleanup issue. Pcb21| Pete 11:43, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Perhaps rename and/or merge, and adjust for POV. I am speaking as a completely unreligious (even anti-religious) mathematician. It's a very interesting start for a very interesting historical topic and should be expanded. Dmharvey Talk 12:28, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. A collection of quotes belongs into an encyclopedia exactly why?
  • As the data for an article. Keep. Septentrionalis 19:03, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
• Strong delete. Not an article. NPOV. Quotation collection. Positive: mathematicians, history. Negative: no context, unverified (?) quotations, missing Taoists (and Muslims, etc.), no finite bounds, potentially highly offensive to followers of IPU. Consider this quotation about Newton's occultism: "Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians." — John Maynard Keynes. But the page not only assumes existence of a "God", it lumps the "God" of Newton with the "God" of Erdös, which is absurd. KSmrq 11:01, 2005 August 16 (UTC)
• Comment: What I seem to be seeing generally here is delete votes because the article is just a collection of quotes and is POV, and keep votes because the history of mathematics in relation to religion is a valid history subject. What I propose is move this article to something like Mathematics and Religion or Mathematics and Spirituality and turn it into an article on the historical relation between the two. Or just start a new article at one of these places and remove this one. How does that strike y'all? The Swami 17:36, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Could someone explain exactly why they believe that the title "Mathematics and God" is POV? Would it be better if we put quotes around the word "God"? The title "Mathematics and deities" sounds wrong to me. It is not clear to me that the article is talking about several gods. I would guess that with the possible exception of Plato, all the quotes here are talking about a monotheistic notion of "God". "Mathematics and religion" also sounds wrong to me, it is not about religion (or spirituality) per se. It seems to me that this article is about an idea. An idea, as expressed by several famous mathematics, about the relationship between mathematics and the notion of a supreme being they called "God" — perhaps seriously, perhaps metaphorically, perhaps jokingly. And in so doing, I would guess, they were also trying to say something important, about mathematics and its relationship to the world we live in. I think, the fact that these mathematicians thought this idea was important, means it is important, if only for the reason that they thought so. Their idea is certainly POV, our writing about their idea is not. Paul August ☎ 19:53, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

It's not the title by itself that causes the problem. The POV is caused more by title plus current first paragraph:

A number of famous mathematicians have made connections between mathematics and God, often likening God to a mathematician.

Taken together, these could be read to imply a POV that a God exists. Now, I don't actually read it this way, rather I see this use of the word "God" as a literary device to denote a concept that the average reader will be familiar with, regardless of the beliefs about God that the reader holds. Nevertheless, I think the first reading is quite plausible for many of our readers, and the paragraph is therefore unacceptable as it stands. I would support keeping the current title if the first paragraph was changed so that the overall POV effect was eliminated. Dmharvey Talk 20:21, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I've made a few changes along these lines. Dmharvey Talk 20:48, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, it would certainly be POV for Wikipedia to be asserting the existence of "God". And I can see given what Dmharvey has said above that the article and title could be read as doing that. David, has now changed the first paragraph to read:

A number of famous mathematicians have made connections between mathematics and various notions of God.

I hope this has eliminated that particular POV concern. Paul August ☎ 20:52, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

If this is about Mathematics, not mathematicians, where is the formal definition of God? What is the status of the "proofs" mentioned? Are the proofs Constructive? A serious mathematician might view these questions differently from a pulpit preacher or a lay member of the congregation. When Intelligent Design advocates are trying to revise one's science curriculum, one can get twitchy about such sloppiness; it's no longer harmless fun. We (mathematicians) know the proofs are nonsense; they don't. Is there something about the word "God" that causes us to abandon encyclopedia standards? Try this: Substitute Satan or Invisible Pink Unicorn for God and decide if you would still keep the article. Wouldn't you want more confirmation, more context, more discussion, more balanced views? --KSmrq 05:12, 2005 August 19 (UTC)

• Keep. Some of the items are quotes, but the pseudo-quote attributed to Paul Erdös is not exactly a quote. It could be made more encyclopedic, but I see no reason to delete. The article does not (at the present time) seem to be non-NPOV. Arthur Rubin 22:54, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Agree with comments from User:Paul August. This is a topic that is distinct from any questions about sacred geometry or any other topics in the Category:Philosophy of mathematics. As with certain other VfD's, I am deeply concerned that people who never contribute to math or physics articles (and presumably also don't think much about God in particular or philosophy in general) feel competent to pass judgement on an article outside of thier expertise. linas 23:49, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
• Keep and there certainly should be quotes from Cantor and Russell; the second should help the PoV concern ;-> Septentrionalis 20:48, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
• Comment whatever happens, the content from the "Beauty and mysticism" section of Mathematical beauty needs to move here or the content here should be moved there. Personally I think it would work well to have all this content under the Mathematical beauty article (I already voted merge to there above). SpuriousQ 21:59, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.