Throughout history, there have been stories of the supernatural. These stories were often invoked to explain mysteries such as the origin of the world, the forces behind weather, the causes of disease, and the prevalence of coincidences. However, these stories often went beyond simple explanations and were personal accounts of people encountering things beyond natural, everyday experience. The fact that these things could also have explained some mysteries may have been interesting and possibly useful at the time, but was beside the point in many cases.

More recently, and especially over the last few centuries, many other unknowns either have not been explained by science or, like consciousness, have actually become bigger mysteries.¹ In addition, mathematics has shown that there are fundamental limits of our understanding in any rational system, and science has discovered what appear to be fundamental limits in our ability to explain physical reality.²

These two classes of mystery may even be related as evidenced by things like the quantum mechanics mystery known as the “measurement problem”, in which human consciousness seems to be linked to certain types of quantum events.³

Such discoveries are clues that should make us look closer, and for example, keep open the possibility that human minds are not the only ones that may exist. Consciousness points to the likelihood that there is yet something beyond the physical, an idea that seems pointed to by other things as well. For example, the creation of physical reality implies some greater reality beyond that in which the creation happened. The existence of things like information and mathematics, which are not physical yet still obviously exist, demonstrates existence outside physical reality.

Interestingly, these deep mysteries, these fundamental limits to our understanding line up with fundamental assertions of some supernatural experiences described above. Could it be that we’re seeing more of that greater reality when we include those experiences?

For example, the most basic of these ideas is that a conscious agent is possible beyond humans and was involved in that creation event – that there was a creator. That describes the start, but the science that tells us about creation also indicates that the universe is winding down, that disorder is increasing. Technically, this is called entropy, and the picture seems to indicate that we are probably heading towards the heat death of the universe as entropy increases without limit.

However, one of the characteristics of conscious agents is that they operate with purpose, which implies that the universe has a purpose, that there was a reason for its creation. Perhaps that reason is more than just letting it completely wind down.

Of course, a creator with purpose is a fundamental part of many supernatural narratives. Again, perhaps this suggests the possibility that the sense of purpose that we recognize is also part of that greater reality.

A hint of this purpose may be evident in the presence of life itself, the only force in the universe that is working against entropy. We recognize that life is better, that flourishing is better, that consciousness and self-awareness are better, and so yearn for something in which these things are perfected rather than extinguished.

But the primary force of life is selfishness – the selfish gene. This is the force that drives the evolutionary process of selection. Although a complicated topic, it nevertheless paints a picture of the ultimate futility of achieving an ideal state. Since we are living organisms that share this characteristic, the idea of self-focus is literally built into our DNA, our very nature.

But if there is a creator and if there is purpose behind the creation, then there may well be a re-creation. In other words, we can look forward to a deliberate, purposeful re-creation with new natures that fulfill the direction and perspective we long for now.

This idea has been echoed in many of the historical narratives that point beyond our natural, everyday experiences. The abiding mysteries, and the way they point to these stories, suggest that trusting in such an outcome makes at least as much sense as trusting in a selfish race towards heat death.

I think this thread is one way to see the Christian faith: That rather than living only for today, we trust that there is truth to these stories, that they help explain what we are continuing to experience, and that this truth includes a future re-creation that will bring us to a new existence that is more compatible with, or finally allows, life with a full expression of love.

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1. Consciousness is now often described as a “hard problem”, quantum wave collapse seems to lead to an infinite number of parallel universes like ours, while the “fine tuning problem” seems to lead many to think there is an infinite number of different types of universes, there significant questions about artificial consciousness, and so on.
2. Gödel’s theorem states that any useful and complete mathematical system includes truths that cannot be proven, suggesting profound limits to understanding our own universe. Quantum uncertainty places hard limits on our ability make measurements in a way that suggests that precision doesn’t even have meaning in the way we think.
3. This effect happens when certain quantum systems that exist in a state of probabilities collapse to a specific outcome. Unfortunately, this mystery is often overstated to make it seem that all of reality is the result of us thinking about it.