Maybe, I couldn't really say. I'm not religious and I do find that view closed-minded myself.
edit: countdown until Dang detaches this tangent thread in 3, 2, ...
This feels like the "god of the gaps" argument, that reduces god to pretty much anything. In reality, religion is far less abstract.
The abstract axioms of reason aren't really the same as religious articles of faith.
> It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all
Depends what you mean by "reality". The closest institution wrt the nature of reality, is "science" which strives to discover its nature, and even implies by method that it is purely phenomenal. Compare/contrast with a church - which defends its doctrines rather than verify them.
The larger point is that derogatory comments about belief systems only point to the speakers subjective inability to comprehend said system, nothing objective about the system itself.
> derogatory comments about belief systems only point to the speakers subjective inability to comprehend said system
Why? Where do you make this point? Can I play that game too? "Failure to agree with my comments only point to listeners subjective inability to comprehend said comments."
Also, I thought that was the definition of "faith" - Is that inherently "derogatory"?
This is not to say that mathematics is wrong, of course, just that since it is not internally consistent -- and since nothing is -- everything becomes an object of belief at some level. Therefore relying on notions like "the burden of proof lies upon the person making an assertion or claim" is turtles all the way down -- NOTHING is provable and EVERYTHING is a belief.
If that's the case, then it's tautological. In practice, "provability" is partially quantitative, not starkly Boolean (True/False)
I'm not sure Russell's Teapot concept was troubled by his later failures to create an internally consistent body of mathematics:
> Russel's teapot was mathematics as he could not meet the burden of proof at the axiomatic level, yet we still believe it to be true.
You don't need to meet a BoP at an axiomatic level, by definition of what an axiom is. We still accept the analogy of the teapot, because the axioms are accepted by standard. If this acceptance is "faith", it is still far from religious faith, whose "axioms" are not reduced/irreducible, but complex, dependent (on reason) and ad-hoc.
Giant enthymematic jump right there.
Math on the hand is so useful it was used to designed my cell phone, my car and the computer I type this on.
One of these these things has evidence and rich history of working and the other is religion. There is some false equivalence going on with your saying that we can't explain every detail of math it is somehow comparable to a thoroughly incorrect view of reality.