You cannot deduce relativity from the knowledge that you can't find out whether you're moving. In Newtonian physics you can't find out whether you're moving either. The essential ingredient is that the speed of light is the same in all reference frames. Furthermore curved spacetime is by no means trivial; that's general relativity. It took Einstein himself 10 additional years before he got from special to general relativity, and more still to really develop it.

????? Why do you assume God is a physical being inside the universe? (Do people really think that?) God created the universe - God is outside it. Like God is the computer and the universe is the program.

God isn't at rest/not at rest. The concept doesn't even apply.

As to why? A lifetime of indoctrination and social pressure. The same reason anyone believes anything, I suppose.

I know there are some religions that believe that, but they are hardly the majority.

The concept of "reference frame" doesn't even exist for a non-physical being.

A god that intervenes has nothing to do with whether or not the God is physical.

I suspect you are reading things into what people believe without actually understanding what they believe. i.e. that it's actually you that believes God has a reference frame, not that the majority of people in the US do.

I'm sure one could define God down into some kind of good-vibes field that could logically exist in our universe, and that's all good with me. But it's not what most Americans profess to believe. In any event, discard it if it offends you; it's completely irrelevant to the topic, which is super-cool physics.

Everywhere at once means "no privileged reference frame". (Kind of like how light, from the point of view of light itself is everywhere at once, and light also has a the special privileged reference frame of no reference frame at all.)

You were the one who claimed the most people believe in a privileged reference frame based on God. Not me. Now you are backpedaling from that claim - which is fine, because not only do most people not believe that, it doesn't even make any sense.

And I agree that this should conclude the religious digression of the main topic. Not that there is a whole lot more to talk about, unless you want to talk about (argue with?) my comment above on light.

Probably you'll never read this now, but... Nope. Everywhere at once literally means a privileged reference frame. "Over there, now" is a concept with no logical meaning in our physical universe. Being in two places at once isn't physically impossible, it's just nothing.

And that imposes very serious constraints on God. If I am on the Earth and I pray for my husband on Mars, God on Mars can not hear my prayer until it is too late. You really think that's a statement most Americans agree with?

You're also off about light. Light is not "everywhere at once from its own perspective" as you seem to think. The fact that light cannot be everywhere at once is the same fact that dictates that light cannot have a point of view, that light experiences no time and has no perspective. (Mind you, if this is the comparison you would like to draw to God, I will happily assent.) Study up and be a bit more careful with your science, and you'll be able to throw much meatier punches theologically.

No? That can not possibly be true? How could something be around forever? And how could something so complex and beautiful as the universe with all the fancy stuff inside emerge out of »nothing«? No way.

But wait, it is no problem for God to be around forever? It is no problem to have an entity, powerful enough to create a whole universe, without explaining where it came from? Or should we just introduce a super-god that created God? Unfortunately this just shifts the problem to the next level and we are again back at square one.

Besides that you can obviously build a house and enter through the front door after you finished it.

> Besides that you can obviously build a house and enter through the front door after you finished it.

You did not enter the material house - you entered the empty space that was already there, which the material of the house surrounds. If you want to use the analogy you must actually change your physical body to be made of wood and nails.

You sort of brought it up yourself when you said "God created the universe." like it's a fact, didn't you? Maybe you could explain what that's supposed to mean here?

Yes, the analogy with building a house is not really strong but on the other hand the whole question if God - if he exists - exists inside or outside the universe (read spacetime) is difficult to say the least. What is outside of space? What is outside of time? Out of what is God made? And how does this affect his possibility to interact with the universe? Is he even able to interact?

Now that I got your point with being something and building the same thing, self-organizing systems come to mind - that's probably as close as you can get to being something and building the same thing. This does not address where the matter for the system come from so it is more self-shaping than self-building but ad hoc that's the best I can think of.

I suspect that not thinking it through that way is a precondition for truly believing in God for most people. That is to say, most people who start out believing in God and who attempt to think this through would give up their belief in God on the way - or, instinctively realizing that and being made uncomfortable by the thought, they would automatically shy away from the whole logic of it.

After all, explaining the world is not really what belief in God seems to be about. It seems to be more about some kind of warm fuzzy feeling that people get from it.