I read this book and he makes statements along the lines of "[so and so] could happen either through [some effect] or direct intervention of God". Any person that purports to be a scientist *and* uses direct intervention from a supernatural being as part of a scientific theory needs to go back to school.
I think you're right in thinking that this concept perplexes a lot of people (including me).
The theory of general relativity is currently one of our most successful theories in describing the structure of the universe as we see it. I've only just started studying it so I can only add what my intuition tells me, and this is that thinking about the universe as consisting of matter floating around in emptiness (whatever that is!) is a side effect of looking at the universe using a Newtonian world view. That is, that the space is all around us and that the matter moves relative to this space. General relativity's view is (again, as far as I can tell) that space and matter (more accurately energy) are bound together, space is *a result of the presence* of energy and acted on by it, curving it. The geometry of space in turn has an effect on the matter by virtue of its curvature, telling it how to move, which is what we call gravity.
Space in this way is an active part of the universe, not just a way of describing where the matter is. From this viewpoint there is no "outside" as space itself is a result of energy being present in the universe.
Unfortunately it is the case that relativity is (wrongly, in my view) only encountered fairly late, if ever, in a person's education. But there really is sound reasoning and a lot of evidence backing up what some of the physicists say.
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I read this book and he makes statements along the lines of "[so and so] could happen either through [some effect] or direct intervention of God". Any person that purports to be a scientist *and* uses direct intervention from a supernatural being as part of a scientific theory needs to go back to school.
I think you're right in thinking that this concept perplexes a lot of people (including me).
The theory of general relativity is currently one of our most successful theories in describing the structure of the universe as we see it. I've only just started studying it so I can only add what my intuition tells me, and this is that thinking about the universe as consisting of matter floating around in emptiness (whatever that is!) is a side effect of looking at the universe using a Newtonian world view. That is, that the space is all around us and that the matter moves relative to this space. General relativity's view is (again, as far as I can tell) that space and matter (more accurately energy) are bound together, space is *a result of the presence* of energy and acted on by it, curving it. The geometry of space in turn has an effect on the matter by virtue of its curvature, telling it how to move, which is what we call gravity.
Space in this way is an active part of the universe, not just a way of describing where the matter is. From this viewpoint there is no "outside" as space itself is a result of energy being present in the universe.
Unfortunately it is the case that relativity is (wrongly, in my view) only encountered fairly late, if ever, in a person's education. But there really is sound reasoning and a lot of evidence backing up what some of the physicists say.