A really big question

[BeyondKnowledge]

So much explanation, so little explained. The OP has already made it clear that the above explanation is impossible.

You entirely missed my point. The question is about perspective. 

Let's for a momemt define the universe as an elephant. Is the elephant able to notice the distance between bacteria on its skin? 

That is what the big question boils down to. The size difference between the elephant and bacteria is much less than the universe to the distance between stars but that is just as un-noticable to the universe. 

And the God stuff, while true, was to further the discussion already going on about the very nature of the universe and how it works. God is just a label put on the universe and how it works by some hairless apes that needed a way to explain what they could not properly understand. We still don't fully understand it but we do better than they did.  Again perspective is everything. 

This very discussion is the universe trying to understand itself better.

[BeyondKnowledge]

Leaning a bit towards a more secular explanation hopefully to avoid thread
drift by way of the all to common theological debate . I think you put
those thoughts together very well to make this a great addition
to the discussion. 

Well done members

It is not in any way theological. It is the way things were understood at the time the explanation was first made. It was the cutting edge science of thousands of years ago. Only the development of organized religion for control of the masses is where it becomes theological. 

The concept of God is mearly everything in the universe and how it all works. The understanding of this concept has advanced greatly but the organized religions of the world don't want to recognize that. And that is the reason there is a huge thread about groups doing violence to each other.

[BeyondKnowledge]

The problem being outside the thought experiment. 

Size matters in the universe because physical laws depend on scale.

I mean a pebble and a planet are made of similar stuff.

But a planet's greater mass means it has enough gravity to become spherical and hold an atmosphere.

Conversely, quantum effects dominate at tiny scales where electrons behave like waves, and randomness becomes important.

Different forces dominate at different sizes, and if that were not the case, our universe could not exist in the manner space-time does.

Well said. But I still don't agree that space-time exists other than as a mathematical concept to make some equations simpler. I think they are closely related but not as we currently think they are.

[andy06shake]

Well said. But I still don't agree that space-time exists other than as a mathematical concept to make some equations simpler. I think they are closely related but not as we currently think they are.

Well, it's not a substance per se.

My limited understanding being mass/energy shapes space-time.

And curved space-time determines the motion we call gravity.

[BeyondKnowledge]

Well, it's not a substance per se.

My limited understanding being mass/energy shapes space-time.

And curved space-time determines the motion we call gravity.

It is most commonly used as if it were referring to a substance. Much like a substitute for atmosphere but even existing in space. That is the problem I have with it. This is usually in badly written science fiction. In equations it works.

[andy06shake]

It is most commonly used as if it were referring to a substance. Much like a substitute for atmosphere but even existing in space. That is the problem I have with it. This is usually in badly written science fiction. In equations it works.

Possibly, but I've never thought of space-time as like an atmosphere.

My thinking being the concept would be far too similar to the likes of "luminiferous ether."

Which, as we all know, was somewhat disproven back in the late 1800s.

I mean, there is no real physical medium or substance, just effects like gravity and time dilation...

[BeyondKnowledge]

Possibly, but I've never thought of space-time as like an atmosphere.

My thinking being the concept would be far too similar to the likes of "luminiferous ether."

Which, as we all know, was somewhat disproven back in the late 1800s.

I mean, there is no real physical medium or substance, just effects like gravity and time dilation...

Gravity effects light, gravity lenses. Time is theoretically distorted to even almost stoping at the event horizon of black holes. Just as examples of the extremes that breaks the rules.

Then there is the dark matter. It is used to explain some actions in the universe that don't fit other explaniations but no one can find it.

The only thing I am truly certain about is we don't really know many things for certain about how it all works. We have good estimates that can predict things, but at the extreams of size, speed, energy, etc., they often fail. Then we figure out why and fix the theories.

[Randyvine]

Different forces dominate at different sizes, and if that were not the case, our universe could not exist in the manner space-time does.

This is Mr. Tours point describing the watchmaker/doppler effect if I haven't missed something.

To paraphraze: At the molecular/chemical level anything slightly ascew and the whole universe
would collapse? I think?

[Randyvine]

You entirely missed my point. The question is about perspective. 

Let's for a momemt define the universe as an elephant. Is the elephant able to notice the distance between bacteria on its skin? 

That is what the big question boils down to. The size difference between the elephant and bacteria is much less than the universe to the distance between stars but that is just as un-noticable to the universe. 

And the God stuff, while true, was to further the discussion already going on about the very nature of the universe and how it works. God is just a label put on the universe and how it works by some hairless apes that needed a way to explain what they could not properly understand. We still don't fully understand it but we do better than they did.  Again perspective is everything. 

This very discussion is the universe trying to understand itself better.

That is just profound because whatever, if could be, the same size as the universe, it would
at some point wonder why? And there you have the OP.

[andy06shake]

This is Mr. Tours point describing the watchmaker/doppler effect if I haven't missed something.

To paraphraze: At the molecular/chemical level anything slightly ascew and the whole universe
would collapse? I think?

Pretty much suggests that if the laws or constants of nature were even slightly different.

Complex structures like as atoms, stars, planets, chemistry....ultimately life, could not exist.

I don't know if the universe would necessarily collapse.

But it could not produce stable chemistry or life as we know it.