Christians; how do you regard Hinduism?

[LTX]

496. I think you are overstating your case.

There is a school of thought that universal mathematical notations and alphabets are invented, as opposed to discovered, but it gross overstatement, in my view, to say that alphabets (or mathematical notation systems) are "arbitrary." Neither alphabets nor mathematical notation can properly be classified as "arbitrary."

The evolution of symbolic representations of abstract ideas is nested in the evolution of the abstract ideas themselves. There was a turning point to universality in both alphabetic and mathematical notation that roughly coincided with the realization(s) that the underlying abstractions themselves had non-parochial applications (language to alphabet preceding mathematics to mathematical notation). While we know in (very) rough terms the historical timeline of universal notation systems, we have very little evidence of why universality was so long in coming, why it appeared when it did, and what functions of consciousness permitted their "invention" (or currently permit their use). We are now so accustomed to these universal notation systems that we blithely ignore both how unique (and bizarre) they truly are, and how powerful they are.

I don't have a firm position on whether mathematics was invented or discovered, or whether universal mathematical and alphabetic notation systems were invented or discovered. I can appreciate the arguments on both sides of that debate. But what you dismiss as "not that difficult" is actually profoundly difficult, and profoundly interesting.