When is a Religious Belief Delusional?

[Amarok]

Unfortunately that is implicit in your response - that rule-based manipulation of arbitrary symbols has no essential relationship to reality other than what is arbitrarily assigned by a knowing subject. You are also implying that the apparent order of physical reality has no rational foundation.

 I am saying that mathematics doesn't reveal anything about the real world in and of itself. It does so *only* to the degree any language does. Isn't all language 'rule-based manipulation of arbitrary symbols'? Do they have any *necessary* relation to reality? No! Any relation to reality is based on our rules of usage.

As for the apparent order having a 'rational foundation', this quickly becomes circular. Any sort of 'rational foundation' would be based on observation, finding regularities, and testing them. We detect order and attempt to model it with our languages, including mathematics. To the extent we are able to do so in a testable predictive way, we have science and knowledge. To the extent we cannot, we have opinion and conjecture. Either way, math is the language that is often used.

The *basic* laws cannot have a more fundamental explanation. That's what it means to be basic.

So Wooters still straw manning you and insisting on and trying desperately to make magic ju ju the foundation of reason