This post is a reaction to the video The Mandelbrot Set: Atheists’ WORST Nightmare.
The tiresome titles of the form <type_of_person_I_do_not_agree_with>s’ WORST Nightmare should really be retired in my opinion. The title is misleading and sensationalized. See Veritasium’s video on clickbait for elaboration.
The video is a talk given by Dr. Jason Lisle on the Answers in Genesis YouTube Channel. The beginning of the video suggests that there is a hidden code in numbers but throughout the video the subject of ‘codes’ is not revisited.
The talk begins inoccuously with a brief but intuitive explanation of sets and the Mandelbrot set. This introduction was acceptable as a popular mathematics talk. There is only so much rigor that can be imposed on a non-technical audience.
But the Mandelbrot set doesn’t require any presuppositional apologetics to be understood and enjoyed by a wider audience. I think it should be enjoyed by anyone who wishes to without them worrying about whether “their worldview can account for it”. Consider watching the following videos for contrast.
Beyond the visually pleasing introduction to the Mandelbrot set, I found that Dr. Lisle’s talk was mostly a string of logical fallacies with the most common of them being the argument from ignorance (argumentum ad ignorantiam). Furthermore, Dr. Lisle claims (and in some cases tacitly assumes) that his worldview solves a variety of mysteries related to mathematics and abstraction but he doesn’t demonstrate that it actually does.
The talk is more rhetorical and preaching than reasonable and was intended to gratify an audience that didn’t need convincing.
In regards to the mathematics, he makes multiple claims that are either false, incomplete, or misleading. These math-based issues in his talk do not seem to lean away or toward his overall thesis, so I don’t suspect they’re intentional. On some points, but not all, there may be a difference in opinion about how to introduce these subjects as well.