Should we believe in what we cannot see, or even aside from some physical manifestation, should we believe in anything that we cannot with our imagination visualize in our "mind's eye"?
This is a question whose answer separates the believers and non-believers of the existence of God. No one that I know personally has ever seen God. (Certainly, I have not!) Should that preclude anyone from believing that God
possibly could exist?
So let's even exclude the need for seeing a physical manifestation of God. Let's try to visually imagine what God (if he exists)looks like. Is he tall? Is he even male? Is he fat? Is he physically perfect? Is he old and bearded? Is he perpetually young and in his prime at age 27 forever? Does he pump iron or look like Arnold from the get-go?
These sound like silly questions, indeed. But not all that far-fetched from how some human minds work. I got onto an airplane bound for New York out of Atlanta recently and I picked up the complementary magazine in the pocket of the seat in front of me. Apparently, a previous passenger of the Jehovah's Witness faith had left a little message for me neatly tucked away inside. It was like a little cartoon booklet. It talked about sin and how even lustful glances and dirty thoughts of having sex with some woman out of wedlock might be brought up during my trial on "judgment day" before God. (By the way, I'm a dead duck if this is true!)
It depicted God as an old man, larger than life (dwarfing those that stood before him in judgment). He was sitting in a large throne like a king. I had to laugh at this. Sorry. It made no sense to me, I could think only some moron could come up with such a depiction. But should this poor failed attempt at convincingly depicting a visual rendition of God shake the possibility of God actually existing?
From the time I was a child, I have always been amused and challenged by puzzles and illusions. That part of my brain built an astute attraction to mathematics over the years that followed. It has caused me to do a great deal of thinking "outside the box" to borrow an overused phrase. You might say that in doing so, I often challenge myself to imagine the unimaginable.
At one time or another, I was curious about the existence of a 4th dimension. I am not talking about the temporal dimension of time, but rather another dimension similar to length, width and depth, but clearly unimaginable. I wanted to imagine a world that was somehow outside our 3rd dimensional world (actually outside our universe). Sounds kind of "geekie", I know. But otherwise, I was probably a pretty normal youngster. For sure it was more normal than the kid down the street who the other kids say was jacking off daily to Playboy magazines and collecting his sperm in a jar. Or it was more normal than my cousin Bobby that would visit us from Illinois and walk around our house wearing high heels and carrying a purse. Like most kids I collected comics, threw rocks at cats, built 4-wheeled carts, played football and baseball.
The question of an additional dimension really did not enter my mind until I was in high school and studying Euclidean geometry. You probably wonder by now what all this has to do with anyone believing in God, right? Stay with me for a while longer. I apologize for its length. But I need to make a point, and brevity escapes me.
Viewing dimensions obviously depends on one's vantage point and available perspective. Before we cruised a ship around the world completely, we thought it was flat. We had not mastered flight, and certainly not the capability of the satellite photos of planet Earth. In short, we lacked the perspective to see its shape. And this was just our problem with visualizing a particular 3rd dimensional manifestation of one of creation's many planets. We were ignorant. It is almost comical to us now.
Even further back in time, there was the very respected intellectual by the name of Ptolemy (A.D. 150), an astronomer and mathematician by trade. He had provided a geometric proof that the 4th dimension did not exist. He did this by drawing mutually perpendicular lines. He argued that no one can draw a 4th line that is perpendicular to the other three lines. He said this means the 4th dimension does not exist. Ptolemy may go down in history as the man who opposed two great ideas in science: the sun-centered solar system and the 4th dimension. What he actually proved however was not the possibility of existence of a 4th dimension but rather
our inability to visualize it.
Believe it or not, the consensus of the greatest scientists of our contemporary times now talk about 10 spatial dimensions...not just 4. And, of course, if we throw in the temporal dimension of time, it is up to 11.
When the Big Bang theory was pretty much confirmed scientifically back in 1965, no one thought about there being any 4th dimension. But in order to have all the math to work out and provide unified field for the physics of the atomic world and the macro world we live in, it seems to be the only plausible answer. (It is outside this post to explain why.)
So how can we believe that such dimensions exist if we cannot see or visualize them? (This will bring us back to the question of whether or not it is sane to visualize the existence of God.) To answer this last question, I need to give you an analogy. Envision a world where no one can visualize three dimensions...a world where everything has length and width, but no depth. The concept of a cube would be outside the reaches of the inhabitant's minds. Imagine for the moment a cube in the form of a shipping box before it is folded into the shape of a cube. Its "footprint" would look something like the diagram below.
Now imagine somehow showing this diagram to someone living in the 2-dimensional world and trying to explain to them how this could be folded up into a 3rd dimensional world and form the shape of a cube. It would be impossible, no doubt. Likewise we can build a complete geometric proof system for higher dimensions that describe all kinds of shapes fitting into the n-dimensional system. We cannot visualize them though. We can, for a 4th dimensional figure, however, unfold it so that we can see its 3-dimensional footprint....just like we did in trying to assist the 2-dimensional people to visualize our 3-dimensional shape.
Below is the 3-dimensional "footprint" of a 4-dimensional object called a "hypercube". This 3-dimensional "unfolded" version is called a "tesserack".
We cannot visualize the hypercube but we can see its footprint. Computer programs have been written to "unfold" the cataloged objects of 4th dimensional geometry. Our minds cannot even do the gymnastics required for some of the more complicated shapes.
Now we come to the subject of creation and God again. What shape of the Universe did God create when "he" created the Universe? Or if you do not believe in God, what kind of shape was created by itself somehow? Observations of bending light and other evidence suggest to scientists today that our Universe has 4-dimensions of which the "footprints" in our 3-dimensional world are either hyperbolic, spherical, or cubical. Most are leaning in the direction of hyperbolic...the "footprint" resembling a saddle.
But scientist also believe that at the moment of the Big Bang this 4th dimensional universe was created out of what started as 10 dimensions that was "cracked" into two sets. Only 4 of these dimensions are in our macro world...the other 6 are part and parcel to the atomic world.
So having studied the physics and math profusely myself, I now agree with the consensus of leading scientists and accept a
unified field theory requiring these 10 spatial dimensions plus the temporal dimension of time. I cannot see or visualize 7 out of 10 of these dimensions, but I can unwind the math backwards to see the possibility of their existence.
I have probably really done a lousy job of explaining this kind of mind-boggling science. I recommend that anyone wanting to have a closer feel for the understanding of creation and this universe, read the book
Hyperspace by Michio Kaku. You do not have to be a physicist or a mathematician to understand it. It will blow your mind.
In final summary...
I have presented to you a case for accepting the existence of something unseen and incapable of visualization. Now the question again.
Does someone have to be crazy or brainwashed to believe in the existence of God without having the ability to see him or even visualize his physical manifestation?