ABSTRACT
My opening statement was in large part a reply to the arguments of Professor Craig’s book God Over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism (2016) And Craig’s opening statement was something very like a condensation of the arguments of God Over All. I think, therefore, that I have in effect already replied to his opening statement. I will therefore devote this “Reply” to an argument for a thesis about numbers—a kind of abstract object that was hardly mentioned in my opening statement, despite the title of this book. And that thesis is that if numbers and other mathematical objects do not exist, then the applicability of mathematics to the world about us (which cannot be disputed) is a mystery. The argument will not take a stand on a certain important question in the ontology of mathematics, namely: Are there sui generis numbers, things that are intrinsically numbers, objects that must be regarded as numbers—or are there only various classes of abstract objects, each of those very different classes comprising objects that can be made to do the work we want numbers to do? (Footnote 2 to my opening statement is relevant to this question.)
