trillian

This is the first time I've come across a case for God based on ideas I thoroughly enjoy thinking about. I think it can also be a case for atheism/agnosticism as well. But some interesting mind candy no matter what you believe. I guess I'd call these types of ponderings my own "atheist spirituality"

Here is the religious link (there are others I'm sure):
http://www.returntogod.com/science/dimensions.htm

I first read about the "flatlanders", who exist as shapes that live on a flat plane in 2 dimensions and try to visit "sphereland" in 3D, in a book called "The Fourth Dimension" by Rucker. Flatlanders was originally conceived in 1884 by a religious schoolmaster named Edwin Abbott Abbott (yes, that's 2 Abbotts-and the hero of his book is A squared ha ha!!).

I always thought that Flatlanders would make a person more skeptical since we cannot know things outside our limited dimension unless they actually physically inhabit it and even then we couldn't comprehend it with our limited view. Kinda like asking a person blind from birth to describe colors.

Given the unlimited dimensions you could imagine existing, there could be many different kinds of beings existing, which, if we knew them fully, would be like a fish suddenly being able to understand calculus- way out there! :banghead:

So...What do you think of Flatland as analogous to our 4D vs a Multi-dimensional world? Is there really a decent argument for an extradimensional deity in here somewhere?

Any thoughts? My brain has overloaded.

fando

Flatland is simply a mental exercise to help visualize multiple space dimensions, but it is by no means an accurate description of our universe. Useful for mathematical gymnastics, but hardly to discover the nature of reality.

The linked article postulates that God exists outside of the regular 4 dimensions of spacetime as a means to explain some of the logical problems with the idea of the Christian god, such as why 1+1+1=1 and why we don't ever see him. In doing so, it starts to make really wild assumptions about the universe, like the existence of multiple dimensions of time and so on without bothering to propose any real scientific basis for his claims. It's pure handwaving guesswork, nothing worthy of investigation.

Asha'man

As I understand current theories of physics that postulate more dimensions than the standard 3(+1), all of the additional dimesions are extremely small, at the Plank scale. There isn't even enough room to rotate a single proton on it's side!

We are unable to perceive these dimensions only becuase they are so small. If they were to espand the way the first 3 dimensions have, then I suspect we would be able to percieve them.

Remember, the flatlanders really did occupy the 3rd dimension, it's just that they were only as thick as a piece of paper. Imagine that the entire 3rd dimension was only paper thick. There would simply be no room for anything else but the flatlanders themselves!