 Welcome to Piranormal episode number 16. We are continuing our discussion of quantum physics and metaphysics. This will be part two. And as last time, everyone made it. This must be a popular topic, I guess, not that schedules work out, but just the the topic itself. Trey Strickland is here. He, of course, is our producer and co-host. Natalina Hadoshell is here. Doug VanDorn, Brian Goddawa, Doug Overmire and our special guest, Putty Putman. And I am Mike Heiser. So last time we really got into the woods fast. Thanks, Putty. Your simplification was still over our heads to some extent. But, you know, I'm sure you're used to that. This is a pretty esoteric field. And it's easy for people who aren't in it to get lost. And those who are trying to communicate it, it probably is really cookies on the low shelf for you. But sometimes the cookies are hard to swallow still. Yeah, well, don't give me too much credit. Even the professionals in quantum mechanics say they know how to do it, but they don't understand it. That's encouraging. Yeah, great. Great. I'm sure glad we're not talking about surgery or something. Well, we want to jump in again, again, with sort of another drill down point. And this one is a pretty big one. Naturally, when you get into all this talk about quantum mechanics and metaphysics, invariably, you run into the issue of other dimensions. Okay. And once you get into other dimensions, you get into the spirit realm. I mean, when we talk about the spiritual world, say of the Bible or some other religious text, when they talk about the spirit world, are we talking about another dimension or are we talking about something that sort of transcends dimensions? And that's important because of the issue of, well, if it's another dimension, does that attach materiality to the spiritual world? How in the world do we parse that? How can we have a spirit world and have it be part of the material world or something like that? So what's going on there? And then of course, in our own day and age, in the wonderful world of the internet, the fringe world that has nestled into the internet, so comfortably, you get into issues like CERN, we'll talk about CERN and ripping holes, creating portals into other dimensions. Is that just nonsense or is there something to that? So we have a lot of ground to cover. And I think I'd like to start out by kind of asking the panel, what sort of things have you heard in relation to that quick summary I just gave and what would you add to the summary? And then we will turn it over to Putty to set us straight or set somebody else straight. I remember when I was young, this is Doug Overmire, when I was a lot younger and was trying to understand science and religion. And I came across some book that talked about string theory. And it said 11 dimensions. And if one of those is time and three of them are where we live and three could be hell and three could be heaven and then time, then you have a dimension that connects them all or something. And I thought, oh man, that makes sense. And quantum physics proves the Bible or whatever. I was young and naive back then. I would like to talk about that because last time Putty mentioned string theory, 11 dimensions, you took away all these dimensions and then you have these four or whatever. And that would be interesting to people who think of hell as three dimensions plus time and heaven three dimensions plus time or whatever. They're thinking of them spatially because that's the only way we can really think about dimensions because we exist in three dimensions. I would just like that to be brought up to address somehow. And this is Brian Gadow and another element that I think has come up a lot that I feel has actually been helpful in seeking to understand the multiple dimensions is the whole Flatland story. And maybe if you can explain that to the audience, that might be helpful, a helpful way in at least. Anybody else want to throw one in? Putty, you have a big job today. Well, I'm definitely interested in this topic from the standpoint of those who are not necessarily believers, but who are more consider themselves to be spiritual. Maybe you could call it the new age. They're so interested in quantum physics. And they do tend to believe that it kind of confirms to them everything that they believe about the nature of the universe and oneness and, you know, so much of what if you do a quick Google search to find explanations for extra dimensionality or entanglement as as it pertains to quantum physics, what you're pulling up is videos that are produced by these new age groups like from the film What the Bleep Do We Know and Down the Rabbit Hole and that kind of thing. In fact, I remember a number of years ago, I read a book by Graham Hancock called Entangled. And the idea of it, it even says this that the title of the book is meant to evoke the idea of quantum physics and quantum metaphysics. And the characters in the book were people who were entangled in different times. One person was living in like prehistoric time and one person was in modern times. Then they go on these DMT trips and they meet up. And it's the whole idea is that since all is one and everything is connected on a quantum level, we should be able to do this cross space and time and interact and manifest our own reality. I'm so interested in kind of maybe drilling down a little bit more on how they take this information from quantum physics and apply it to such grand things like being able to manipulate reality on an individual basis because they really do believe that and they believe that quantum physics confirms that. So I was asking the panel before we went on, if anybody had seen this movie called Cloverfield Paradox, which I was going on Netflix last night, looking for something to watch. And I had no idea what is about, but it's about pretty much everything this show on the next show is going to be talking about. So it's like this, you know, the world is running out of resources and stuff. So there's this particle accelerator in space and they're trying to figure out how to make like an infinite amount of energy. And they end up going into another dimension and they talk about, you know, entanglement both in the show. At the very end of the movie, they kind of have the people returning to earth and there's these creatures that they had feared. So, you know, somebody had feared would pop into existence from another dimension if they started messing around with this stuff. So it's obviously, you know, it's a pop culture thing and it's something that I'm interested in, you know, just from last night, but also as a Christian too. So the demon portal, that whole thing is just, I want to know, I want to know what's going on. Anyone else? We're just piling on here. This one's going to be fun. Yeah, well, let me just give a summary for the sake of our listeners. So what we are hoping Putty can touch on again to help us make sense of is how do we talk about all this stuff? The spirit world dimensions are dimensions and the spirit world related is one of the dimensions, the spirit world. Does the spirit world have spatial quality? Can we interact with each other? Okay, without regard to space and time in one of these dimensions or because of these dimensions, can we tear portals and holes into one of these dimensions? All this stuff. So what's legit? What is sort of on the table, but not established? And what is just nonsense? So Putty, please be our guide. Jump in wherever you want. Oh, I love it. Yeah, so these are a lot of really good questions. And they are the kind of thing that there is a lot of discussion about in the Christian community. These things are being dialogued as, Nathalina, you were saying beyond the Christian community kind of in the New Age community and so forth. There is a lot of talk about this stuff. So I would love to actually start just because it frames the discussion about talking about what is science. And this is important because there's a lot of times where people will make statements like quantum physics proves dot, dot, dot, dot. And it's important to understand what it means for quantum physics to prove something because I don't know that I've ever actually heard that phrase used correctly. So let's back up a little bit and let's talk about what really is science because if we want to be able to say quantum physics demonstrates or proves or suggests or whatever we want to say, we have to know what the parameters for the field of science are. So, you know, as I was reflecting on this a little bit since our last dialogue, and I think the thing to understand, the key thing to understand is in probably most studies, but certainly in the field of science, what's important to know is where does authority in the field of study come from? So if I was going to use an example in the Christian world, we would say that spiritual authority in our lives comes from the proper understanding of the scriptures. And, you know, Mike, I've listened and read enough of you to think that I would not be putting words in your mouth to say that the proper understanding of the scriptures comes from understanding what the original writer meant, the original reader, you know, in the context of their time. And that's what we choose to sort of hang authority on. And so, if we can with credibility say, we believe that the original writer meant this to the original reader, then we can take that as an authoritative statement in the context of our own spiritual lives. And, you know, how does it apply to me, whatever we work that out? Where we run into trouble with the biblical story, and the exact same thing is happening here in this field, is when we leave the parameters of authority, but we still try to ascribe that authority to our conclusions that don't fit within those parameters. So, you know, I don't know. I read Isaiah 45, and I become convinced that it has something to do with our current presidents. And so, you know, I say things like, well, the Bible says dot dot dot about today's political environment in America, right? Well, we know Isaiah wasn't writing to me, and he wasn't writing to America in the 21st century, you know? So, we take that and we say, no, no, no, no, hold on. Like, you have stepped outside of the bounds of where the authority of scripture speaks to. We can have a separate discussion as to, you know, you might say, well, no, I really think it's true, you know, or the Holy Spirit might have told me, or, you know, we can make some other claims and we can have a reasonable discussion about whether those claims should be taken seriously or not. We can weigh the validity of those claims. But what we can't do is claim the authority of scripture because we've stepped outside the boundary of where that authority applies. I see the same thing done in science often. In science, authority is placed when we are in the area of experimental confirmation. So, the definition of science, we might take to be something like this. I just googled the definition of science. Here's what it said. The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment. So, in other words, you know, figuring out the way stuff works by observing and experimenting. And, you know, if you go all the way back to grade school, you know, the scientific method is basically this. You form a hypothesis, you do an experiment, you refine your hypothesis. That's the scientific method, you know, broken down. And so, the key idea for science is authority is based in experimental and observational confirmation. That's where we're doing science. Once we step outside of the place where we have, we have the ability to experiment and observe and confirm, we are no longer doing science. Now, we may be philosophizing about science. We might be doing other kinds of things. And I'm not saying that there's no weight or credibility to things like that. I'm just saying we're not doing science. Science is, I form a hypothesis, I test and verify or disprove my hypothesis through experiments and confirmation and then I iterate. That's the scientific method. Now, the reason that all of this matters is the game of science is to produce models that help us understand and perhaps even predict our experiments. And quantum mechanics is one of those models. It's a model that, you know, kind of fits in a certain area. We talked about the world of very small, et cetera, et cetera. It's a model that helps us understand some set of data, some set of experiments. But scientific models are not the same thing as reality. Scientific models are tools that we use to try to predict or understand reality, but they're not reality itself. And if you look at the process of scientific models, scientific models in time are developed and replaced. There's almost no scientific models from the very beginning that have not been set aside and improved upon and something new has been introduced. And that's because we keep doing this experimental process, we keep refining, we keep doing all these things, right? When we, the process of science is that connection of that model to experiment, to testing in some physical way. When we are in the space where we're talking about a lot of the things we're talking about here, there is no way to actually test experimentally many of the things that we're talking about. Now there are some layers that you can kind of test a little bit, but what's really happening for a lot of the discussion that's happening here, and for most of the things I see on the internet, overwhelming majority, is the model that we presently use to describe our experiments, that is taken as a starting point to step into another set of conclusions based on the model, not based on experiment. And when you're drawing conclusions based on a scientific model about how things work, not based on experiments about how things work, you're not doing science. That's kind of the point I'm trying to make is like, you have now stepped into the world of maybe philosophy or metaphysics or something like that. And I'm not saying that there's no value to that. I'm saying that is not science. So when people make these statements like quantum physics proves that spiritual beings live in extra dimensions, the proper response, if we understand what science is, ought to be, well, where is the experimental proof of that? And if the person can't say, well, here's the experiment, you know, here's the experiment, here's the proof that they can't say that. And then we say, oh, okay, you're, you're philosophizing based on the model of reality that we have right now. And that may, that may be true. I'm not saying it's false. It's just not science. And so we can't say quantum physics proves that reality. These models have to do with how we conceptualize reality, right? Reality has never changed, but the way we conceptualize it changes all the time. And it's really important for us to be aware of when we're working with things that are connected to the physical reality and when we're working in that area of concepts. And so I say all of that to say, as we begin to talk about extra dimensions and these kinds of things, we need to realize we're beginning to step into that space where we're philosophizing based on scientific models. We are not doing science. And that's important because science is like almost universally accepted as a universal authority these days. And so drawing the line of where we're doing science and where we're not is, I think, very important. So that all being said, I'll get off my little soapbox there. And we can, we can start talking about extra dimensions, which kind of came up in a number of these. Now, if I'm going to start talking about extra dimensions from a scientific point of view, the original ideas for extra dimensions are probably somewhere in the neighborhood of about a hundred years old. Scientists like to come up with all kinds of new clever ideas and are constantly searching for ways to explain phenomena in new or novel ways or whatever. And so I don't remember exactly who the first guy is who came up with this. But if I remember correctly, he's about a hundred years ago, someone began to realize that we can create mathematical models based on extra dimensions and make predictive, we can, we can calculate and predict what things would happen if we, if these mathematical models were real. And so, you physically, it's very difficult to figure out like if the world was five dimensional instead of three dimensional, like how would things behave? It's really, really hard to picture that, like mentally, right? I don't really know what that looks like. And you invariably wind up kind of like grabbing some sort of an analogy where you go, well, what does it mean to go from two dimensions to three dimensions? And then you try and use that as a bridge to try and step into four dimensions or something like that. So, physically, it's really hard to figure out. But mathematically, it's pretty unambiguous. It is not difficult to create mathematics in five or six or 10 or whatever number of dimensions you want. It's really actually rather straightforward. If we can't conceive of what it would be like in these other dimensions, how do we know that the math is correct? In other words, what, I mean, typically, again, I'm a math phobe, okay? But typically, I can do two plus two and I can write that out, but then I can physically look at four objects, divide them in, there's some way to check that what I've written conforms to reality. So, if we don't know what this reality looks like, how do we check the math? Yeah, so that's a wonderful question. And there is a little bit of an underlying assumption here, which this question draws out, which is that if you look at the three dimensions we live in, the three dimensions are oriented separately, but they all behave more or less identically to each other. And what I mean by that is this, a foot northwest is the same distance as a foot east west, which is the same distance as a foot up and down. You can take these distances and more or less interchange them and they all behave the same. They have some quality that they share. That's exactly right. So, if we have an object that's a foot tall and we rotate it so that it's sitting on a table, it's still a foot long on the table. It doesn't change in length or things like that. And so, there's this understanding that dimensions are more or less interchangeable in some way. And what you wind up doing is your first stab at extradimensional mathematics is you just extend that same structure and you say, well, let's suppose there's a fourth dimension or fifth dimension that I could rotate into and things behave the same way. They don't get shorter or longer. They just change and work in a different dimension and so forth. And so, that's the initial thing. Now, of course, it poses a whole lot of physical questions. Well, if there is another dimension, why can't I see it? Where is it? You have all kinds of those questions, but mathematically, it's not particularly difficult to create calculations in that direction. And so, at some point along the way, physicists began to play around with ideas like that and create models with ideas like that. We talked last time about the idea of grand unified theories. And grand unified theories are basically the attempts to sort of say, hey, what if all of this comes from one master theory that kind of describes it all? Sort of one ring to rule them all in the particle physics realm kind of idea. And there's a branch of grand unified theories that involve extra dimensions because there's kind of different dynamics that start coming in when you have extra dimensions and you get some interesting things that happen there. Now, I say all of that to say this. The mathematics are well-defined. It's easy to calculate and it's easy to predict what happens when we're dealing with extra dimensions. They've become in the realm of physics a tool that we use. And in fact, for a big part of my thesis, I wound up calculating in four minus two epsilon dimensions where epsilon is some number that you at the end of your calculation take to zero, meaning we live in a four dimensional reality through space one time. But for the purpose of the calculation, it's really handy to leave it in until you get to the end. So it's become a calculational tool. There has been essentially zero proof of any amount of extra dimensions. So tons of models have been created, but there has been no experiment that has actually verified any of these models or required any of these models to explain what's happening. Beyond four. Is that what you're saying? Beyond those four? Beyond the four, exactly. So it's become a tool. But it's in, again, we're in the space where once we're talking about what proof is there of extra dimensions, the short of it is zero. Is it possible that extra dimensions can explain heaven and hell and spiritual beings over? Well, we can explore that, but it's not science. It's philosophy. This is kind of going back to where I was at before. And there are questions where it begins to raise scientific questions, because if there are more than four dimensions, or if there's more than three spatial dimensions, I'll put it that way, then you have to ask the question, well, where are they? Why can't I see them? And in general, not just why can't I see them, but why doesn't anything see them? You have to ask questions like this as a scientist, right? So, sure, maybe I'm stuck on three dimensions somehow, but why is it also that light is stuck on three dimensions, and gravity is stuck on three dimensions, and every force and every particle that I can compute are all stuck on three dimensions. And there's nothing I can find that bleeds over onto another dimension. Like, sure, we can hypothesize that there's other dimensions, but if you have another dimension that nothing can talk to, how do you know you have another dimension? It's kind of real circular logic. Because Deepak Chopra said so. Deepak Chopra says so, that's true. Well, then we have to weigh the credibility of statements like that. But what physicists actually do is they do things like put boundaries on dimensions. And they say, well, we know right now that we have three spatial dimensions up to this amount of certainty, and things like that. Because we can do all these tests, and we know, for example, if gravity is supposed to be the deforming of space, you know, that's kind of the idea that general relativity points out, then gravity ought to bleed into other dimensions. Like, if there's extra spatial dimensions, gravity has to talk to them because gravity is about dimensionality. And as far as we can tell, we've found zero proof for it. And so then you have to say, well, this probably is kind of a cool, clever idea. But if it's true, you kind of have to really concoct a situation where most of the evidence washes out and goes away somehow, if that makes sense. It reminds me a little bit of the one test. And maybe we'll talk about it later, but the one statement, not a test, a statement where they say, you have one particle and electron, and it originated the same spot as another electron, and you put them a universe apart, right? You put them one side of the universe, the other electron, the other side of the universe, and then you spin one of them, and the other one spins the same way. Like, okay, that's a great statement, but is that just math? I mean, I think I read something where they did that where they were 10 feet away from each other, but now you can extrapolate that based on the math that is the universe. I mean, you can't observe that, you can't test it. So I find statements like that very frustrating because they're making these grandiose, they meaning these quantum physics videos on YouTube, and they're making these statements that you can't possibly test. It must be based on math, I suppose. Yeah. So when we've got this idea, that's beginning to kind of talk about entanglements, for example. When they talk about you separate them all the way across the universe and this happens and that happens. And yeah, I mean, obviously, we don't have the ability to separate things across the universe and do something to one and watch the other respond. We just don't have the capability to do that. But what's happening there is they're kind of extrapolating based on an observable effect that we can sort of see across some distance. The entanglement is kind of a different thing and perhaps we'll talk about that, but that'll bring us away from extra dimensions. Okay, yeah, we can circle back to that one later. Sure. Yeah, we'll circle back to that when it's time. So then how does this, as Christians, the notion of other dimensions on the surface to many of us seems to be fit with our notion of, oh, there's a spiritual dimension to reality that we can't see and it interacts. And even modern neuroscience and stuff where there's the claim that everything's reducible to the brain synapses and stuff, but yet the Christian says, yes, but there's still a spiritual dimension to the brain that transcends it yet interacts with it. So in a way, that sort of sounds and feels very similar to this notion that you're talking about where other dimensions that interact with them or with our present three dimensions. Right. Does that fit? Is that a legitimate way of thinking? Right. So, yeah, so this is a great question, right? Because if, so let's just suppose extra dimensions are real, right? Take that as a given. Then they begin to have all kinds of questions because extra dimensions basically mean things can exist, which you're not aware of, but they're absolutely there and they can like kind of step into your dimension and step out of your dimension. And they look like they sort of transcend the rules of our three dimensions, but they're just kind of living naturally in a four-dimensional space, say, instead of a three-dimensional space. And so what seems very odd to us is very natural to them and so forth and so on, appearing and disappearing and so forth and so on. Walking through walls, you could easily see that as a four-dimensional kind of an act. You know, so there's a lot of parallel there. I'll put it that way. Again, you wind up having, physically, it's very difficult as a scientist to explain those things from that point of view. And here's why. So the only real way that we can find that extra dimensions may exist would be if we could sort of curl them up and make them very small. An example, kind of a picture of what that might look like. Like what does it even mean to curl up a dimension? Like such a weird thought, right? Well, if you were to hold out like a pen or pencil in front of you, and you were going to say, I'm going to only look at an ant that has to live somewhere on this pen, right? The ant can basically walk forward and backward on the pen, or it can walk around in circles and wind up in the same place that it started. And so you sort of had the idea that there's two dimensions that this ant can live on, but one of them is circular. One of them is kind of curled up on itself. You wind up traveling in a loop and going back to the same place you started, whereas the other, you can kind of walk along an extended direction, and it doesn't function the same. And you wind up kind of having to do that same thing where you say, okay, our three dimensions are sort of like the extended amount of the pen, where we can move freely in three dimensions. And there also happened to be some other dimensions that are just curled up so small that we can't really see them, but we're just going to like assume that they're there, right? That's kind of the only way from a physical point of view. I mean, that we can kind of create a picture that's not incompatible with reality as far as we can tell, because gravity is going to have to bleed into these other dimensions and things like that, and we can measure that. We can say, well, we know gravity is not going anywhere, we can't see it. And so, you know, extra dimensions have to be this size or smaller. And the thing is, is, you know, we can say, oh, well, angels are living in these extra dimensions and so forth and so on. And, you know, I don't know, maybe that's possibly true, but it looks to me like you have to work real hard to make that work, because you have situations where the extra dimension has to be so small that you can't step into it with the size of a being that the angels appear to be in our world. So in other words, if you're an ant on the pen, you can only walk in that dimension if you're the right size. If you put you and me walking on a pen, we can't walk around that circle, we're too big, we don't fit. And you sort of wind up having sort of analogies of that same kind of a situation that wind up happening when you're talking about, you know, spiritual beings living in these extra dimensions. The picture that most people come up with is they don't actually understand the nuances of these ideas. And so they go, oh, well, extra dimensions are possible. Therefore, there must be three extra dimensions that angels live in and things like that. Or demons or ghosts or whatever you want to put in there. And the thing is, is like, there's a lot of very tight constraints on how these extra dimensions might be able to work. And the pictures that get painted of these people who don't understand the science and just kind of grab the idea and run with it are almost wholly inaccurate. If it worked the way they described it, we would absolutely see it. You'd be like, hmm, there's some sort of mysterious mass that is pulling on this thing from nowhere and we'd be able to detect energy in those dimensions or gravity in these dimensions and so forth and so on. And it's just not there. We don't see it there. And so when I hear stuff like that, as a scientist, what I have in my mind is there's this kind of thing that we do where, as human beings, we sort of connect weird things together because they're all weird. If that makes sense, right? It's sort of like the association of the odd. This thing is odd and that thing is odd. And so therefore they must be correlated somehow. And anyone who fits carefully, that kind of thing falls apart pretty quickly. And this just feels very much like it lives in that space to me. The idea of extra dimensions is really weird. The idea of the spiritual world is weird. Maybe they're the same thing. I guess maybe, but just because they're both weird doesn't mean they're related. If that makes sense. It makes a lot of sense to me when you mentioned angels appearing or other spirits interacting with people. And you would expect gravity to be impacted. And we've done other paranormal episodes where we talked about supposedly electronic voice phenomena, for instance. So you get some of that. But being appearing from one dimension to another dimension would release some kind of radiation. It would be observed and then you could test it and then you could go the other way. It should be detectable. That's what I'm hearing Putty saying. If there are other dimensions, then the present dimensions we know of should be able to measure their intersection with some other dimension. That should be detectable in some way. Is that correct? Yeah, that's exactly it. You hit it spot on. And if you were to have a situation where you'd have things stepping from other dimensions into other dimensions, I'd need to think very carefully about things. But my guess would be you'd set off so many random quantum mechanical processes that it would not at all work the way that you can kind of naively set it off. You could argue though that, well, I saw this ghost. And I know it was like you have this experience. And if we had set up an experiment, you would have detected all that. But we didn't have an experiment set up. So what you just said doesn't apply to my experience. So is that the situation that we'd actually have to have instruments or whatever set up to detect something? Or if this actually ever really happened, we could still be seeing the ripple effects somewhere in quantum mechanics. Which of those are you saying? It's probably more the former than the latter. There may be some ripple effects. I'd have to really think carefully about that. I'm reluctant to just shoot from the hip and guess that I would know what all those would be. But I think more generally, what I would say is that if we were going to posit that as the solution for the spiritual realm, the picture that the Bible depicts is the spiritual realm is very alive and very active and very full. It's not like there's two angels. If these things are real and they're living in the spiritual realm, they ought to be showing up all over the place. You have to catch the one time a year an angel shows up in one place in the world. I read the book and it looks like there's probably as many angels as us, maybe more. I don't know. It looks like there's a lot of them. The spiritual realm should not be hard to find if it's living in extra dimensions. It sounds to me like the ideas of other dimensions I think you've established are pretty much based entirely on mathematical models. That doesn't mean that none of them conforms to reality. We don't know that. Predictions aren't reality. Going from that point, it sounds to me like all the talk of other dimensions beyond the four that you mentioned that we have some verification for, all the talk of other dimensions and the talk of the spirit world being another dimension or all this stuff being proved. Again, I'm using my terms deliberately here. Being proved by quantum mechanics is either, I'm going to ask you to pick one of these. Is either sophistry, there's an element of intentional deception there, or self-deception, or word games to cater to gullibility. It's the old, well, it's possible, isn't it? People say that to justify believing in some certain thing. When I'm on a talk show, I say, sure, it's possible that I could be the next American Idol or a Nobel Prize winner, but that's really not going to happen. The odds are so infinitesimally small as to be meaningless. Which one of these is it? It might be all of them. The sophistry, self-deception are just the willingness to believe. If it's one or all of those things, that doesn't mean there isn't a spiritual world. It just means that the best we can do is to say, well, the spirit world might be one of these other dimensions, but we don't know, and to this point, we really can't know. Right, yeah. Well, it's funny. What you're asking me to evaluate there is a very non-scientific question. I don't know that I can evaluate others' motives. My guess would be is probably some of all of that. I would also add in, and I think a large percentage is this fourth category, is it's an ignorance of the nuances and not precise thinking. Again, you see this in every field. I'm sure, Mike, you see the exact same thing in your field, where people know just enough to be dangerous and draw all weird conclusions, but they don't understand the nuances. Their conclusions are just nowhere near real, but they don't know that they're enough to know how wrong they are. Yeah, that happens. Last time, when you said that quantum mechanics, it describes the super small, but then when you get to the atomic level or even the molecular level, and certainly bigger, then that math just breaks down. It doesn't work. That may, that made so much sense to me. Even the two-slit experiment experiment, how can we can detect it? Well, it's because it's leaving the one area where the math works, it's hitting another area where it doesn't work. I had light bulbs go off and it made so much sense. When I look at these claims of the extra dimensions and the UFOs that we're seeing, well, when a UFO is in the air and it does things that aircraft can't do, well, therefore it must be an extra-dimensional craft. And like, well, no, hang on. It can't, I mean, no, because just because an electron can do something like that doesn't mean a spacecraft can. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's exactly right. It's that correlation of the weird kind of thinking. And there are well-defined boundaries for quantum mechanics applies. There's well-defined boundaries for a lot of these things. And I've yet to see most of these claims fit anywhere near within these boundaries. And so my response, I think I said something akin to this, is that I'm not convinced that it's any less a miracle if quantum mechanics is doing that. It might be a bigger miracle than whatever other explanation you want to offer. That so stretches quantum mechanics so far that I'm going to call that miraculous or whatever the case may be. Putty, in relation to the multi-dimensions and such, are you familiar with the Christian conspiracy theory that the CERN Hadron Collider is on the verge of breaking, opening a portal into these new dimensions and that they're guided by these Luciferians who, you know, you can see their evidence like I think they said something like there's the statue of Shiva somewhere on the campus there. I am destroyer of worlds. And so that there's whole kind of spiritual connection of Luciferians who are trying to open portals to other rich. I mean, have you heard that theory? Do you know anything about that? Wait, wait a minute. Are you saying that's just a theory? Sorry. I have heard a little bit about that. I have not heard a tremendous amount and basically the majority of what I've heard is about what you just summed up there. It's, yeah, I, as a scientist, just, you know, those are a set of ideas and some people are trying to, I guess, understand what's happening there. There's, it's wonderful to hear you struggle, buddy. You did research at a particle accelerator, didn't you, somewhere? Well, yeah, I presented some of my research at Fermilab, which was basically the, the modern accelerator before CERN. So you are, you're part of this conspiracy to break open portals to invite demons? Well, why do you think I'm not answering the question? Yeah. You notice how he's avoiding the question. Illuminati! Right. Yeah. So I think your niceness is getting in the way, but it's nonsense to say so. There's, there's nothing, there's nothing to that from a scientific point of view. It's, it's kind of the picture of the extreme, you know, correlation of the weird here. Scientists will say something like, hey, we would love to be able to discover extra mentions if they're there with CERN, you know, and then that gets hijacked and dragged into, you know, scientists are trying to open a portal or something like that. You know, from what I've seen, you know, I know some of the scientists out there, you know, I, I'm familiar with that community. And that community is so far from that space. Like if, if that was what was actually happening, like it would be, yeah, no, I mean, there's, it's, that's just not it. That's not it at all. Just take that whole idea and ball it up and throw it away. And no, no. Let's, let's, let's paint, you know, the sort of, for lack of a better term, the worst case scenario. Let's say we've got a Jack Parsons on the loose at CERN and nobody knows it, you know, that he really wants to make contact with the other side, you know, and he's, he's got the, you know, he's a physicist or, you know, I guess in Parsons case, you know, rocket scientists, you know, but he's a really smart guy and he has access to CERN and he's just determined, you know, to, to blow a hole in, in this or that and reach the other side. Even if there's somebody like that, that doesn't change the science. You know, a wish is not science. Yeah. Even I know enough about science to know that what it isn't. Okay. I can't articulate much of what it is, but I know what it isn't. It just, it just seems so odd. But I think that, you know, this, this accumulation and correlation of the weird is really a good, it's kind of a good axiomatic thing to keep in mind because I see correlation confused with causation all the time. These two things are similar. So one gave rise to the other. Well, why would you think that? You know, I mean, if that's true, like in a given text, I mean, you should be able to find that somewhere. I mean, there, there should be an evidentiary way to establish that or rule it out, but, but nobody bothers to do that the work. They, they just sort of like the sound of it. They like the feel of it. Right. Maybe they're entangled. Humanities. Yeah, maybe they're entangled. Yeah. The answer is quantum physics. Oddness entanglement. It really comes down to this, you know, a wish, a desire, a hope, is not science nor, nor in many instances can science really help you. It's sort of outside the purview of science and scientific tools. So when they say we're trying to, like they accelerate and they blast two protons into each other and it creates all these other particles and, and then, and then, you know, like you said, last time years later, they finally get to the data and maybe, and they try to, they're trying to match models with the data to, oh, if it's this model and, and let's say it fits model X and model X has multiple dimensions, you know, in the math, therefore this, this test doesn't prove model X, but it, model X kind of, maybe it predicts this. So then let's run another test and then, and then maybe we can, maybe we'll get some verification that there are other extra dimensions, but that's not the same thing. And maybe, maybe a spokesperson really wants the EU to keep funding it. And so they say, yes, we're trying to communicate. I mean, is this what's going on or am I extrapolating the wrong way? No, I mean, I think you're extrapolating the right way in terms of theory to, or sorry, experiment to theory. You know, there's nobody in the scientific community that's trying, that is talking about trying to communicate with extra dimensions. If, if they even were trying to get to extra dimensions, the machine isn't going to be able to get to the bounds of where we know extra dimensions would have to live, right? So I was talking about how, you know, there's kind of always data or saying, well, if there are extra dimensions, they have to be this smaller, smaller, right? Well, LHC, the CERN isn't, isn't even at the right energies to get to those small dimensions. So like, if that even was the plan, it's set up to be failed, you know, from the beginning, like LHC was built to try and find Higgs boson. That's what it was built to try and do. I mean, you look at the numbers, you crunch the numbers, like they're looking for something in this window, they built it to try and find that thing. They found something that they're like, we think this is it, you know, and now they're going through the process of trying to pull out its properties and discern, you know, what exactly it is, they know something is there. But that is actually a really long way from the space where extra dimensions might have to live. And, you know, you know, there's the quantum mechanics is inherently stochastic, it's inherently random, which means a lot of things happen that you don't like, you don't predict like quantum mechanics just kind of stuff happens and whatever, right? And so, you know, is it possible that some extra dimension thing can sort of pop up? Well, sure, I mean, I guess it's quantum mechanics is random, anything can happen is kind of the idea. But the thinking that we're trying to like puncture a hole into another dimension, like, first of all, it's unclear what that even means, because other dimensions would be little balled up things, they wouldn't be like a hole into another space you could step into, like that's an extended extra dimension, which we know doesn't exist. It's the upside down and stranger things. That's not it. You're telling me I said it? Okay, sorry. Don't ruin that for me. Okay. Never mind. Sorry. So there's a there's a lot more fantastic, you know, brainstorming about ideas like that, then they are tethered to reality. You know, there is real measurable data that's coming out of the LHC that they're finding the things that they're looking for, and they're doing the real science. You know, I'm sure they were saying the same things about whatever the latest particle collider was 20 years ago, you know, and 20 years before that. And, you know, science sort of has this way of always being depicted as, you know, these evil people that are trying to overthrow God or something like that, you know, like, that's gone all the way back to Galileo. I mean, right? I mean, he was like, I think the sun might be the center, you know, and these other people are saying these things can Pernicus and kill them, they're trying to overthrow God, right? I mean, there's something in the relationship that that thing just keeps coming up in its latest form, whatever it is, you know, but it's the same idea. It just gets rehashed. Let's let's let's riff off this. And if this is too much of a gear shift or or it's a really quick one, you know, just let us know. But okay, setting the puncturing a hole in another universe and letting all the demons come in. Okay, setting that aside. Is there any danger to what they're doing? Because you remember with the, you know, when they were testing the atomic bomb and different kinds of bombs, there, there would be something that would leak out that would say, oh, if this goes wrong, the whole atmosphere burns up and we all die, you know. So is there any danger to what they're doing in terms of sort of a cataclysmic life, you know, ending event, you know, extinction level event, or is that just pathology as well? Yeah, no, that's a good question. And certainly it's a question that like people need to be thinking about, right? You know, I would say the trick with a question like this is you never know what you don't know, right? So, so I'll say this based upon what we know, no, there's not there's not a danger of that. Yeah, you got to remember like scientists are people too. And we don't want to die any more than anybody else does, you know, and the first people who are going to die would be all the scientists working at LHC like, you know, so, so you got to you got to kind of keep that in the back of your mind as a data point, so to speak. But you know, the thing, if there was a thing based upon what we know, that would that would be as close to cataclysmic as we could predict would be, you know, if our theories are massively, massively wrong in some areas, ridiculously wrong, it might, might, might, might, might be possible to spawn a little mini black hole. Now, the odds of that, we're talking are like, so ridiculously low, like one in gazillions, you know, like, it's not worth like, worry about the economy crashing again, you know, worry about getting cancer, like, don't worry about that, right? So, so like the day after I become the next American Idol, we should be looking for that. Right. Well, you know, actually, the American Idol who won the Nobel Prize got struck by lightning and became friends. That's when we need to be worried about that. And, and I'll say this, even if that were to happen, most people don't know this, but kind of the current understanding of black holes is that black holes actually evaporate over time. And the smaller they are, the more rapidly they evaporate. And so even if we were able to make a little black hole, we're pretty, pretty, pretty sure that the thing was just evaporate before it did any damage. And we wouldn't have any real problems. And it would be just this credible and incredible events in our particle detectors and people get Nobel Prizes for it or something. Well, I'm glad to hear that. I can go invest in Bitcoin now and it won't work. So, you know, in short, subject to the fact that we never know we don't know what we don't know, there's, there's nothing to be concerned about there. And in fact, what a lot of people actually don't understand is how safe a lot of these machines are and how hard they work to keep them safe to the general public and to all of us. You know, I remember reading or hearing a talk when I was in, in my graduate studies, where the person was actually demonstrating that if you wind up living next to one of these particle accelerators, you know, there's, there's all kinds of questions that you begin to ask yourself, like, you know, am I getting exposed to radiation? You know, am I going to have like mutant children because I live right next to this particle accelerator or whatever? And, you know, the kind of subject of the talk basically boiled down to this, like, you know, if you decide that you're going to eat a banana, you're exposing yourself to far more radiation than if you live next to a particle accelerator, right? So like, because bananas have potassium and potassium has some amount of isotope that is radioactively breaking down. And, you know, it turns out that bananas are going to expose you to more radiation than particle accelerators, right? So, you know, scientists are working really hard to protect people, to keep themselves safe, to keep other people safe, to spend the billions of dollars that are going into these machines well, not irresponsibly, you know, not, not on, you know, crazy conspiracy theory type things, like, they know that their funding is going to run out if they don't science worth continuing to fund. And so they're getting hard to prove that the billions of dollars are worth so they can keep getting funded. Even if you set the altruism aside, all it takes is one major screw up and they're never getting another dollar. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. I've had this question lingering my mind for a while and like I keep going back and forth on whether or not I should ask it because every minute I keep changing my mind on what I think the answer is to it. But I guess kind of the basic question is, do we really know what like our experiment should look like if we're going to try and detect another dimension? And my thought goes back to watching a few of the Flatland videos that like we were sent one of them. And I started watching several of them. There was one with Carl Sagan did kind of a nine or 10 minute Flatland thing. And so this is what this is kind of where the question is coming from. Like if you watch those shows and they'll say, so what would a three dimensional object look like in two dimensional space? Right. And so then they give their explanation. And then something he did was he held up like a crystal cube or something. And then he projected it with light onto a piece of paper. And he said, well, this is what it would look like if you're going to, you know, this is what its shadow would look like in two dimensions. And it's just kind of your typical I illusion three dimensional cube thing. So then when they try and explain what the Tesseract would look like in three dimensional space, this is where the question is coming from. They kept going back to two dimensional explanations, not three dimensional explanations of what a four dimensional object would look like in three dimensional space that keeps like if you look up Tesseract, you'll see kind of a moving shadowy object, but it's projected in two dimensions. It's not projected in three dimensions. So my guess my question is they keep I keep wondering about is how would we know even what a shadow of a four dimensional object would look like in three dimensional world without we keep going to project it back to two dimensional world because that's what our experience is. Does that make sense? Yeah, you know, again, it's this is the place where you kind of have to like trust and believe the mathematics if that makes sense. If you if you can you can sort of calculate a four dimensional cube and you can calculate the projection of a four dimensional cube into a three dimensional space. And you can say, you know, what would that look like? And those are the kinds of things that they're generating these images of when you look on, you know, you look at Tesseract online or whatever. You know, the challenge then is that our computer screens are only two dimensional, right? Yeah, exactly. You know, most of the most of the ways we display data are only two dimensional, which, you know, then then you're trying to project from four to three to two gets a little more complicated. But yeah, I mean, mathematically, you can kind of just turn the numbers. And if we had better, like, I don't know, three dimensional displays or something, I would think they would be creating three dimensional projections. Yeah, yeah, that's going on in different angles and stuff. Yeah. I look forward to that. That'd be cool to see. I'd like to see that. I have a question real quick about time. Time's not the fourth dimension, right? Time is not a fourth spatial dimension. No. Often, it winds up getting lumped into the talk of dimensions because it's often more convenient to calculate as if it were a dimension, but a dimension that behaves very differently. And that actually introduces a whole set of other, you know, theories that people get way out where you say, well, what if there's actually two time dimensions? You know, what does it look like to have six spatial dimensions and two time dimensions? And how does all that work? You know, and again, you're way out in the space where who knows if this has anything to do with reality more than likely doesn't. But you can turn the numbers, you know, you can figure things out if you're interested. And so, you know, light or time often gets treated as if it's a dimension, but a dimension that behaves kind of inverse inside out of our spatial dimensions, if that makes sense. Now, I think when you start asking like, okay, so, calculationally gets treated as if it's a dimension, you know, is it really a dimension? I think a lot of that probably depends on how you define dimension and things like that. You know, if you define dimension as like, how much data do you have to have to uniquely specify, say, a given event, right? So if I snap my fingers, how much data do I need to describe uniquely that finger snap? Well, I would need three data points in terms of space. And I would actually need to specify when it happened to, you know, like a snap, you know, five minutes from now is not the same thing as a snap now, even if it's in the same place. And so, if you're kind of defining it very generically, not physically, but like, you know, how much data do I need to specify a unique event? Yeah, you could call it a dimension. If you're trying to resort to more physical definitions, then you're probably not going to include it as a dimension, if that makes sense. It's also, it's also complicated, like my mind is spinning, and it makes me think about almost the audacity that people have to think that they can take what we know about quantum physics and apply it to all of these different theories that they have. Do you know what I mean? It's because it's so complicated. And so like, maybe a really useful thing to do to people is just sort of state their theory back to them so they can see how outrageous it is. I was thinking about this when you were talking about, you know, people trying to equate this one weird thing with another weird thing and because they're both weird, they're the same or they're connected. Like what if you just said to someone, okay, let me see if I understand you correctly. One, quantum physics deals with particles and maybe dimensions too. Okay, so two, CERN deals with particles and possibly extra dimensions. So three, that means that CERN is going to rip a hole in a dimension and a monster is going to come out. You know, like that's literally what their theory is, you know, and there's like nothing filling the gaps between that's all they have. You know what I mean? So you could just state it back to them and say, you know, am I understanding you correctly? This is what you're telling me, you know? Well, how do you know that won't happen? If you rip a hole in there, how do you know what's going to come out? Butterflies probably aren't going to come out. It has to be monsters. But if you know what I mean, it's so ultra, ultra complicated. I actually have hundreds of questions, but I don't even know how to say them. And so it's audacious almost for just, you know, a non-scientist to even be theorizing about these kinds of things. Yeah. I mean, I think you're hitting the nail on the head there. And that's why, you know, I keep saying things like, you know, if that were quantum mechanics, that would be so outrageous that I would be, you'd have a hard time convincing me there's not some other explanation for that. Yeah. You know, unique event. So we're at, go ahead, Brian. If you are, you know, as a scientist buddy, you know, you're helping us to, you know, question these other dimensions and see how science, the limitations of science and how we go beyond those limitations so frequently. And yet I have to say, you know, it's really scientists who have really encouraged that because if you look at from Neil deGrasse Tyson to Leonard Lawrence Krauss all the way back to Sagan, it's the popular scientists who have been promoting this idea that, oh, we can talk about, we're talking about science when they're, in fact, they're talking about philosophy. And that's what always discourages me when I hear that. And I, as a person who study philosophy, I know they're philosophizing and they're denying their philosophizing and it's frustrating, right? But now as a Christian, how do you, then can you sort of wrap this up by sort of, can you tell us how you then approach the spiritual dimension, you know, the spiritual world? How do you understand that as a Christian and a scientist who's helped us to question these issues? Yeah, no, that's a great question. And you are right that there are some percentage of scientists that are kind of trying to speak into this space. You know, and it's unfortunate that the majority of people don't understand what science is enough to realize that they've left science behind. That's why I'm trying to reiterate some of these points, like these are the boundaries of science. Because yeah, a lot of times that kind of goes without thinking. And then what they say gets taken with the authority of what people ascribe to science and so forth. So thinking about the spiritual world and the spiritual realm and so forth, you know, so just a little bit of background about myself. This is obviously not what we're principally talking about here. But you know, as a pastor, you know, I'm actually a pastor in a charismatic church. And so, you know, I very much definitely believe in the spiritual realm and the spiritual world. I don't, in any way, you know, I think there's probably, well, there are definitely branches of the church that would, I don't know, leave that out or somehow, somehow try and rewrite the Bible. So that's not a real thing or something. But, you know, I definitely believe in that. And you know, I think science is the study of the physical world as God made it. And, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of talk out there where people are actually trying to grab science in some way, shape, or form and use it to explain somehow the things that the scripture would clearly be ascribing to as miraculous, not natural events. You know, Jesus walks through walls, you know, food multiplies, you know, all these things, right? And, you know, kind of underlying all of that, what I don't like is that if that's actually true, we're turning an event that as far as I can tell, scripturally is meant to be clearly understood as supernatural. And Mike, you can tell me if I'm right or wrong on that. But it's taking an event that the scripture is conveying as supernatural and is redefining it as a weird natural event instead of a supernatural event. It's taking something that's meant to be a depiction of transcending the natural laws. And it's actually folding them within the natural laws. And in doing that, you wind up actually undermining the meaning of the biblical writer. Now, Mike, tell me if I'm wrong on that. No, I think that certainly happens. We might even, I think I'd be willing to call it a propensity. And scripture certainly presents certain things as demonstrations of God's independence and overlordship of creation, you know, that he can more or less do what he wants. He's not bound by it. And, you know, when we try to bind him by it, we do sort of undermine that presentation. Yeah. And so, you know, I think the spiritual arm is absolutely real. I'm not sure why it has to rub up against science, if that makes sense. Like, it's real. And, you know, when an angel steps into our reality, you know, you can use our, again, metaphysics can go anywhere, right? When the angel steps into our reality, does it weigh anything? You know, like, I don't know. Probably. I don't know. You know, like, I don't even really know how to think about that situation. Well, it's another, it's another example of trying to have, it's a related example of trying to have scripture answer questions that the writers never asked, and that honestly, God and his providence didn't prepare them for. And so therefore, we have to conclude, wasn't interested in. In other words, that wasn't the purpose that God prompted this or that writer to write this or that book. But yet, we are prone to, you know, we have this urge to make scripture comment on these things. And, you know, I just think broadly speaking, that's just wrongheaded. But, you know, there are times I feel like the voice crying in the wilderness, you know, because, and I'm not saying it's a sinister thing. There's this need, it seems, for people to want to validate either scripture or validate a scriptural idea, like miracles, with some other thing. You know, like, it's not sufficient on its own. And I think if you do that, you really need to examine your theism. I mean, you may want to just spend a little bit of time thinking about what it means to embrace the idea of God. And then ask yourself, why does God need to conform to something else or be validated by something else? What to me, it just sort of speaks, you know, to a need inside of us, not some deficiency in the idea. But we, I think we tend to sort of shy away from that kind of introspection. But it can be pretty useful. Yeah, I think, you know, another element that gets in there is, you know, people don't always understand how to think about what to ascribe authority in their life too. So, you know, kind of back to the idea, where is their authority in the realm of science? Like, where does science hang authority, right? You know, a lot of times, believers are like, the Bible's supposed to have authority in my life. But, you know, culturally, science also has authority in our culture. And because they don't understand things like the boundaries of understanding where authority is, then they feel like, oh, well, somehow we have to merge these two together, because, you know, the Bible's supposed to answer every possible question that I could ever ask in my life. And science is supposed to answer every possible question, somewhere those overlap. So they must be the same, you know, or something like that. And it's, in my opinion, you know, it's sloppy thinking. It's not understanding the real discipline and the real kind of parameters for where that discipline applies and what it actually does say and doesn't say and things like that. And so, you know, to circle back to the original question, what do I think about the spiritual realm and so forth, you know, I, Mike, I loved what you said in terms of, you know, scripture, there are things that it doesn't say. And we have to assume that it doesn't say them because God wasn't feeling the need to address them. And I'm reluctant to address anything that God doesn't seem to think is important enough for me to, like, fit in my spirituality. So, in other words, like, if God's like, you don't need to worry about how these two fit together, then I'm just gonna be like, I'm not gonna worry about how they fit together. I don't, I don't understand, but I'm not gonna pretend I do. I'm just gonna say it must not matter. Like, they're both real. They both, science is real, faith is real, you know, spiritual realm is real, the natural realm is real. God made them all, so I know they fit together there. And beyond that, if he doesn't think I need to know, that's good enough for me. So, Putty, I have a question about the fourth dimension. It's something you said earlier in response as you were kind of first answering Brian's question. And my question would be, it sounds like you're saying, and this may be, this may be at least a reason why people kind of want to merge dimensionality into the spiritual realm. It sounds to me like you're saying that a fourth dimension, if there would be such a thing, would be part of what we would call the physical world. It wouldn't be a supernatural thing. It would be a physical thing. Is that, is that correct? That's exactly right. Yeah, I think that's a really, really important thing for people to understand. Yeah, that is important. Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. Like, science is built around the physical world. And as such, like, if science is ever making spiritual world claims, then I'm not sure that we're living in the realm of science anymore. We're living in that realm of, I don't even know exactly what to describe it as, if that makes sense. Now, we can take scientific ideas as the starting point to make analogies about the spiritual realm or something, but that's an altogether different thing. Biblically and theologically, it's troubling and theologians have dealt with this at length, that if you're going to make that marriage, then God as a resident of the spiritual world somehow could be construed as a material being. If the spiritual world, the material world, or somehow combined, because when you talk on other dimension and you can test it materially, then by definition, that's what you got. And so that gives rise to a whole other set of questions. And theologians have considered that problematic and they've tried to sort of, well, if this is true, then how do we essentially extract God from you? And there are ways to do that. There are ways to do that. But the short version here is that if you found that other dimension, it really doesn't solve anything. Yeah, that's right. It just creates another set of questions. That's right. It really doesn't solve anything. Right. And the default assumption should be that it really has no real connection to the spiritual realm. That would be the starting point. Yeah. Well, we should wrap this one up. We have one more episode to talk about. Believe it or not, we have not exhausted the subject that's probably not a stretch for anybody listening, because like Natalie just said, this is so complex. You could just go on and on and on. But we will do one more episode on this and jump in at a different point. And we will attempt to use the third installment of this to sort of be a summative episode as well. What did we learn, that kind of thing? So thanks again to everybody for being here. And I think it's going to be really useful to anybody who listens to these episodes, to really help them think well again about all this stuff. So we may not be able to be able to spit it back out at somebody. But I think at the very least, we're learning how to think better about all these questions.