The Fabric of the Cosmos: What is Space?

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i do not know how this thread has become a discussion of theism versus atheism. i thought the fundamental question was "what gives rise to the actuality of space", and i did not think it had religious intonations, but i was obviously wrong. space is not energy and so space can not be dissembled using energetic concepts, but whatever.

i went to a religious school for a few months, and we had to learn things that the bible said, and there was no clear meaning described as to what the eating of the apple from the tree of knowledge meant.

i am not religious to any degree, so please do not bother to refute me as a religious person, but i did try to comprehend what that parable meant. the "brothers" who taught at that school just reeled off the text from the bible, but they did not interpret it.

my interpretation of that parable was complicated.
god apparently said what we need is faith (which is trusting belief despite the fact that we can not work it out for ourselves to verify it without doubt).

i interpreted that to mean that the universe is infinitely complex, and no mind can ever begin to understand the fundamental workings of it, and so therefore people should just have faith in what hey are told by god (although he never spoke to me yet) rather than second guessing it and running away to do their own calculations to determine if he is right. no one has enough knowledge to understand the entirity of reality, and if they doubt reality because they are not capable of verifying it, then they are doomed to insanity.

i interpreted the snake story to be like the snake is the devil who says "do you want to be as smart as god? do you want to feel assured because you can suss out all of reality on your own without having to trust him blindly? if you want to get rid of your dependence on him to tell you what is going on, then just eat this apple", and eve chose to eat it and convinced the adam fellow to do so as well, and in eating the apple, they showed that they did not have faith in god, and they thought that they could be as smart as god if they ate it.

after they ate the apple, the horrible realisation of their inability to work it out on their own became a reality, and so their world went from "everything is taken for granted due to blind faith in gods love" to "everything we do from here on, we are now accountable for, because it is our own minds that steer us from now on, and our own minds are not capable of eternal judgement, so we are at the mercy of our own self governed fate".

i never thought that parable meant anything to do with sex.


but i must say again, i am not a religious person, and i never talk about religion with anyone in my real life.

You and me both. I thought I presented my case from the bible fairly well.

PPR is total anarchy. People change topics like a flock of birds evading a predator, or they trying talking over each trying to see who gets the higher ground. It would be nice if people would actually stay on topic... but most do not.



Thank you for posting that.

But do you understand what it means?

Someone could throw out a rather complex math problem like this -- (sqrt(cos(x))*cos(400*x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.4)*(4-x*x)^0.1 -- but would the person be able to understand it? It's one thing to simply see the equation, but something entirely different to understand it. That's what Witnesses do. We share our knowledge AND understanding of the bible with people. It's not just words on paper. They have meaning.

You don't. You don't have the Oral Tradition to guide you.

ruveyn

I couldn't watch the video because I don't "have the right in my country".

But I read Brian Greenes book. I think it is hard to think of space in terms of fields (which is what I think he was saying), because the fields are not tangible but merely values of forces? It seems he was saying that anyway.

Its a tough one, is it a thing in its own right, or does it exist simply because matter/energy exists.

Anyway, the bible doesn't explain it any better than anyone else. And just because it appears to say something about space being a fabric doesn't mean anything other than the people who wrote it were thinking just like we think today, and presumably like any human has always thought.

What else could you expect from a thread that begins with a bible quotation?

Please don't lie. The thread began with a quotation from Brian Greene in the Nova video. Go back and look...

oh yes, the very first line is not a bible quote, but your first post's focus is clearly biblical

The earth is not a circle. It's not even a sphere.

That's not what I'm getting at. Feel free to post what you believe, and I'm glad if you do, but if you (or me, or anybody) makes statements about the natural world that are questionable then expect to be... questioned. Sometimes the questions will seem hostile, but if you can answer them without letting that effect you then you look better than the attacker. Sometimes that is easier said than done, I know, but there is no point complaining that you are a lone voice; outside of this forum, this is generally how I and most atheists feel, so perhaps you can understand, or perhaps not. In any case I respect you for being the lone voice that you refer to