Euclid and Jesus

EUCLID AND JESUS

How and why the church changed
mathematics and Christianity
across two religious wars

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Why this book?

To explain to the layperson that the math taught in schools and universities, today, is based on (a) false and racist history and is (b) not secular, but is laced with church dogma.

You probably heard of "Euclid" with school geometry. "Real" math supposedly began with "Euclid". But what is the evidence for "Euclid"? Never asked? Just believed those stories without evidence, did you? Most children do the same: they believe the stories planted in their school texts. They ask for evidence only when the story changes.

Euclid prize. To move the attention from story to fact, I have offered a prize of RM 10,000 (Rs 1.8 lakh, USD 3,200) for any serious evidence about "Euclid". No one has claimed the prize so far. But "Euclid" continues to be portrayed in school texts as a white male, though he supposedly lived in Africa.

Experts know there is zero evidence for "Euclid". Some have admitted the truth. But many are not honest enough to do so. Unable to supply evidence they think a clever way out is to misrepresent, and abuse the critic. They censor, to save their superstitions from exposure. These tactics only underline their dishonesty: they know they can can peddle their faith only by attacking the sceptic.

Read this scholarly article "Goodbye Euclid!" to find out how "Euclid" is mere Crusading history concocted by the church. Don't fully understand the article? Try this book Is Science Western in Origin? available from Kindle. Want to know more about how the church concocted history? Then the book Euclid and Jesus is for you.

Is this book really for you?

But does this really concern you? How does it matter to you whether or not "Euclid" existed?

First, if you are black this concerns you since that racist history built on top of this false history. (initially aimed against Muslims during the Crusades). Just as Crusading history sought to suppress Muslim achievement, racist history systematically suppressed African achievements, attributing them all to Greeks. Read Euclid and Jesus to learn how leading Western philosophers (like Kant) went on to use that racist history to morally justify slavery. For true emancipation those false stories must be forever destroyed, as this book aims to do. The anonymous author of the Elements was not a white male, as he is usually pictured, but a black woman whose image you see on the cover of the book. So, if you are black (or a woman or a Muslim) do read this book for a fresh perspective on the history of math.

If your people were colonised (that is, if you are from Arabia, Iran, India, Africa, Indo-China, etc.), this concerns you for that false history was used to trap and capture the minds of the colonised. False history was used to claim that the West was superior since science (or "real" math, in the case of "Euclid") originated there. So, the colonised came to believe that the right way forward for them was to mimic the West. Even after independence, most of these countries blindly adopted Western institutions .True independence, or decolonisation, requires the mind to be freed from the grip of such false myths like "Euclid", as this book aims to do. In actual fact, before the Crusades (and for many centuries afterwards) Europeans were backward in math, and they leanrt most of their math from India, either through Arabs (arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry) or drectly (calculus), just as the Greeks easlier learnt geometry from the Egyptians.

Is this book for you? (continued)

The book also concerns you if you ever studied math in school. Bad history leads to bad philosophy, and today math is taught in schools with a bad philosophy. Children study math without questioning its philosophy (did you?), and get indoctrinated. That indoctrination begins with the belief that only one philosophy of math is right, and that it is "universal", though it developed in the West.

If that philosophy of math were indeed universal, it should have developed universally. But the odd ball belief is that only one individual, "Euclid", got that "universal" philosophy right. Further, as I point out in Euclid and Jesus, if we look at the actual book Elements (which "Euclid" supposedly wrote), even its very first proposition does not fit "Euclid's" purported philosophy. This is explained away by saying that "Euclid" made major blunders! Stranger still, "Euclid's" supposed views do NOT agree with the beliefs about math prevalent in his purported time; instead, they agree with the church dogma (Christian rational theology) which developed in Crusading times, some 1500 years later. That was also when the book Elements (which "Euclid" supposedly wrote) first came to Europe.

Those early "pagan" belief ascribed a religious function to mathematics, for they related mathematics or mathesis to the soul. This relation of mathematics to the soul is explained most famously in Plato's story of Socrates and the slave boy. But the church cursed that notion of the soul duirng its first religious war against "pagans". Early Christians had earlier believed in that same "pagan" notion of soul, but the church invented a new notion of soul, which enabled it to rule. To strengthen its rule, the church brutally suppressed dissent, and soon banned mathematics and all philosophers from the Roman empire, so that no one was left to defend the earlier notion of soul. Many centuries later, the church waged a second religious war (the Crusades, against Muslims). At this time, the church found it convenient to accept back mathematics, but it had to be made acceptable. To make mathematics "acceptable", the church reinterpreted the book Elements to match its brand new Crusading dogma. Concocting a "Euclid", about whom nothing was known, helped the church in this process. But it harms you in various ways.

For example, did you (or your children) find math difficult in school? It was not your fault (or your teacher's). Math is difficult because church dogma has intruded into it. That dogma is irrelevant to all practical applications of math, which practical applications are the reason why most people study math. Eliminating the church dogma from math makes math easy. I have demonstrated this in teaching experiments in universities in 3 countries. (Feel free to downlaod and read the scholarly reports of these experiments The religious bias in formal math, and Calculus made easy. More in the left pane.)

If you are non-Christian (or secular), you must read the easy book Euclid and Jesus to find out how church dogma infiltrated a supposedly secular subject like math, and how that plants various religious biases in your mind and in the minds of your children. That harms your interests and surely concerns you.

If you are a Christian, then too you should read the book Euclid and Jesus to know how that church dogma, which aims for world power, hence trampled on the original religion of love, and mangled the Bible (as Isaac Newton also pointed out, though the church suppressed his writings).

Mathematics and Christian dogma

Many people are shocked at the thought that mathematics may not be secular. "Isn't 2+2=4?", they invariably ask. But "modern" math is about "proof". Most people try to prove 2+2=4 by lining up two objects with two objects to make four objects. (That is how they learnt about numbers in kindergarten.) Such empirical proofs are indeed secular, but they are NOT permitted in present-day mathematics. Why not? Read my book Cultural Foundations of Mathematics, or this early scholarly article. If you find that too heavy-reading, then the book Euclid and Jesus is for you.

On present day mathematics, 2+2=4 is a formal and metaphysical truth relative to Peano's axioms or set theory. With different axioms we could have 1+1=0 (as in Boolean addition for exclusive "or" performed on computer chips), or 1+1=1 (as in Boolean addition for inclusive "or", also performed on computer chips). If 2 means 1+1 that would make 2+2=0 or 2+2=1. We could even have 2+2=5 (as in 2 big fish + 2 small fish = 5 small fish by weight). So, in formal math we must specify that we are numbers and addition according to Peano's axioms.

But Peanos's axioms (or set theory) subtly bring in the notion of infinity; hence a computer can never do Peano arithmetic properly. (Read this article for more details and the C source code. The complied computer program on computer addition is here. A more detailed explanation is here.) Hence, children who learn "modern math" are taught set theory, which is a metaphysical way to handle infinity. This axiomatic infinity uses the church metaphysics of eternity; it led to the first creationsit controversy in the 5th century. (Read this article on Academic Imperialism for more details.)

Don't know what Peano's axioms are? Don't know what is formal truth? Don't know axiomatic set theory? Don't understand the church metaphysics of eternity? Too bad for you. Did it strike you that your ignorance could be (and is being) exploited to chain your mind (and your children's) to a world view which suits the church? Read the book Euclid and Jesus to understand this in simple terms.

Are you a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or other non-Christian? Did you know that the "universal" proof of formal mathematics is biased against your religious beliefs? For example, disallowing empirical proofs rejects all systems of Indian philosophy at one stroke, as inferior, for they all accept the empirical as the first means of proof, as does science. The Indian ganita or the Arabic hisab is secular, but is today rejected as non-mathematics, claiming that "Euclid's" "universal" philosophy of mathematics requires a particular (non-secular) metaphysics which suits the church.

Of course, this metaphysics is not universal so the mathematics based on it cannot be universal either. Thus, present-day, formal mathematics is a doctrine of proof which uses only 2-valued logic. If one used instead the Buddhist logic of catuskoti, or the Jain logic of syadavada, the theorems of formal mathematics would change. Math today does not allow that, for it teaches reasoning aligned to Christian rational theology, which borrowed from and modified Islamic rational theology (aql-i-kalam). Read this article on Religious roots of mathematics to know more, and this one (Benedict's Maledicts) on why Christian rational theology differs from Islamic rational theology. Read this encyclopedia article on Non-Western Logic to learn more about Buddhist and Jain logic. Don't fully understand the articles? Want to know more? Then the book Euclid and Jesus is for you.

Colonial education

Students don't really know why they study the math they do. Neither do their teachers: they just follow the syllabus set by the government. The government doesn't know either: it goes by what the "experts" say. Thus, everyone blindly trusts a few "experts" who set the syllabus. A handful of math "experts" control a vast gullible population!

So you thought your blind trust in math "experts" is different from the blind trust others have in so many foolish things? Did it strike you that the "experts" you trust might have vested interests? Who decides who those "experts" are? Why do all math "experts" need to be Western-trained? That usually also mean they act as agents of the West, and push church metaphysics which harm your interests. These "experts" are unethical, for they hide the conflict of interests which becomes manifest the moment one tries to change the philosophy of mathematics, as I did. Read more about the conflict of interests in the concluding paragraph of this article Calculus made easy.

So, you thought colonialism introduced Western education for the benefit of the colonised, and not to control them through mind-capture? So, you thought exploitation (as in India and China), slavery (as in Africa), and genoicde (as in the Americas and Australia) were not utterly immoral, but were great humanitarian acts, the way Westerners like Kant or Carlyle said? If so, you deserve your slavery. Want freedom? Read this book to find out how to free yourself. Don't fully undestand it? Want to know more? Then the book Euclid and Jesus is for you?

How to make math easy

Math became difficult because it got intertwined with theology and Christian metaphysics: the metaphysics of infinity is built into set theory. So, making math secular eliminates that bad metaphysics, and makes math easy. For example, differential equations and elliptic integrals can be taught to children in a few days, as I have done.

Formal math is about proof or persuasion (required by Christian priests) unlike practical math which is about calculation (required for commerce, science, and engineering). Metaphysically proving 2+2=4 (from Peanos's axioms) is pointless, for mathematically proving something does not make it a certain or universal truth. Metaphysical proofs are also useless: few people ever need them. (That includes scientists and engineers who use mathematics to calculate.)

But to be able to teach secular, practical, and easy math (see the courses on calculus without limits, on the left pane), it is first necessary to overthrow the rule of the math "experts". For this it is necessary that common people understand how and why math got mixed-up with Christian dogma. The layperson must learn that Western-trained math "experts", who act as agents of the West, are not to be trusted, any more than agents of the slave trade. Trusting them is a sure path to slavery. Freedom needs informed decision-making: people must work to overthrow the authority of those "experts". Then only can math become secular, practical, and easy. This book Euclid and Jesus is for you if you want to join this effort to make math easy and history more honest.

Making science better

If math has been invaded by church dogma, that will naturally reflect in science based on that math. Eliminating that dogma also helps to make science better.