These articles were originally published on Blogger, then later used for an Advanced Placement English Language and Composition course paper.
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The Fourth Dimension, Part I: Intro to Mario World
April 12, 2009
A few days ago, I revealed that I would be writing my AP English Language and Composition final paper on the fourth dimension and how it can scientifically explain the theories of religion, Christianity in particular. To help me organize my thoughts and better prove my point, I have chosen to make a series called
The Fourth Dimension: A Scientific Approach to Christianity. In this collection, I will partition the concepts I will be covering in my paper and introduce them in segments. All comments will be read and considered thoroughly and seriously, no matter how one-sided or arrogant they may be. I encourage you to share your views so I can do better on my paper, but more importantly, pinpoint flaws and solidify my theory.
So to start off, I am going to give some background information for the people who approach my theory with no basic knowledge of the dimensions whatsoever. Before I give any other information, I’m going to reveal the most vital fact needed to understand anything I’m talking about: the fourth dimension is time, and beings in the fourth dimension can control it at will. Confusing? Well, while researching in class to complete my topic proposal assignment, I found a source with an excellent analogy between the second and third dimensions and the third to fourth dimensions, which will help you quite a bit.
Back in the day, when we had our non-portable Nintendo gaming systems, there was a famous game called
Mario Brothers. The plot was set in a seemingly never-ending world, with
fire-spitting enemies after you from every corner. But, the most important aspect of Mario we’re going to use is that the entire game was set in a two-dimensional world.
If a killer
Goomba started sliding toward Mario, he could do only one of four things (actually it’s three, but I’m going to say four just for this example’s sake): move forward and toward the Goomba, which probably isn’t the best idea; move backward and away from the Goomba, and be
Chicken Mario; jump and go above the Goomba, to safely evade it; or dig and go below the Goomba, which we all know isn’t possible unless there was some secret key combination to whip out a shovel from Mario’s back pocket. Note that you cannot make Mario step aside and let him watch the Goomba walk right past his body, because Mario is not in the third dimension.
But, what if there was a killer Goomba coming down your street right now, headed towards you head-on? You could do all the things Mario can do to avoid it: move forward, move backward, jump over it, or dig a tunnel below it. But, you can also do two more things: move to the right, and move to the left. Note that you cannot control time and make the Goomba walk down the street at a different time, because you are not in the fourth dimension. Using this concept, I will start tomorrow by making some comparisons between our lives and Mario’s life.
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The Fourth Dimension, Part II: Mario World Analogies
April 13, 2009
Yesterday, I described the differences between the second and third dimensions. Today, I’ll be starting off with some simple analogies to compare objects in a two-dimensional world to objects in a three-dimensional world.
Left and Right is to the Second Dimension as Past and Future is to the Third Dimension.
Say that Mario was moving along one day when he encountered a
Koopa Troopa. For some reason, they decided to talk about how they came to be, Mario claims that he knows; Mario claims that there is a creator. After the Koopa gets skeptical and asks Mario to point to where their creator is, Mario replies that he can’t, even though the creator is to the right of him, and the directions right and left exist. This is similar to the concept that our creator is located somewhere, but we cannot point to him. Existing in the fourth dimension, we are unable to point to the past or future, even though we know they exist.
You are to the Second Dimension as God is to the Third Dimension
In the conversation mentioned above, Mario states that there is a creator. Although we did not literally create the game, we created the world by placing the game pack into our gaming system and powering on the gaming system to make Mario World appear on our television screen. This is a similar situation with the creator of our world. Similar to how we are able to observe and control what is happening in Mario World, our creator, or God, as Christianity calls it, is able to observe and control what is happening in the third dimension. We are the ruler of Mario World; our creator is the ruler of the third dimension. Note: from now on, "God" will be referenced to as the Creator.
Mario is to the Second Dimension as Jesus is to the Third Dimension
While we are playing Mario World, we are basically placing ourselves into the second dimension and determining what will happen next. However, if we literally placed our bodies into the second dimension, we would appear in cross sections, because only one slice of the depth of our bodies can be perceived at a time. Thus, we have Mario, whom we control with a gaming controller, to do what we want to do in the second dimension. This is similar to how the Creator placed Jesus, as the Christians call him, onto this world. The Creator was unable to enter the third dimension in a perceivable method, so he created a three-dimensional being that he could control like we control Mario.
This brief overview is it for today, please leave any opinions and/or discrepancies you observed while reading my blog post.
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The Fourth Dimension, Part III: What?
April 18, 2009
In the past two parts, I presented examples and connections among the second, third, and fourth dimensions for an easy, immediate grasp of the concept as a whole. Now that you have a good picture in your mind of the fundamentals, I thought it would be a good time to explain the scientific definitions of the dimensions.
The word "dimension" is defined by the Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary as "a level of consciousness, existence, or reality." In the world we live in today, there exist three dimensions.
Firstly, there is dimension zero. Objects in the zeroth dimension have highly limited characteristics; everything existing in the zeroth dimension exists as a point. When you think back to your early schooling years when you took geometry, you should have a distinct memory of plotting an endless number of points on a Cartesian coordinate graph. Those dots you drew represented a single point on the graph, existing in the zeroth dimension.
Next, there is dimension one. Objects in the first dimension are lines that can have varying lengths. Going back to geometry class, after you plotted two points on your paper, you whipped out your ruler and drew a line connecting them. Depending on how far apart the two points are, your line could be short or long. Thus, the first dimension has one characteristic: length.
Moving on, there is dimension two. Objects in the second dimension are planes that can have varying area. Once again, referencing to geometry class, after completing your line, you could draw another point non-collinear in respect to the two points you originally had and connect both ends of your line segment to this new point. The space enclosed inside the three lines is what we call a triangle, and exists in the second dimension. Depending on how far away the new point was to the line you had, the encased plane could have high or low area. Thus, the second dimension has two characteristics: length and width, which combine to form area.
Furthermore, there is dimension three. Objects in the third dimension are solids with varying volume. If you had six sheets of paper and taped them together so every side of every sheet had another sheet attached to it, you would make a prism. The space enclosed inside the prism exists in the third dimension. Depending on how large the sheets of paper were, the created solid could have large or small volume. Thus, the third dimension has three characteristics: length, width, and depth, which combine to form volume.
Finally, there is dimension four. Objects in the fourth dimension are things with varying age. if you create the prism out of paper mentioned above and set it on your desk, it will soon get discolored by the sun, crushed and malformed, water damaged by potential liquid spills, and tattered by natural decomposition. Depending on the conditions of its environment, the life of the prism could be shorter or longer. Thus, the fourth dimension has four characteristics: length, width, depth, and time, which combine to form a life cycle.
That’s it for today. As always, all opinions are requested and welcome.
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The Fourth Dimension, Part IV: Sidetrack to the Fifth Dimension
April 19, 2009
Yesterday, I gave definitions and representations of dimensions zero through four. Taking a break from the central theme, I decided to do a quick segment about the fifth dimension.
As you are living in the third dimension, you are living through the fourth dimension. You are unable to control it, but time ticks on, and the fourth dimension ticks on with it. Objects existing in the fourth dimension are able to alter time at will, but you cannot because you are dimensionally inferior.
This can be exemplified by a small demonstration you can do at home. Cut out a strip of paper. Twist one end 180 degrees so there is a half loop in the paper. Then, without further twisting the paper, bend the edges around and toward each other and tape them together. Finally, take a pencil, put the tip of the pencil anywhere on the body of the strip of paper, and start drawing. Keep drawing, and your line will twist and turn around the paper. If this line had been the trail of a one-dimensional object, from the first dimension’s viewpoint, they are going in a straight line and only progressing in one dimension. However, from the third dimension’s viewpoint, it is obvious that the line has been traveling in and out of multiple depths of the third dimension.
So what exactly is the fifth dimension? The fifth dimension is a split of the fourth dimension. The easiest way to understand the fifth dimension is to say that every time we make a choice on what to do in life, we change our location in the fifth dimension. This is similar to how every time the one-dimensional object chose to move forward on the strip of paper, its location in the second and third dimensions changed without it being aware of it. If a five-dimensional being was watching us from the fifth dimension, they would see something along the lines of us completing a maze. The choices that we can make are different forks in the maze, and us following through with the choices are like walking down the straight sections of the maze.
That’s all for the fifth dimension, we’ll go back to the fourth dimension and find out how the world came to be in the next part of this series.
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The Fourth Dimension, Part V: In The Beginning
April 22, 2009
According to the Bible, God said something along the lines of "Let there be light," and the world was created. However, in my analogies, I said that you were similar to God in the way that you are able to create Mario World by powering on your gaming system. So how exactly does this work, and how exactly did our third dimension world come to be?
When you play Mario World, you create the two-dimensional world with a purpose – for your entertainment. You enjoy playing games on your Nintendo gaming system, so you create your two-dimensional world to have some fun. The way the third dimension was created is somewhat similar. The Creator created the three-dimensional world for his entertainment. He wanted to have some fun, but he did so in a way that he could control everything that occurred in the world he created. We are unable to defeat and overpower our Creator because he has the power of the fourth dimension over us. So the "Let there be light"? It’s possible that our Creator said that when he created our three-dimensional world, but it’s just as random as us saying "Let there be light" when turning on our gaming systems.
So this brings up the idea of multiple worlds existing. It’s very possible that you turn on your Nintendo gaming system to play Mario at the same time as your neighbor does, and two different two-dimensional worlds exist at the same time. On a larger scale, it’s possible that multiple four-dimensional beings have created multiple three-dimensional worlds at the same time. Going back to Mario World, it’s possible that we are at different progressions in the game than our neighbors. For example, we may have almost reached the end of the game, while our neighbor just started playing. This can be compared to the progression of the advancement of technology in the three-dimensional worlds, and is a justification for the existence of aliens. Aliens are merely three-dimensional beings that belong in a different three-dimensional world owned by a different four-dimensional being. They have just happened to have greater technological advancements than us, and are capable of moving from one three-dimensional world from another.
In the next section, we’ll explore more about moving from one dimension to another.
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The Fourth Dimension, Part VI: Trip to the Second Dimension
April 26, 2009
What would happen if we entered the second dimension? Essentially, someone in the second dimension would see us as cross sections. Infinitely small slices of our bodies would appear at a time in the second dimension. This can be imagined by guessing what it would be like if we were able to push our bodies through a piece of paper. What someone drawn on the piece of paper would see of our bodies would be similar to what we would look like in the second dimension. If we stuck our arm through the paper, we would start out as a small circle, then get larger and larger as our arm gets thicker and thicker.
So, what would happen if our Creator, a four-dimensional being, entered the third dimension? Similar to how second-dimensional beings see cross sections of our depth, we would see cross sections of our Creator’s time, or age. So essentially, we would see the Creator in one point of his life. Similar to how we can alter the cross section of ourselves the two-dimensional beings can see by simply moving our arm deeper in or further out of the piece of paper, the Creator can change the age of his existence we see by simply moving deeper into the past or further into the future.
This method of entering another dimension isn’t very effective though, especially if we wanted to communicate to the two-dimensional beings. When we stick our arm through the piece of paper, first of all, it’ll be quite difficult to keep it steady. Our arm will constantly be moving slightly in or slightly out, no matter how hard we try to keep it still. Thus, our cross-section will constantly be changing, and the two-dimensional beings will be more interested in seeing the magical changing object more than listening to what we have to say. This can be applied to the fourth dimension. If our Creator chose to enter the third dimension to talk to us, he would have difficulty maintaining a constant age. He would be changing from an infant to an elder, and we would be more interested in his changing age more than what he has to say to us.
This is where Jesus, as the Bible calls him, comes along. If we wanted to effectively communicate to the second dimension, we could easily create another two-dimensional being to send messages for us. We would be able to control the two-dimensional being entirely, and not have difficulty keeping it in a constant depth because the two-dimensional being doesn’t have depth. Our Creator did the same with what the Bible calls Jesus. To effectively communicate to us about his existence and what he wishes for us to do, the Creator created his own three-dimensional being to control himself and communicate to us with.
In the next section, I’ll be explaining what four-dimensional beings would be depicted as in the third dimension, if they were ever to be present in the third dimension.
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The Fourth Dimension, Part VII: The Final Paper
May 26, 2009
I’m finally finished with my final paper, and it was due today. I made it into an Adobe PDF file, and it is now available for download.
Click here to download my final paper.
Overall, the paper was a compilation of the multiple posts that I made in this blog, in a more organized manner. Leaving out the sidetracks to the fifth dimension, these small snippets of writing that I did on the blog greatly aided me in structuring my paper well. A majority of the different aspects covered in the blog posts were placed in my paper, with a few additional ones that I thought up of on the fly.
I believe the biggest flaw in this paper is the use and integration of external sources. There was a required minimum of eight sources, but in previous papers I’ve written that had no required minimum quantity of sources, I usually had a full page of references. I thought this wouldn’t be an issue in this paper as well, and apparently it was – I was struggling to find quality sources that I could place in my paper without making it too obvious that they were just placed in there because of the requirement. Because this paper was based greatly off my own thoughts and beliefs, I had difficulty finding others’ opinions that could tie in with my own. Ultimately, I ended up using poor quality references because there were no others that had sufficient connections with my topic.
All comments are welcome on my paper, and all suggestions on how to improve my writing can be placed in the comment area. Although this paper may not be one of my most entertaining pieces, all feedback is appreciated.