Deism for non-believers

[Skepsis]

Yeah I agree completely. The scale doesn't prove in any way that one of these plausible gods exists. It merely allows one to construct gods that wouldn't contradict reality.

So it really doesn't do anything of value at all, does it? A scale that measures the number of ghosts holding blue-flaming candles has as much use as a scale measuring plausible gods, in that both are mere conjecture.

Maths is most certainly not based on reality. For example, the most fundamental concepts of geometry and mere assumptions that can't be proven in reality. Two parallel lines can't be shown to exist because you would need to check along their infinite lengths to see if they ever diverge or intersect. Parallel lines are just an idea that is accepted as being true without any real proof. Same thing with a circle, whose perimeter is made up of infinite amounts of points all placed at a distance R from the centre. Sure, you could draw me a circle, but it wouldn't match the definition because your pen has a thickness meaning that you have points that are closer or further away to the centre. Therefore, you are merely representing the idea of a circle, but you haven't drawn a circle. 2 + 2 = 4 is no different either. You could grab two rocks and another two rocks and throw them together to get four, but you're not showing me what four actually is. You merely have four rocks that represent the idea of 'four'. But what is four?

I would like to defer to Rhythm here, because he had answered this (mostly) by the time I got around to posting again.
4 as a number is a concept and cannot be shown directly in reality, just like every single other concept that has ever existed. We can only show the physical representation of those concepts.
Mathematics is necessarily based on the obervable universe, because it is a descriptive function of the universe rather than a prescriptive. That is to say, it functions off of the observable and is subject to change.
That said, every single mathematical concept has some use in the gauging of reality. Infinites have uses in macro calculations despite their inoperability in the physical universe.

Oh, and by the way, I want to make it very, very clear that parallel lines are not some axiom of geometry. They are very observeable in reality, and you don't need infinite lengths to have two lines that would never intersect.

...amazes me btw, how many times I've had this conversation since joining these forums. Math or numbers (nor logic) are "things" floating around bending the cosmos to their whims. They are descriptive terms and systems we have formed in order to communicate some observation or concept. I could call a "4" a "splurge" nd it would still return the same results when multiplied by itself, i would merely have a different name for those results. That -is- what 4 "is".