Materialism Vs. Mathematics: Why Math Needs God!

Welcome back to Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and today we're gonna be diving into a topic that is both fascinating and foundational. So get your floaties ready, because we're gonna be heading straight into the deep end of the philosophical pool.

We're gonna be exploring some big ideas that might sound intimidating at first if you're not familiar with things like philosophy, but we're gonna be discussing the topic of what is known as universals and particulars, okay, in philosophy.

And we'll talk about why this is relevant here, but I'm gonna walk you through this step-by-step, and my goal here is not just to explain these concepts, but also show you how they connect to something practical, defending the Christian faith, okay?

So these philosophical concepts are gonna be very important for you to become familiar with, especially when you're talking with atheists and materialistic naturalists, if you're with those, you know, that terminology, okay?

And this isn't, again, this isn't just philosophy for the sake of philosophy, okay? I think understanding these ideas are gonna help you see why the Christian worldview makes sense of even the most basic truths, like how we know, I don't know, how do we know 2 plus 2 equals 4?

We'll explore that and why other worldviews, especially materialistic atheism, cannot. So buckle up and let's get started, okay? The first thing first is to define our terms, okay? But before we get into that question of why atheists cannot count for something like mathematics, 2 plus 2 equals 4, we're gonna need to take a step back and define some of the big ideas that affect this question, okay?

Universals and Particulars in Philosophy

So these ideas are called universals and particulars, and they play a huge role in how we understand the world, including math. So very, very important. So these are deep philosophical concepts. I'm gonna try my best to walk slowly through them, take you by the hand if you're not familiar with philosophy, and hopefully help you understand what these concepts are and why they are important, how they can be useful in conversation, okay?

So let's start with the concept known as universals, okay? Universals are abstract concepts or ideas that don't change and can apply to many specific things. So they're the big picture ideas that help us make sense of reality, okay?

An example would be the concept of numbers. If you think about, for example, the number 2, it's not tied to any specific object, like a physical object. The number 2 applies to two apples, it applies to two chairs, or it applies to two books, but it's always the same idea, no matter what you're counting, okay?

Does that make sense? Another concept of universal would be something like shapes or colors. So take a triangle, okay? A triangle can be small or large. It can be red or blue, but it's still a triangle because it has three sides.

And so the idea of a triangle is universal, even though the specific ones you see, like a road sign or even a slice of pizza, even though those things are different, the idea of, you know, triangle is not limited to those specific instances of triangular objects, okay?

You can think of universals as kind of like a blueprint or a pattern. Every time you see something that fits the pattern of 2, or it fits the pattern of triangularity, or it fits the pattern of red, you're seeing a particular example of a universal idea, okay?

Now you want to be very careful. We're speaking of abstractions, like ideas, but these are real. So even though you can't hold 2, the number 2, in your hand, it's real. Universals help us organize and understand the particulars that we experience in the actual world.

If you think about it, without these universal ideas, we couldn't share ideas or make sense of the world in a consistent way. And so the concept of universal, I think, is very, very important to get a grasp on.

So those are some examples of what a universal is, all right? So for example, a red barn, which often uses an example. We can say that a barn is red, okay? But that redness, okay, can be in other things like a red apple, the red barn, the red car, okay?

The physical objects that possess the universal can change, but the universal category itself doesn't change, and it can be in multiple places at once, which is very different than what we might call in philosophy particulars, okay?

Particulars are the specific individual things that exist in the actual material world, okay? These are the objects or instances you can see, you can touch, you could interact with, okay? Introducing All Access, your premium gateway to deeper apologetic and theological insights.

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If you have two apples on the table, for example, if you're sitting next to fruit or something like that, you could take two apples, put it on the table. Those apples are what we would call particulars, okay?

They're individual examples of the universal idea of two. You can take, for example, a red balloon. And so a red balloon at a party, you know, wherever you might find a red balloon, a clown is holding a red balloon or something creepy like that, okay?

A red balloon at a party, we'll go with a party since clowns are super scary, you take a red balloon at a party, we can call that red balloon a particular. It is a specific example of the universal idea of redness.

A red balloon is a specific example of the universal idea of redness, okay? And so particulars are what we experience in the physical world. They're specific and they're tied to time and place. And particulars, in differentiation from universals, particulars don't last forever.

For example, if you take apples, apples can go rotten, you can pop a balloon, but the universal ideas behind them like two or redness or things like that remain the same. And so those are the differences between universals and particulars, okay?

How Universals and Particulars Relate

Now, the next question we could ask is how do universals and particulars relate to each other? How are they connected, okay? This is so important. And this is a big question in philosophy, in essence, how do abstract universals connect to specific particulars in the real world?

For example, how does the universal truth of two plus two equals four apply to actual apples or chairs or any other particular, okay? Here's why this matters. Universals apply to particulars. When we say two plus two equals four, we're using universals, the abstract ideas of two addition, right, two plus two addition, and four, okay?

But we're also applying those ideas to particulars like apples or chairs or cherries or any material particular object that we can point to, okay? Now, in order for two plus two to equal four to make sense, there has to be a connection between the universal ideas of math and the specific things we count in the real world.

So without this connection, universals would just float around as meaningless ideas, and particulars would be random and chaotic objects that don't hold any specific relationship to each other, okay? This is so important.

Now, throughout the history of philosophy, these concepts have—people have grappled with these concepts. People have tried to provide different explanations as to how universal concepts relate and connect to particular things in our experience, okay?

So let's look at—I mean, this is a broad category of the history of philosophy, which I'm not going to bore you with the details of the history of it all, but these—there have been many attempts to bring these categories together, and so we're going to be going through some of those, and hopefully that will give you some context in how and why this is important, okay?

Plato, Aristotle, and Nominalism on Universals

So let's look at four main approaches and what these approaches get right in their attempt and what they get wrong, okay? And so we have to dig back deep. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there is this philosopher named Plato, okay?

Plato. Not to be confused with Play-Doh, the wonderful, fun child sculpting clay, okay? It's Play-Toh, not Play-Doh. By the way, if philosophy interests you—I mean, these are—they're known as the big three.

You want to be familiar with Plato—or rather, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Those are the three big names in Greek philosophy, and of course, the first attempt to explain the connection here is in a view known as Platonic—after Plato—Platonic Realism, okay?

And this view holds that universals are in a separate realm than the particulars, okay? So Plato believed that the universals exist—these universal concepts exist—in a perfect, eternal realm that's separate from the physical world.

Particulars, for Plato, like apples and chairs, are just reflections of these perfect universals, okay? So Plato would say that the number two exists as a perfect idea in a realm of forms, and when you see two apples, you're seeing an imperfect reflection of this perfect two, okay?

He also said that he compared—. Plato compared the physical world of particulars to shadows on a wall, if you're familiar with his famous cave analogy, right? The things we experience are just blurry copies of the real, perfect universals.

You know, to put this idea across to my students, I'll often ask the students, you know, what is a chair? You know, what is a chair? Can someone define for me a chair? And so, you know, one of my students might say something like, well, a chair is something you can sit on.

I say, okay, a chair is something you can sit on. Well, I can sit on the floor. Is the floor a chair? Well, I mean, the floor is not a chair. I was like, oh, so then what is a chair? And so they begin to have difficulty defining what a chair is without having a conception of a chair.

How do we know what a particular instance or particular exemplifies the concept, okay? These are some deep questions, okay? So for Plato, we can define the physical chair, but it's always imperfect. It doesn't capture the essence or the ideal of what a chair really is, okay?

That's why Plato would say that these are shadows. They're not the perfect. They reflect in an imperfect way the perfect, okay? Now, Platonic realism does, I think, a good job explaining why universals don't change.

They exist in this changeless realm of ideas. The number two is the same for everyone, everywhere, because it's part of this eternal realm. However, the problem for Plato and Platonic realism from a philosophical perspective is that if universals are stuck in another realm we call the realm of ideas or the realm of forms, how do they reflect the real world?

How does the number two in this perfect realm actually connect to two apples, say, in your kitchen, okay? It's one thing to posit this immaterial realm of ideals and this realm of particulars that are filled with physical objects that are constantly undergoing change, but how do you connect them, okay?

And what relationship does this immaterial realm have with the physical realm of particulars? And I don't think that Plato's philosophy could account for that in a meaningful fashion, and therefore there are problems in accounting for both universals and particulars in their relationship, okay?

Because if you think about it, in order for you to have an intelligible experience of a duck, for example, you have to have a concept of what it means to be a duck, the nature of a duck. The concept then is imposed upon the particular instance of a duck, say, in a pond somewhere, and then the concept there has meaning.

But why are they related? The immaterial realm and the physical realm, these conceptual realms and the particular realm, how are they connected to one another, okay? Important question. And so the Platonic realism perspective is one way that people try to kind of express these ideas of universals and particulars.

And then along comes Aristotle. Aristotle was Plato's student, okay? And he kind of had a different take on it. If you want to know what this position is, it's often referred to as Aristotelian, after Aristotle.

Aristotelian realism. So the universals for Aristotle are not in this realm out there somewhere, but they actually are in the things. They're in the particulars, okay? So Aristotle thought universals, again, weren't in a separate realm, but were actually part of the particulars.

Universals only exist within the things that they describe. So for example, two, the universal two exists in the apples that we are looking at. So the concept two is in the two apples that you're holding.

You don't need a separate realm, Aristotle believed. You don't need a separate realm of forms to explain it, okay? Aristotle thought that universals were the shared features of things. Every triangle has three sides, and every number two involves a pair of objects, okay?

Now again, Aristotle's approach ties universals closely to the observable reality, and this explains why we can count objects and recognize patterns in the world and so forth. And so in that sense, someone might favor Aristotle's view because it is not as far and lofty as Plato's view of a realm out there, but rather it's rooted—what we can know about objects, the universals, and the particulars—it's rooted in the material world that we could observe, okay?

And so that's why Aristotle is typically associated with kind of like empirical considerations, you know, the observation, the eyeball experience sort of thing, okay? However, I think Aristotle's explanation, and people who hold to Aristotelian realism kind of run into some problems.

Think about it. If universals only exist in the things that we see, how can we think about them as abstract ideas? I mean, how do we know two is true, even when we're not looking at two apples, right?

Seems like they're not necessarily instantiated in the specific physical things. Does the concept have meaningfulness when we're not holding two apples in our hands or something along those lines, okay?

So that's another way that people have tried to understand the relationship between universals and particulars. Dr. Greg Bonson was a renowned Christian apologist, philosopher, and seminary professor, and his life's work is now at your fingertips with Bonson U.

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Universals on nominalism are just labels, okay? They say universals are, you know, anomalists will say that universals are just names or labels we use to group things that seem similar. So, nominalists would say that, number two, it isn't a real thing, it's just a label we use to group pairs of objects, like two apples or two chairs or something along those lines.

And I think the positive aspect of this view, at least I can see as to why someone might want to hold to it, is that it keeps things rather simple, right? It says, you know, listen, let's not over-complicate things.

Universals are just ways we talk about patterns that we see, okay? And so I can see the kind of the simplicity in that view might be attractive to some people who are trying to work through this concept philosophically and come to conclusions.

But I think there's something missing here. Think about it. If universals are just labels we made up, there's a question. It's just a question. Why do they work so consistently? Why does 2 plus 2 equal 4 hold true for apples, for chairs, stars, even in places we've never been, right?

Why the consistency? If these are just labels, are they just labels or are they telling us something about the nature of reality itself? I think that's an important question to consider. Again, we're not offering a full frontal refutation to all of this right here, but these are some of the ways that people have understood these concepts.

Christian Theism and the Grounding of Math

Then along comes Christian theism, okay? And we ground universals and particulars in the very nature of God. And I think this often is overlooked by people who are not familiar with these categories. It's one of the reasons why the Christian worldview, when we say, for example, only the Christian worldview provides the foundation for intelligible experience, knowledge, science, logic, mathematics, I mean, the answer to those philosophical puzzles is rooted in the very nature of God and His revelation.

I mean, think about this. Christianity offers a unique solution to this very deep philosophical issue. Universals and particulars exist and connect because they are rooted and grounded in God Himself.

You see, in Christianity, universals like numbers, logic, and shapes exist because they reflect the nature of God. Not that God is a shape, but that the universal concepts are grounded in His being. They're part of His nature, right?

God is unchanging, He's eternal, and the ground of all truth. Now, God also created the physical world and the spiritual world, for that matter, but in terms of the physical world, every apple, every chair, you know, the star that exists out there exists because God created all things.

He created the material out of which we make things, right? God is the source and fount of all of the physical world and the immaterial world that does not include Him. Obviously, we don't believe God created Himself, right?

That's an incoherent concept, okay? And it is within the Christian worldview that you have the important bridging of the gap between abstract realities and particular things, right? The connection between universals and particulars exists because God designed it that way, okay?

Numbers apply to apples because God created a world where they fit together, okay? God does not only create the physical world, He defines the facts of the physical world and establishes the relationship between particular things, okay?

And so He's established those things. They are grounded in Him, they find their connection in God, and we know about these connections through His revelation, okay? Now, think in terms of God's nature, though, and this is, I think, super helpful here.

Within the Christian worldview, God is a trinity. God is a triunity of persons. God is one being who exists as three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Now, this is not the episode where we're going to be defending the trinity per se.

I obviously believe that it is the Christian position that God exists as a trinity. Working with students, sometimes, you know, the kids would ask, well, why? Why does God—why is God a trinity, you know?

And I've had—I've heard some people try to answer this question, and they're all confused. I don't think it's a hard question. It's like saying, why is God God? Well, that's the nature of God. That's who He is.

God didn't make Himself a trinity. God is a triune being by nature, okay? So I want you to think in terms of the nature of the triune God, okay? Even God's nature as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit helps us understand this connection between abstractions and particulars, the realm of individual objects, okay?

In the trinity, we see both unity and diversity, right? One God in three persons. And again, if you think about it, this reflects how universals, unity, those concepts that unify the particular individual things, this explains why they work together in the world.

I want you to think about this, okay? I want to slow down here, okay? God is one being who exists as three persons. So in God, both unity and plurality are equally ultimate. So the plurality of God does not begin or derive from something more ultimate, the unity.

Both the unity and the plurality are equally ultimate in God, and creation reflects that unity and plurality. Why? Do we have a plurality of things? And why are the plurality of things meaningful, okay, is because they are unified by universal concepts.

They reflect the Creator. This makes perfect sense within a Christian worldview. However, it does not make sense in an atheistic worldview, a materialistic atheistic worldview specifically, okay? So how does Christianity make sense out of, say, two plus two equals four?

Let's explore that. Let's bring this back to math, right? Christianity explains two plus two equals four, okay? I would argue in a way that no other worldview can. Universals like two, okay, exist because of God.

God, in the Christian worldview, is the source of eternal, unchanging truths. They exist because they reflect His rational, consistent nature, okay? The physical world exists because God made it. It's orderly and countable, okay, because He designed the world that way, okay?

Universals and particulars connect because God created both and designed them to work together. Numbers apply to objects because God built that order into creation. Now, again, you might be listening and saying, well, wait a minute.

Well, I don't believe in the God of the Bible, so on and so forth, okay? That's not what I'm talking about, right? You can reject the Christian worldview. The question then is, how do you make sense out of the things you take for granted?

For example, two plus two equals four. It's a fair question, okay? From a biblical perspective, it is obvious that the unbeliever is borrowing from the Christian worldview when they are arguing against the Christian worldview.

And again, this is not just a bare claim. We're not just claiming that they're doing that. Of course, when you're interacting with an unbeliever, you're going to have to actually, in some cases, explain what you mean by that, okay?

And I have a whole video where I explain how this is actually the case. I have a whole video where we talk about—where I talk about the specific ways in which the unbeliever borrows from the Christian worldview.

But nevertheless, when an atheist says two plus two equals four, okay, the materialistic atheist—he's doing math, right? What they're doing is they're using a truth that makes sense in Christianity, but I would argue doesn't fit in their worldview.

They can account—I'm sorry, they can count, as Van Til said—they can count, they can do math, but they cannot explain why counting works. They could count, but they cannot account for the counting that they engage in, okay?

Now, when I say account, they cannot account for something, I'm not simply saying they can't come up with a story. This is, you know, this is how math works, so on and so forth. No, I'm saying, in a philosophical sense, they cannot provide an adequate justification for why numbers are what they are and how—why immaterial, abstract universals apply in a meaningful way and relate in a meaningful way to the particulars, the individual things of experience, okay?

They cannot bring together both unity and diversity within a worldview that is not grounded in something that is both ultimately unity and diversity, like the Christian worldview can, all right? So that's very, very important.

So the atheist cannot account for these things, and any worldview that is self-vitiating, any worldview that is contradictory at its core, at a fundamental level, is not able to give an accounting for these things as well, okay?

Applying the Argument in Apologetic Conversations

Now, we're not talking about other worldview perspectives at this moment, I'm just kind of using materialistic atheism as an example here. But why is this all important? Well, to express kind of the practical apologetic application of these things, let's kind of go through some questions.

And I'll kind of provide, you know, my views here in terms of how I would address some of these questions. And these questions here, they're pretty practical for, you know, if you're a Christian and you're having a conversation with, you know, an atheist who is somewhat knowledgeable about philosophy and things like this, and they might hear you say some of the things that we've just expressed here, you know, how might we respond and explain some of these questions, okay?

So let's take some time to do that, okay? So here's the first question here. How does this idea of universals and particulars even come up in conversations with atheists? Aren't we just talking about math, okay?

This is the pragmatist, right? It's like, what's going on here? Why are we talking about philosophy? We just brought up numbers and things like this. That's a great question, okay? And I think at first glance it might seem like we're simply talking about numbers and math, but the discussion about universals and particulars, I think, really gets to the heart of how we explain reality itself, okay?

So for example, the atheist might say something like, we don't need God to know that 2 plus 2 equals 4, it's just basic math, okay? And then someone might say that, and you might even be thinking, why would I even be bringing this up?

But by the way, when I talk to atheists, it doesn't come up all the time, but it does come up, right? When I talk about how the unbelieving worldview, specifically the atheist that I'm talking about, he does not have unity in his worldview, he cannot account for the basic things he takes for granted when he says, but how?

I don't need God to know 2 plus 2 equals 4, okay? And then of course it's at this point where we're gonna have to strategically press in a little deeper to get to the heart of the issue, right? If you press the atheist, the materialistic atheist, to explain why math works, you'll see very quickly that they will run into some problems.

Math involves universals, like we've been discussing, abstract concepts like numbers and addition, okay? Math involves particulars, real-world objects, objects we actually count. You see, atheism doesn't have a foundation for why universals exist or why they connect to particulars in a consistent way.

You see, they're left borrowing from the Christian worldview, which does provide a foundation in God's rational and orderly nature. It's the teaching of Scripture, okay? This isn't just about numbers, it's about the consistency of the entire universe.

Without God, you can't account for why math, logic, or science even work, okay? Now of course some might say, well I don't need to account for those things. Well of course, you could say that, you're free to say that, but at that point the person is just being arbitrary.

Anything they assert, any fact that they state or assert, is going to, by necessity, presuppose these categories of unity and diversity, universals and particulars, okay? And so they're gonna argue all day long and ask you not to look behind the curtain to show that actually the things that they are asserting, the things that they're presupposing, when they assert a fact, okay, they cannot give an account for the very foundation upon which those things issue forth from.

And so your job is to pull away the curtain and show, actually, I agree, Mr. Atheist, you're very good at math, you're better at math than I am, but here's the kicker. Your world, you cannot account for math.

Your world, you cannot account for universals and particular things in the relationship between individual things and how they relate to each other with these overarching universal categories. The unbeliever cannot account for those things.

They cannot provide a rational justification for them, okay? All right, well what if, you know, your atheist friend comes along and says that math is is just a human invention, okay? It's something we made up to describe the world, right?

And I've heard this in various capacities, okay? Now if the atheist says that math is just a human invention, you could ask, if math is something we made up, here's a question, okay? Why does it work so perfectly in describing the universe, right?

For example, why do the laws of physics rely on mathematical principles? Why can we use math to make accurate predictions about things we've never seen before, like distant planets and things like that?

It's a question. It's a good question to ask. You see, the Bible explains this. God created the universe with order and structure, reflecting His rational nature, right? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, okay?

He created all things seen and unseen, right? He holds all things together by the power of His Word. See, humans didn't invent math. Humans discovered order. They discovered the order that God built into His creation.

If math were just a human invention, it would be arbitrary, right? And it wouldn't consistently apply to reality. But because God governs all things, math and everything else works universally, from counting apples to calculating the orbits of the planets, okay?

There's an order to it. And again, that is sufficiently accounted for within the Christian worldview. Now, if someone were to say, how do I explain to an atheist that they're borrowing from the Christian worldview, isn't that just an assumption, okay?

Now, that's a fair question, okay? And this is important because a lot of, especially presuppositionalists, you know, out there on the street, they'll say, hey, you're borrowing from the Christian worldview, or they'll say, by what standard, or they'll say, Christianity is true by the impossibility of the contrary.

All of those things have their place, but you need to learn to go beyond simply asserting those facts. You need to be able to explain, you know, what you mean by that and demonstrate that, because that's what apologetics requires.

We're giving an answer, we're not just making assertions, right? We need to defend and get into some of the details. And sometimes it's gonna require us to go a little deeper than simply making those assertions, which are popular presuppositional talking points.

But we want to go deeper than that. So when we say that atheists are, they are borrowing, okay, one second here, that they are borrowing from the Christian worldview, we mean they're relying on concepts that only make sense if God exists.

So even though they deny him, right, they're borrowing concepts that only make sense if God exists, the God that we're talking about exists. For example, atheists trust in universal consistency of math and logic, right?

They might say in their explanation, well, you know, it's a human invention, it's a language game. They might say those things, but they don't live consistently with that, right? They rely on their minds to reason accurately about the world, right?

They think that that helps them reason accurately about the world. They assume the physical universe operates in an orderly and predictable way. They might give lip service to, well, you know, you never know, right?

But really, they assume these things in their everyday experience. But if you think about it, none of these things fit with a worldview that says the universe came from random chance processes. You see, the Bible tells us that God is the source of all truth.

He upholds the universe by his power, Hebrews 1 .3. And humans are made in his image with the ability to think rationally. God created us in his image, Genesis 1 .27. And so when an atheist says two plus two equals four is just true, you could ask the question.

It's a fair question. Why? Where does that truth come from? How do you know it will always be true? And their answer is ultimately rely on assumptions about order, truth, reason that are themselves grounded in the nature of God, and they are unable to account for those things.

Okay? And so again, you want to press, you want to ask questions. There's nothing wrong with asking questions. People, you know, presuppositionalists specifically will get a bad rabble. There you go, they're playing the skeptic game.

How do you know? How do you know? How do you know? But those are fair questions, are they not? When we're debating worldviews, are we not supposed to ask for justifications for your assertions, right?

If you want to reject God, then make sense out of the world without him. We don't just—we're not just gonna grant you the things that you want, right, and then just let you argue from there. If you reject the Christian worldview and you think you can get along fine without the truth of the Christian worldview, then yes, account for numbers, account for mathematics, account for the things that we take for granted.

You see, a lot of people just think that we should give them those things, and we shouldn't, because when we're dealing with the existence of God, we're dealing with fundamental foundational issues. And so in a debate on worldviews, there are no free lunches, right?

We need to get into those details, okay? The unbeliever is always looking for that little thing that you'll give them. Well, let's just grant this, and then I'll show you—no, no, no, no. If you reject the God of the Scriptures, if you reject the God who says that all men have a knowledge of him and they are without excuse, then you're gonna have to construct your worldview and provide explanations that are native to your unbelief, not things that you have to borrow from a Christian perspective, okay?

We want to be able to point those things out. Very, very important. All right, so how does—you know, if someone were to ask, how does the Trinity, specifically the triune God, explain the relationship between universals and particulars?

Can you give an example? Yeah, so we can, all right? Again, these are deep issues. You're not going to always get into the conversations like this, but this is important, okay? Lest you think a nuanced and philosophically heavy discussion is irrelevant to practical apologetics.

Even if it's true that you might not use the terminology that I'm using—universals, particulars, abstractions, these sorts of things—it is so important that you are at least familiar with the concepts, because everything that someone says are going to assume those categories.

So even though you're not using these concepts, you want to be able to take what we're learning here and make application to the specific context in which you're speaking. Does that make sense? So even though we don't use this language, the concepts are important.

You want to have these concepts playing as kind of the background music of your mind, and be able to make practical application when you are talking with the atheist or whoever you might be engaging with, okay?

So nevertheless, the question, how does the Trinity explain the relationship between universals and particulars? Can you give an example? Okay, the doctrine of the Trinity helps us understand, I think, the balance between universals, or the unity, right, and the particulars, the diversity, the one and the many, right?

There are many things we see in the world—rocks, plants, you know, animals, humans— and then there are things that unify and relate those concepts—the universals, logic, right? Without logic, how do we even make sense and differentiate between individual things, right?

In the Trinity, we see one God—there's the unity—in three distinct persons, there's the diversity— Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Both unity, the oneness of God, and diversity, the manyness of God, are equally ultimate in God.

And this reflects the way universals and particulars work in the world. So, for example, universals—the concept of two is universal. It applies everywhere, whether you're counting apples or stars or whatever.

Particulars, okay, you got two apples—two apples are specific objects, they're individual objects in the real world. And so just as the Trinity brings harmony between unity and diversity, God's creation brings harmony between universals and particulars.

Without the God, there's no reason to expect this balance to exist at all, okay? Hope that's helpful to that specific question. Now, someone might say—someone might walk up and say, well, doesn't evolution explain how humans developed the ability to reason and use math?

And the straightforward answer to that is, no, not at all. Evolution can't explain the human ability to reason or the existence of math at all. And here's why. Think about it. Reason requires order, right?