[empath75]

The roots of mathematics in the west are fairly inextricably tied up with the development of religion via Pythagoras and especially Plato. Plato (or at least Platonists) taught, for example that God literally was One -- as in the number 1. And that all of reality is the result of successive emanations from 1 -- to the dyad (2), then the rest of the numbers, on through geometry and so on. Those beliefs influenced the philosophical development of all the major monotheistic religions.

[yters]

Math was one of Plato's main methods of showing there was a reality beyond the physical world that we could access with our minds.