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[Newbie]

Given what we know about science, matter, time, and our natural world, can you give me proof that an afterlife is real?

[jimwalton]

Dinesh D'Sousa writes, "Discoveries suggest that there is dark matter and dark energy that make up 95% of all the universe. All materialist generalizations about matter are immediately rendered partial, because how can you claim to know something if you’ve seen only 5 percent of it?

"Scientists now posit through string theory the presence of multiple realms and multiple dimensions. One of the implications of the big bang theory is that space and time had a beginning, and that space and time are properties of our universe. If that’s true, then outside our universe or beyond our universe there would be different laws of space and time, or no space and no time.

"The idea that our universe may not be the only one and that there may be other universes operating according to different laws is now coming into the mainstream of modern physics. So the Christian concept of eternity, which is God outside of space and time, as well as the logic of an afterlife, is rendered completely intelligible."

[Newbie]

NO NO NO. Even if I accept that we don't know anything about 95% of the universe (which I don't), that still means that D'Souza and the Christians don't either, and they've still got to base their claims on the supposed 5% that we know. The 5% that we know doesn't support a god outside of space and time (or anything that we could possibly know about) or an afterlife. Ignorance is not an excuse to declare the bullshit du jour to be true.

[jimwalton]

Our understanding of space and time does not negate the possibility or even the probability of a being outside of that causal continuum. The possibility of a spiritual being is only incompatible with modern science if it can be proved that nature is necessarily a closed continuum of cause and effect. Classical science (Newtonian) portrays the world as operating according to fixed laws, which, of course, is exactly what the Bible says it is. So there's no inherent contradiction there. Newton himself (who we can assume believed in Newtonian physics) was a Christian who believed that nature was not a closed continuum. In addition, one of the specified conditions, according to Newton, was that the laws he saw at work describe how the world works "when, or provided that, the world is a closed (isolated) system, subject to no outside causal influence." Newton himself saw no contradiction between the world as we know it and possibility of God outside of space and time, and a continuum of existence outside of our natural world. It is not part of classical science to assert that the material universe is causally closed.
But if you want to think of the universe in terms of quantum mechanics, the potential conflicts are even fewer. Given that quantum mechanics doesn't determine a specific outcome for a given set of conditions, it clearly doesn't necessarily prohibit realities outside of the finite regions of our known universe.

Just because the 5% that we know doesn't support a God outside of time and space does carry your point to your desired conclusion. There is no scientific evidence that the universe is without design. There is no scientific evidence that biological science is in conflict with Christian belief. The Neo-Darwinian scientific theory of evolution doesn't prove that God necessarily doesn't exist, or that there isn't a reality outside of the parameters of what science is capable of observing. There is no scientific proof of the mechanism of causality from which all is theoretically deriving. All science can tell us is that science is all I can tell you. That is certainly not a convincing argument that other realities, therefore, do not and cannot exist. If there are other sources of information or knowledge, science would be incapable of detecting them, which is OK, but it certainly doesn't prove their nonexistence.