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More Philosophy and Religion

Michael has been blabbering away about N-dimensional space and has been likening our inability to visualize extra dimensions to our supposed similar inability to recognize his god.

In a very real sense, there is no such thing as dimensions at all.

Dimensions are a handy method we have for describing an object. We say that something is X units long, Y units wide, and N units deep. These three dimensions are sufficient to describe everday stationary objects. You can plot any object on a 3 dimensional graph as long as you do not have to account for it's motion. If you do need to include motion in the description, a 4th dimension, time, is needed.

If we back up just a moment, we can describe some objects using only a two dimensional graph. We aren't generally concerned with the depth of a piece of paper, for example. However, if we need to describe the properties of stacked paper, we need the third dimension. If stacks of paper are moving, we need time as our fourth dimension.

So far, what we have fits with simple Newtonian Physics. But, as we all know, the Newtonian model didn't quite work perfectly, and Einstein and others developed a subtly different model of How It All Works.

For a good number of years, mathematicians and physicists have been playing with the new model(s). The mathematicians play on chalkboards, and the phyicists play with chalkboards *and* particle accellerators.

And they try to make it all make sense. Unfortunately, it doesn't. Physics has some apparent inherent contradictions where X + X doesn't seem to want to come out to the expected answer.

One way that these things have been dealt with is by inventing extra dimensions. Just as we needed a third dimension to describe stacks of paper, certain models of the universe work out better if we theorize an extra dimension or two. Or twelve :-)

The important thing to keep in mind is that these things are proposed in order to solve problems that don't seem solvable any other way. It is quite possible that such extra dimensions are real, and it is also quite possible that we are just plain missing a simple piece of data that would make everything fall into place without such constructs.

Michael wants us to believe that belief in extra dimensions is equivalent to belief in God. As the extra dimensions are posited for rather definite reasons, any such claim for God must involve such a definite reason also. In other words, we need a God-shaped hole in the universe for Michael's argument to have any validity.

If Michael is going to show us this God-shaped hole in Physics, I am not at all surprised that he declines to attempt it in a single post.

Although I will be surprised if he thinks that very many reading here have the necessary background to even begin to see this supposed hole at all.

I can say that some physicists have made such claims in the past, and probably make such claims now. Since other physicists of equal or greater renown have consistently attributed those claims to personal wish fulfillment rather than hard facts, I have little doubt that there is no such a hole in physics.