God and Nature 2025 #2
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By Kenell and Cheryl Touryan
As physical beings completely submerged in the sensory perceptions of taste, smell, hearing, seeing, and touch, we find it challenging to accept that there is an invisible spiritual world in which we live. Secular scientists who seek to dismiss this invisible world claim that even our intangible thoughts can be explained as functions of the neurons and synapses that make up our brains. In other words, they claim that everything will eventually be explained in physical terms. Since the invisible is only indirectly accessible to our senses, our attention naturally shifts to the visible. A classic example of how we humans give priority to the visible is recorded in the Gospel of John (20:24), where skeptical Thomas, a disciple of Jesus, says “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands… I won’t believe.” Indeed, how often we hear people say: “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Humans have developed instruments to help us “see” invisible physical reality, such as telescopes, microscopes, and cloud chambers, among others. Scientific investigations using these instruments have shown us that the universe (all creation) is based on invisible and intangible elementary particles (almost a hundred of them). It is these particles that ultimately make up the known physical world—in other words, the intangible is indeed more fundamental than the tangible. The very structure of the atom, which is made up of protons and neutrons, with orbiting electrons, is not directly accessible to our senses, and those protons and neutrons are made up of elementary particles that are even smaller.
As physical beings completely submerged in the sensory perceptions of taste, smell, hearing, seeing, and touch, we find it challenging to accept that there is an invisible spiritual world in which we live. Secular scientists who seek to dismiss this invisible world claim that even our intangible thoughts can be explained as functions of the neurons and synapses that make up our brains. In other words, they claim that everything will eventually be explained in physical terms. Since the invisible is only indirectly accessible to our senses, our attention naturally shifts to the visible. A classic example of how we humans give priority to the visible is recorded in the Gospel of John (20:24), where skeptical Thomas, a disciple of Jesus, says “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands… I won’t believe.” Indeed, how often we hear people say: “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Humans have developed instruments to help us “see” invisible physical reality, such as telescopes, microscopes, and cloud chambers, among others. Scientific investigations using these instruments have shown us that the universe (all creation) is based on invisible and intangible elementary particles (almost a hundred of them). It is these particles that ultimately make up the known physical world—in other words, the intangible is indeed more fundamental than the tangible. The very structure of the atom, which is made up of protons and neutrons, with orbiting electrons, is not directly accessible to our senses, and those protons and neutrons are made up of elementary particles that are even smaller.
There exists a seamless transition between the spiritual domain and the material world in which we live. |
To detect these invisible particles requires a cloud chamber, a device that makes them visible. The chamber is filled with a supersaturated alcohol vapor, which condenses when the elementary particles pass through, producing tiny droplets that can be detected. The Large Hadron Collider in France/Switzerland has been used to study these elementary particles. In it two proton beams collide at high speed, causing the protons to break up, releasing elementary particles in an explosive fashion. The particles pass through the cloud chamber, where scientists are able to track them. In this way, the invisible is made visible.
Recent images from the James Webb Telescope reveal a stellar nursery, a distant place where stars are formed when enormous clouds of gas and dust collapse under the influence of gravity. These cosmic phenomena have only recently become visible to us. Further examples of the invisible or unknown are dark mass and dark energy, which constitute 95% of the known universe, and yet, to date, have escaped good explanations of their existence by astrophysicists. We can only conclude that most of the universe is invisible and intangible to our physical senses.
If the basis of the seen is the unseen in our physical/material world, is it too hard to consider seriously our relationship to the unseen spiritual world described in Scripture? The Creator God clothed himself in human flesh so that we could see, touch, and hear him. “The Word [Jesus Christ] became flesh and made his home among us. We have seen his glory, glory like that of a father’s only Son… full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The spirit world is indeed invisible, but nevertheless, very real, and it can become visible in mysterious ways. Humans are not only physical beings but are also spiritual in nature and have demonstrated a sense of the sacred over millennia.
The author of the book of Hebrews makes an astute, insightful observation. “By faith we understand that the universe was created by a word from God so that the visible came into existence from the invisible” (Heb. 11:3). For modern, scientifically educated readers the parallel stands out: the invisible, spiritual realm is the source of the visible/material realm in Scripture, just as the invisible/intangible world of elementary particles is fundamental to the physical world described by science.
There exists a seamless transition between the spiritual domain and the material world in which we live. We see again and again the weaving together of the miraculous and the mundane. Christ was conceived miraculously in the womb of a young woman, yet the birth process continued in normal fashion: Mary was pregnant for nine months. God chooses to reveal himself in ways that call us to seek, ask, and knock. The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning expresses it well: “Earth’s crammed with heaven / And every common bush aflame with God; / But only he who sees, takes off his shoes—” (Aurora Leigh, Book Seven, 1856).
May we all practice deep seeing and look beyond the ever-present material world into the depths of God’s love. Christ gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. Jesus’ sacrificial death makes forgiveness and reconciliation possible, so our Heavenly Father can invite us into his invisible kingdom where the King of Kings rules with justice, grace and love—a place of shalom. Let’s all “take off our shoes.”
Kenell (Ken) Touryan retired from the National Renewable Energy laboratory in 2007 as chief technology analyst. He spent the next eight years as visiting professor at the American University of Armenia (an affiliate of UC Berkeley). He received his PhD in Mechanical and Aeronautical Sciences from Princeton University with a minor in Physics. His first 16 years were spent at Sandia National Laboratories as Manager of R&D projects in various defense and advanced energy systems. He has published some 95 papers in refereed journals, authored three books, and co-owns several patents.
Recent images from the James Webb Telescope reveal a stellar nursery, a distant place where stars are formed when enormous clouds of gas and dust collapse under the influence of gravity. These cosmic phenomena have only recently become visible to us. Further examples of the invisible or unknown are dark mass and dark energy, which constitute 95% of the known universe, and yet, to date, have escaped good explanations of their existence by astrophysicists. We can only conclude that most of the universe is invisible and intangible to our physical senses.
If the basis of the seen is the unseen in our physical/material world, is it too hard to consider seriously our relationship to the unseen spiritual world described in Scripture? The Creator God clothed himself in human flesh so that we could see, touch, and hear him. “The Word [Jesus Christ] became flesh and made his home among us. We have seen his glory, glory like that of a father’s only Son… full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The spirit world is indeed invisible, but nevertheless, very real, and it can become visible in mysterious ways. Humans are not only physical beings but are also spiritual in nature and have demonstrated a sense of the sacred over millennia.
The author of the book of Hebrews makes an astute, insightful observation. “By faith we understand that the universe was created by a word from God so that the visible came into existence from the invisible” (Heb. 11:3). For modern, scientifically educated readers the parallel stands out: the invisible, spiritual realm is the source of the visible/material realm in Scripture, just as the invisible/intangible world of elementary particles is fundamental to the physical world described by science.
There exists a seamless transition between the spiritual domain and the material world in which we live. We see again and again the weaving together of the miraculous and the mundane. Christ was conceived miraculously in the womb of a young woman, yet the birth process continued in normal fashion: Mary was pregnant for nine months. God chooses to reveal himself in ways that call us to seek, ask, and knock. The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning expresses it well: “Earth’s crammed with heaven / And every common bush aflame with God; / But only he who sees, takes off his shoes—” (Aurora Leigh, Book Seven, 1856).
May we all practice deep seeing and look beyond the ever-present material world into the depths of God’s love. Christ gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. Jesus’ sacrificial death makes forgiveness and reconciliation possible, so our Heavenly Father can invite us into his invisible kingdom where the King of Kings rules with justice, grace and love—a place of shalom. Let’s all “take off our shoes.”
Kenell (Ken) Touryan retired from the National Renewable Energy laboratory in 2007 as chief technology analyst. He spent the next eight years as visiting professor at the American University of Armenia (an affiliate of UC Berkeley). He received his PhD in Mechanical and Aeronautical Sciences from Princeton University with a minor in Physics. His first 16 years were spent at Sandia National Laboratories as Manager of R&D projects in various defense and advanced energy systems. He has published some 95 papers in refereed journals, authored three books, and co-owns several patents.