The materialist would tell you that the universe, and everything in it, is all there is, all there will ever be. They only believe in what they can touch, taste, feel, etc., and can’t possibly envision something more. However, a physicist, if they were being honest, would know better. A physicist would know that what we can see and feel is merely a stubborn illusion. The reality is, what we can perceive is a very small fraction of all that exists. We are limited by our five senses and three spatial dimensions. Beyond that, we can’t detect more. Even our senses are limited in what they can detect.
Take sight, for example. We identify objects by their shapes and colors. However, what we perceive as color is merely light waves bouncing off objects, entering our eyes, and then being interpreted as colors by our brains via electrical signals. So, not only do colors not physically exist, but we can only see a mere 0.0035% of the entire light spectrum. If we could somehow see the world apart from our limited human perspective, it would look very different.
Light is interesting in that it can behave like a particle or wave depending on how it is observed. Certain experiments, such as the double-slit experiment, indicate that physical objects do not have an independent, objective reality on their own but that they only appear when we observe them. That means that consciousness doesn’t merely affect reality; it creates it too. That also begs the question, where does consciousness reside? Is consciousness solely a product of the brain, or does it exist externally, perhaps in another reality? There are theories, but scientists don't know for sure.
Then there is touch. We think that what we can touch is solid. However, if you were to place your hand against a wall, it wouldn’t actually touch. What you would feel is the electrometric fields at play between the atoms in your hand and the atoms in the wall, much like two magnets repelling each other. What is also interesting is that atoms are mostly empty. Atoms have a nucleus composed of protons and neutrons that are orbited by electrons. If you had an atom the size of a football stadium, the nucleus would be like a marble in the center with the electron cloud occupying the rest of the space. An object may appear solid, but it's not. It's been said that if you removed all the empty space in an atom, our bodies would be reduced to less than the size of a pinhead.
All this is to say, there’s much more to reality than we can perceive. Our senses can’t detect even 99.9% of the world around us. The problem is that people have difficulty envisioning something beyond our limited human perception. That's understandable. We were born into a world of three spatial dimensions and one dimension of time, it’s all we’ve ever known. Our minds can’t truly grasp anything beyond that. But what if there are more dimensions beyond our perception? How different would things be?
The best way to visualize what adding an extra dimension would be like is by taking one away. Imagine a flat two-dimensional world. Life would be drastically different. In fact, I doubt complex life could even exist. But if it could hypothetically exist, such lifeforms couldn’t perceive anything beyond their two-dimensional world. A three-dimensional object could hover a millimeter over their two-dimensional world, and they would never even know it unless the three-dimensional object chose to intersect with their two-dimensional world.
Now, imagine if you add a fourth or even a fifth dimension to our own. How different would our reality be? Suddenly, things that would have been impossible before would suddenly be possible. String theory leaves the door open for such a possibility. In string theory there exists 10 to 11 dimensions, depending on the model. So, even science acknowledges the possibility of more dimensions beyond our own. Reality is far bigger and wilder than we can imagine. Even at the quantum level, things behave in odd ways that defy the laws of physics, such as a particle existing in multiple locations at the same time.
In conclusion, there is much more to reality than meets the eye. This universe we live in is a closed physical construct, governed by certain laws like a computer code that dictates how it behaves. Such a physical construct could only have been created by an outside force. As Christians, we understand that force to be God. This world we live in is just a shadow of a much larger reality. When we die, we leave this physical reality and move into a higher reality that is more real than our own.
