Mathematician was smug with skepticism

By Riley Gonzalez —

In 581 Geometry Math class for his master’s degree, Jeffrey Geibel stumbled across one paragraph in his book that shattered his atheistic worldview.

“It’s not possible to prove anything because if every statement requires a reason,” said the veteran high school math teacher from Southern California.

The geometry had at the back of the book 29 axioms that were considered true without proof. Based on those starting points, you would prove every geometric principle. Without them, you couldn’t prove anything. But the axioms were just assumed to be true.

He pondered: why were the axioms just assumed to be true?

Geibel had spent the last four years challenging people on Skypecast, one of the early chatrooms on the internet, with a simple skepticism: How do you know that? Christians, atheists, Hindus and others came into the room to engage; he befuddled them by repeating the one question.

People who explained their beliefs but eventually ran out of foundational arguments to prove their beliefs.

Geibel felt smugly superior. No one could out-logic him. He felt safe and secure with his extreme skepticism — until he took that Master’s Degree math class.

At some point, you have to have some sort of assumptions that required no “infinite regress problem.” Whenever a statement is made, it needs to be proven backwards to a foundation. Then that foundation is also a statement that needs to be proven. You keep moving backwards trying to prove your statement. There’s no end.

“For the last four years of my life I had been pursuing pursuing a fool’s errand,” Geibel says. “as they say, “The reality is at some level you have to have statements you accept and then you reason forward from them.”

Geibel had been attending church with his wife to placate her; he did so to for appearances sake only, and he didn’t mind. The people were nice, the moral system seemed to work. It was a small price to pay for an atheist who enjoyed his family.

But now the consummate beffudler was himself befuddled. What were his assumptions in life?

As time progressed, he was perplexed. Then he had an epiphany.

“I was trying to really believe there was no meaning, value and purpose” in life, he says. “But I just knew it wasn’t true.”

As a normal human, he felt life was full of meaning, value and purpose. An atheist has no meaning, value or purpose because life just spontaneously formed on an insignificant speck in the universe. Animal species, including humans, live by the principle of survival of the fittest. There’s no right or wrong.

He knew intuitively that as a human life had meaning. Life had value. Life had purpose.

He was already attending church with his wife. He was listening to the Word. The people there produced the fruits of Christianity; they had a moral code and enjoyed the psychological benefits by living for others and for God.

Eventually, Geibel came to embrace Christianity. He makes his case for Christianity whenever given the opportunity.