DAY 57
CHALLENGE
“The idea of supernatural realms like heaven and hell is scientifically absurd.”
DEFENSE
On the contrary: scientists themselves propose the possibility of realms with properties different from those of our world.
Contemporary scientific literature is filled with proposals that our uni- verse might be just one realm among a much larger collection. This set of realms—referred to as the “multiverse”—is often proposed as a way of explaining why our universe has multiple properties that seem finely tuned to allow for the existence of life.
Scientists recognize that it would be very unlikely for a single uni- verse to have such properties purely by chance. Consequently, some propose that there are a vast number of universes, each of which has different properties, making it probable that at least one would have the properties needed for life to exist. (An alternative would be to say that our universe was designed to have these properties.)
It is even proposed that these realms may interact with one another (e.g., “brane cosmology” proposes that our universe may have begun when two such realms collided, producing the Big Bang).
Thus far we do not have scientific evidence that any such realms exist, but the fact that scientists are proposing them shows that it is not scientifically absurd to suggest the existence of realms outside the visible world that have different properties than it does, or that are capable of interacting with it.
Indeed, even before contemporary physics, such realms were being discussed. In 1884, Edwin Abbott published a landmark book called Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, in which he contemplated the way worlds with different numbers of dimensions might interact. Abbott proposed many examples whereby a visitor from a higher dimension could be capable of producing effects that, from an ordinary perspective, would be regarded as miraculous. Indeed, the parallels to religion are so clear that one character in the novel ends up being commissioned as an “apostle” to preach “the Gospel of the Three Dimensions.”
This is not to say that supernatural realms such as heaven and hell are simply other dimensions or other universes on the model of those proposed by modern physicists or by authors like Abbott. However, this does show the intellectual defensibility of the idea that realms with different properties might exist and might interact with our own.