When is a Religious Belief Delusional?

[polymath257]

No. It helps us *phrase* truths about reality (as does any language). But in and of itself, it has no bearing on reality.

Are you saying that any correspondence between mathematics and physics is purely accidental and that there is no essential relationship between them?

No. I am saying the correspondence is *exactly* the same as that between any other language and the real world. *WE* are the ones that use the language to describe the world, and thereby set up the correspondence. That isn't accidental, but it also isn't something deep about the universe (except, perhaps, that it has enough regularity to be described).

In math, *we* chose the rules for calculation to give good results in the real world. The nice thing about math is that it allows for description of any number of regularities. So, many regularities that are seen through observation can be *modeled* using mathematics.

When a mathematically described physical law is found to be incorrect, we look for another mathematical description that is closer to reality. That is using math as a *language*. it is an expressive language for certain types of things. But the language and the reality should not be confused.