Mathematics and Religion vs Self-Help

There are similarities between traditional education in religion and contemporary education in mathematics based on an idea that God = Mathematics. To see this, consider the following common statements which express the fundamental beliefs which religious/mathematics education seeks to imprint in the blank minds of the students:

• Religion/Math is a supreme creation of human thought.
• Religion/Math is a high perfect art as daring as the most secret dreams of imagination.
• Religion/Math is a fundament of society.
• Religion/Math helps us to understand the World.
• Religion/Math helps us to cope with the problems we face in our lives.
• God/Math is everywhere present but invisible.
• God/Math is allmighty but with very limited practical utility.
• Religion/Math can be properly understood only by a selected few; the others have to accept it without understanding.
• A life without Religion/Math is a miserable life.
• Religion/Math has an intrinsic beauty and coherence.
• Religion/Math Mathematics plays a pivotal role in the progress of society and its continued growth relies on the encouragement and teaching of the next generation religious/mathematical thinkers, and outreach to the public and schools. 
  

Traditional education in religion was very successful in implanting these beliefs, but nevertheless today confessional religion has vanished from the school system, at least in the Western World. 

Similarly, even if the school system still succeeds in making all students believe in the greatness and importance of mathematics, whether they succeed or fail miserably, mathematics education is today in a state of permanent crisis in the footpaths of religious education. 

Religious education is today being replaced by a flood of self-help psychology and traditional mathematics is being replaced by self-help laptop technology:

• how to handle words, pictures, sound and videos
• how handle social life using facebook and blog 
• how to get information and get to understand the world, using search engines
• how to play computer games and music
• how handle gps, mobile and bank account. 

If not mathematics education is going to vanish from the school system, it has to be reformed into self-help laptop technology, and come down form the higher spheres of religion. This is further motivated on my blogs about mathematics education.