Extra-Dimensions Explain the Unexplainable

We live in a world with three spatial dimensions (length, width, height) and one dimension of time. The concept of extra dimensions is not fantasy but science. For string theory to work, there have to be 10 or 11 dimensions. One theory is those dimensions are so small that they are impossible for us to perceive or access. But there is an alternate theory by physicists Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum that we can't access them because our entire universe is "stuck" on a three-dimensional membrane floating in higher-dimensional space. If that is the case, some of those dimensions are large, even infinite.

In simple terms, a dimension is an independent direction. That sounds trivial at first until you realize the more dimensions you have access to, the more freedom you have, and the more things are possible. It's difficult, if not impossible, to conceptualize what more dimensions would look like. But we can get an idea of how big a difference just one dimension makes by subtracting one from our own: height.

People have used the satirical novella Flatland as an example to highlight this point. It was a book originally written in 1884 by English theologian and priest Edwin Abbott Abbott intended to be an entertaining commentary on society and on the limits of human understanding. But it has also led to some profound thought experiments. Flatland is a two-dimensional world (length and width) inhabited by geometric figures called Flatlanders. Flatlanders can only perceive the limited 2-D world around them and can't conceive of anything beyond that.

If you were to move a three-dimensional sphere through flatland, from their perspective it would look like a single point that grows larger into a circle and then decreases to a single point and disappears completely. You could move your hand a mere nanometer above Flatland, and unless it intersected, they would never be able to perceive the hand no matter how close it was. Also, from a 3-D perspective you could see everything going on in Flatland at once without the Flatlanders even being aware of it. You could move objects around in Flatland from one location to the other, and from the Flatlanders' perspective, it would look like those objects suddenly disappeared and reappeared somewhere else.

This, of course, is a thought experiment only. In actuality, I doubt complex life, or even simple life, would be possible with only two dimensions. But it does demonstrate how things drastically change when just a single dimension is added. Flatland actually gives us an idea of what a being living in higher dimensions might be capable of. Just as a 3-D being would be able to see everything going on in a 2-D world, a 4-D plus being would be capable of seeing inside bodies or any closed object without ever having to open them. Just as a 3-D being could simply walk over a 2-D barrier, a 4-D plus being could do the same to our three dimensions. From our perspective, it would appear they were walking through objects.

So, higher dimensions are capable of explaining the unexplainable: miracles, angels, demons, supernatural phenomena, etc. Things that are impossible to explain from our limited three-dimensional vantage. And this is what atheists, some of them brilliant, are missing and can't wrap their brains around. We live in this three-dimensional time bubble, as it were. It's all we've ever known or experienced. We are incapable of perceiving anything beyond our three spatial dimensions. There could be an entire world around us, but unless it intersected with our dimension, we could never perceive it. Heaven then would not a geographic location but a dimension separate from our own.