The Mandelbrot Set: Atheists’ WORST Nightmare

In the case of the mandelbrot set. The answer to "What causes the complexity?" is "The work done iterating the formula". It's not a nightmare. It shows us that the beauty and complexity we see in the word around us can arise from a few simple rules.

Now I believe in Math, thank you.

I'm an atheist. I have no idea why this was recommended to me, but it was a very good, entertaining, educational and non-condescending presentation on a series of complex topics. At least until the way it got to religion - you're right that atheist mathematicians/scientists don't understand everything, but to most of us that's the joy of science. To be on the very edge of understanding and not understanding. Religious differences nevertheless, great presentation, thank you.

As soon as you plot a graph you have brought the conceptual into the physical. An incremental formula using negative values to infinity creating a pattern that is infinitely smaller and infinitely beautiful is no nightmare. Thank you for confirming to me there is beauty in everything.

As an Atheist, I am fascinated by the Mandelbrot! Not even close to a nightmare!

The Mandelbrot is the greatest fractal formula ever written. Every time I use a Mandelbrot formula for my fractal art, I'm never let down.

The universe does not inherently obey mathematical laws; rather, the physical world has an intrinsic behavior that we have learned to describe using the language of mathematics. Referring to these descriptions as 'laws' is a misnomer, as the universe is not governed by our mathematical constructs. Instead, we stumbled upon numerical patterns and scenarios that closely resemble and model the behavior we observe in the universe as we explored and played with numbers over time.

I mean you CAN attribute how cool the Mandelbrot set is to the infinite, intelligent mind of God, but you can also do so to the dude who came up with defining the set that way instead of another. I'll go with the second one.

As a Christian, I don't think this is "scary" to atheists, or somehow conclusively proves the existence of God. It is some really cool math though, and I personally believe it adds to the glory of God, but I don't see how an atheist couldn't just be like "yeah. that's math." Nice, funny, cool sermon!

The truth is always more crazy than the craziest predictions. Math looks boring because of school, but it's implications are absolutely mind-boggling.

There's some incredible beauty in math for sure, but while I cannot rule out a "designer" of the mandelbrot set, all of math is connected. You cannot invent only the mandelbrot set without also inventing the notion of complex numbers, squaring, and adding. To paint the beauty of the mandelbrot set is to also paint all the dull or chaotic parts of math with seemingly no pattern. Really, there's just patterns everywhere and it's up to you decide which to enjoy. It's not beautiful because God created it for us, it is beautiful because we ignored all the patterns that weren't.

Lisle explains the Mandelbrot set very eloquently and without requiring the audience to know much math at all. As an allegory for the mind of God, I think the Mandelbrot set serves perfectly. It is infinitely complex in the literal sense that it would require infinite resources to render in its entirety and it represents a certain blend of repetition and unpredictability that makes it particularly beautiful. Really, though, it does not serve as an argument for God. There are so many fractals like this and it's pretty easy to come up with new ones on your own, and there are other systems such as the Lorentz Butterfly that are similar in their beauty. The Mandelbulb is another good example, a 3D generalization of the Mandelbrot that was invented in a fractal rendering forum. These things are all beautiful for the reasons mentioned above, but they are even more beautiful because their complexity emerges from such simple rules. That doesn't show God at all, it only demonstrates the property of emergence. It also makes sense that a mathematical equation would give rise to mathematical properties (the cardioid, circles, counting, etc.) It also isn't a "code" by any reasonable definition, I really don't understand how that word is meant to be interpreted here. The Mandelbrot conveys no knowledge that isn't required to make the thing, and doesn't encode any wisdom beyond counting, adding, and so on. It is a fascinating thing to study the properties of, but that's about it. To the contrary, I find its demonstration of emergence to be an excellent counter to the mind-body dualism which Christians often presuppose (and then go on to argue that their god offers the best explanation for). With the Mandelbrot, we see that complex properties sometimes emerge naturally from a simple system. Our consciousnesses, then, may also have emerged rather than requiring some external soul or agent to explain. It isn't a proof of physicalism, but it's a good way to explain emergence as a hypothesis for how our minds came into existence. If you want to use the Mandelbrot as a metaphor for the mind of God, then do that. I completely understand, it's a beautiful metaphor. Please don't call it an "atheist's nightmare", though. It makes no sense.

I was an atheist and now I'm a mathematician after this video

It's not scary, it's beauty and wonder

I"m an atheist and the mandelbrot set gives me night terrors. I wake up in cold sweats. 🙄

I had to laugh at the title of this. My maths tutor daughter, a confirmed atheist, is especially keen on the Mandelbrot set.

“Mathematical concepts were not created, they were discovered.”

I have to admit, if you ignore the fallacious reasoning and logical leaps for the last 10 minutes or so, this man did an amazing job explaining sets, complex numbers, fractals, and the Mandelbrot Set. Good job!

This is a nightmare in that we get to observe individuals wholeheartedly discount high, yet rational, complexity, to the whim of a deity simply because the human mind finds it difficult to comprehend. The nightmare is knowing that people are inflicting this abject deism on other people throughout societies, guiding policy and lawmaking, and subjugating people to their own narrow band of "belief."

The prime number distribution is already fabulously intricate, and that comes from an even simpler procedure. If anything here surprises you, you weren't paying attention to 2,3,5,7,11,13,17 ... back in elementary school.