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A week or so ago, my friend Jake published a post about perspective. That post was a result of a conversation that he and I had on the way back from Nationals about that topic. This post is a result of both that post and that conversation. Basically, we were agreed that one of the most incredible things we can do as people is to see from another's point of view, and we decided to create two posts about perspective, each from a different perspective.

This is something I could talk about forever, but in my next three posts I just want to elaborate on three fairly simple but fascinating thoughts, the first of these being:

1. God must be 5D

Now, this point requires some clarification. Lots, in fact. What I actually mean to say will take a lot of explaining. Let me start by quoting Jake's perspective post. I could take the time to explain things myself, but he summed the main points of our conversation quite nicely in these two paragraphs:

"The things around us are 3D, having height, width and depth. H. G. Wells explains that "time" is the 4th dimension. However, the world, as whole is essentially 5D. We all see it from our 4D experience in life and see it as what we feel to be a whole. However, there in lies the problem. When we see something that is 5D through 4D lenses, we can only see part of it.

The world is a sphere. I see my circle. you see your circle. We both see the world, and we both see different things. Perspective is how we understand a 5D idea, in a 4D way. The problem with this, is simply that we talk about the same thing, yet we unknowingly are talking about different perspectives of that thing."

If the physical world is essentially 5D, and our experience is 4D (points that are debatable, but essentially true - not everyone agrees with Wells' contention that time is a fourth dimension, or Jacob's well-thought-out point that the world is 5D), then God has to be at least 5D. That's the other debatable issue. God may exist in a thousand more dimensions than we do. Most likely, He exists in as many dimensions as there are in our universe. But He must exist in more dimensions than we do.

We know that He transcends the physical world. But then, if He is in a different dimension, how can He act in the physical dimensions, as the Bible says He does? If you are asking yourself this question, then you definitely need a primer on the concept of dimensionality.

A dimension is, to use a very simplistic and incomplete definition (which will serve its purpose just fine in this instance), a way in which an object moves through space. It could also be called the space through which the object moves, but you get the idea. It makes more sense when we apply it to the dimensions in which we exist. For example, we exist in one dimension in that we can move left and right. If we were placed upon a line, we could move back and forth along that line. We also exist in two dimensions, for we can move up and down. If we were placed up against a wall, which has two dimensions (not counting its thickness, obviously), we could move to every point on that wall. We also exist in three dimensions because we can move back and forth. Thus, we are able to reach every point in a room. We might have to climb a ladder or jump a lot, but the point is that we are physically able to occupy any of those points in space.

Time is called the fourth dimension by many because we move through it, but it is not a spatial dimension. One reason we know this is that, regardless of what you read in science fiction, as far as the evidence has shown us we are unable to move backwards through time. Also, we are unable to stop moving through time. Finally, time is not physical. It can be used to measure physical motion, but because it is not physical itself, and for this reason I contend that we are truly 3D, although we do experience what some call a fourth dimension.

You see, we are four dimensional beings, but this does not mean that we only exist in the highest dimension (which is either the third or fourth depending on your preference). Rather, we exist in all three spatial dimensions and time. Likewise, God must be 5D+ in that He can move through all dimensions. He is not limited to any of them and can chose to act within any of them.

Now consider this. Let's say that the Mr. Clean company releases a magic pencil to go with their Magic Eraser line of cleaning products. With this pencil you create a two-dimensional world inhabited by little stick figures who drive ultra-compact cars and live in houses with paper-thin walls. You call this world Page-because you're just that creative.

At some point these people go bad and decide that they don't want your help, even though you're the only person who can protect them from rain getting on their pages or being fed to a paper shredder. They start breaking the rules you set up for them when you created them, dismissing them as pages at the beginning of the book that have no relevance in this chapter of their lives. They start wondering if you even exist.

Why would they wonder this? Well, they've never seen you.

Their ancestors may have seen you, but for the past few years you have been invisible to the people of Page. You see, you are a three-dimensional being, and you live outside of the world of Page, transcending their two-dimensional existence. When a person on Page dies, you cut them out of Page and take them to the three-dimensional world of your room. As for the people on Page still living, they have theorized about a third dimension, but many have lost faith in that world and thus lost faith in you. Because they cannot see the third dimension, they cannot see you, and they have difficulty believing in you. How can you show yourself to Pagekind? Quite simply, you have to lower yourself to their dimension. Since you are three dimensional, you can inhabit the first and second dimensions, but only in a form that they can comprehend. You will have to limit yourself in order to save the people of Page.

Is this not the same way in which God revealed Himself to the inhabitants of Earth? He sent His son, Jesus, in a form that we could understand, as a 3D human. He had extradimensional power to affect the 3d world, but He was also limited by the dimensions He assumed. He had within Himself the fullness of God as well as the fullnes of man, but we could only see his 3-dimensional existence.

This 2D world analogy breaks down in that you and I are not God. God is able to reveal the spiritual dimensions to us, whereas the people in my example would be unable to show the people of Page something in their third dimension. Secondly, my analogy does not explain for the origin of sin, and third, we could not become flat people, but God is able to become like us as Jesus. What can I say, I was trying to communicate this idea of dimensionality and I didn't think through my analogy enough.

I still think it would make a good children's book, though. I'll keep it on the back burner. Hmm... The People of Page... it's coming along.

Physics and Philosophy Part II

Here is another quote from my physics textbook that affected me in a very different way:

Have you ever heard the philosopher's question, "If a tree falls in a forest but no one is

around to hear it, does it make a sound?" To a physicist, this question poses no dilemma.

The tree does cause a longitudinal wave to be produced in the air when it falls, but until

that wave hits an ear drum, there is no sound. Thus, if there really isn't an ear around to

pick up the longitudinal wave, there really is not a sound.

Now, I don't think this quote states that our senses decieve us. It does go on to say that what we call sound is merely electrical impulses sent to the brain, but this point is purely semantics. From a physicist's point of view, the clumps of air sent through space that vibrate our eardrums is not sound, but merely what causes sound. So to "make sound" is to vibrate the eardrums which sends an electrical pattern to the brain which we then decode as the sound of a tree falling in the forest. So, if we define sound in that way (which is apparently the proper scientific definition of sound), trees that fall alone are not remembered. Or something like that.

In the words of Alex the Lion:

Dilemma solved! Good night.

Physics and Philosophy

I was reading something in my physics textbook that caused me to think about the phrase in a new way and I thought I'd give it to you to chew on as well.

An object that moves in a circle is moving in two dimensions. However, if you cause it to

cast the correct kind of shadow, that two dimensional motion can be projected into one

dimension. If, for example, you shine a flashlight on the object so that the light strikes the

circle directly on the edge, not either one of the sides, then the shadow cast by the circle

will look like a straight line. [An] object moving in that circle, then, will appear to move up

and down on a straight line, rather than around and around in a circle.

...think about it this way. The very act of casting a shadow results in losing one

dimension. If, for example, a tree casts a shadow, the shadow is flat. It has width and

height but no depth. Thus, the shadow is a two-dimensional representation of the three

dimensional tree. In this case, we are creating the shadow of a two-dimensional object.

Since the process of creating a shadow destroys a dimension, we are turning a

two-dimensional situation into a one-dimensional situation. This makes the circle cast a

shadow that is a straight line.

I never really thought about it that way. A shadow is a representation of something, a representation that loses one dimension. By this logic, a shadow of circle creates a line. We see this to be true. Does this mean that we are merely shadows of something, or someone, in a higher dimension?

Wow, that's cool. Often I hear an expression so many times that I lose track of what it was written to express. For example, the statement that this world is a shadow of the spiritual world, and that we are shadows of what God is creating us to be. But what does the word "shadow" mean in this instance?

I think it could mean that we are representations of God that have lost a dimension. The symbolism here is really powerful. For there to be a shadow, something has to be there. This doesn't prove God's existence, but it corraborates it perfectly. If there is a God, and he exists in a higher dimension than ours, we would expect to see some sort of a three-dimensional* shadow in our world. And we do. We were created in God's image to be, as C.S. Lewis puts it, "little Christs," but we are missing a dimension. A spiritual dimension. We are not spiritual beings (yet), but we have retained a shadow of that spiritual reality in our humble three dimensions.*

This really excites me. Not only is it an argument that affirms my belief in God, but it shows me evidence of a personal God with character and personality. He is not just transcendent but has all the attributes of a person to the perfect degree. Our characters, our personalities, our attributes, are nothing but shadows of his and will not be made perfect until he makes us perfect and brings us to that perfect dimension outside of time. Here's a quote from Mere Christianity that I think echoes what I'm trying to say:

I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what

I call 'me' can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up

to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own. At the beginning

I said there were Personalities in God. I will go further now. There are no real

personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a

real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most 'natural' men, not among those

who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors

have been: how gloriously different are the saints.