Dark Energy and Spiritual Light

Imagine being in a room where you could see less five percent of your surroundings and everything else is a mystery. 

Let's take this even a little further. Not only is your world only about five percent of the complete "reality" that surrounds you, you didn't even have a hint that the other 95 percent existed until recently and what you now know about the other 95 percent is almost nothing.

While this scenario may sound a little outrageous, it's exactly the situation we're in according to physicists. We're only able to directly perceive less than five percent of the universe. We can see or sense the earth, planets, stars, gases, and the regular energy that fuels our existence. However, dark energy makes up about 70 percent of the universe and dark matter makes up about 25 percent of the universe. Our "reality" is the remaining five percent.

In other words, we are totally unable to sense or relate to 95 percent of what the universe really is. It's all around us, but we haven't a clue. The main indication we have that it exists, is that the mathematical models physicists have developed to explain our universe require all this dark energy and dark matter for the math to work out. Astronomers and physicists are also beginning to find clues or hints to the existence of these elusive phenomena.

I'm something of a curious Christian, in probably both senses of the word "curious." I wonder if this huge "dark" reality that surrounds us is the spiritual world. I'm not going to claim that it is, only suggest that it's interesting to consider.

The biblical account of creation depicts the existence of a spiritual world from which the physical world originated. The physical world that we all enjoy, according to the Bible, is surrounded and permeated by the spiritual world. Excuse me here, words fall a little short in capturing the relationship of the spiritual world to the physical world. However, the preeminence of the spiritual world is clear. More power resides there, as it is the very source of the physical world's creation. The Bible says our physical world will come to an end and that the spiritual world is eternal.

I don't want to argue that dark energy and matter are in fact the spiritual world—although it's an interesting and tantalizing thought—but I do want to use them to illustrate our position in the universe. To put my point at its most simple, a human would be wrong to believe that the physical world around him is all that exists, or even the most significant thing that exists.

People have been living for thousands of years unaware that their universe is actually little more than a footnote to the far bigger and more powerful universe of dark energy and dark matter. In recent decades physicists have essentially discovered that there "must be something more."

That is very similar to the relationship between humans and the spiritual world. In our daily lives we deal with the realities of the physical world that surrounds us, but often when we stop to put our lives in perspective, we sense that there "must be something more."

The Council for Secular Humanism says, "Secular humanism is philosophically naturalistic. It holds that nature (the world of everyday physical experience) is all there is…." We now see, in fact, that there exists a far larger reality than "the world of everyday physical experience." If Secular Humanists say that their philosophy is "naturalistic"—or based on the natural world one experiences—then by definition, the reality or universe (for lack of better words) of dark energy and dark matter is supernatural. It is above, more powerful, greater, or exceeds, the natural.

As physicists confirm the existence of this almost unknown world of dark energy and dark matter, is it such a leap to say that a supernatural reality, such as that described by the Bible, exists as well? Physicists found that their math wouldn't work without dark energy and dark matter. I posit that any theory that attempts to explain the origins of the physical world won't work without a superior force that exists prior to, or above/beyond, the creation of the physical world.

Further, as physicists studying dark energy and dark matter know, it gives up clues to what it is only with great difficulty and it takes concerted study to begin to learn about them. It is the same with Christians who hold a biblical worldview of God and his spiritual nature and realm. I would say also say that God gives us clues to the existence of spiritual reality through nature, through the human experience and consciousness and, most of all, in the Bible.

For anyone who wants to understand what life is all about, ignoring the spiritual reality would be like a physicist who wants to understand the laws of the universe ignoring the reality of dark energy and dark matter.