What I believe but cannot prove

I am currently reading a book from the site Edge, asking this question. So I thought it would be an interesting question to answer - what do I believe but cannot prove?

The thing I believe but cannot prove is that there exists a spiritual realm, that there exists reality that is not subject to empirical validation or testing. This is not only something that I cannot prove, but it is unproveable, in terms of scientific or empirical proof. In particular, the empiricist requirement that events are repeatable - I believe that there are events that are one-offs, that are not repeatable whatever you do.

I have deliberately not said "I believe there is a God" - actually, that is a development of the belief that there is a spiritual realm, and one that I would support, but that is an argument you can only start to make if you accept the assumption that there is a spiritual realm of reality, and that this is "real" just as much as the more physical world around us. I will be doing a post later exploring the meaning of reality, because even that is not as solid or defined as we might like or assume.

There are two things that this belief is not doing. Firstly, it is not a rejection of the scientific basis for understanding the reality around us. Trees do not grow because of "mystical spiritual power" - they grow because of reasonably well understood biological processes, because of scientific principles. All I am saying is that the empirical, scientific reality is not all. Of course, this cannot be "proved" in any sense, especially not to someone who starts from the requirement of empirical definition. In fact it is also a matter of belief that is unproveable that the empirical reality is all there is. If that is your belief, and you only accept proof within that context, than I cannot "prove" to you that this is wrong.

Secondly, it is not saying that the spiritual "has to be", to account for things that are not yet explained. I am not arguing for a "God of the Gaps" belief system, because that is a very dangerous and mistaken approach to take. The spiritual reality is not a necessity, which doesn't mean that it isn't real. What it means is that however much scientific advances progress, it will not be squeezed out, because they are not occupying the same ontological space.

What it is doing is saying that science is wonderful, awesome and amazing at helping us to understand the world around us. It can tell me how a tree grows, how and why it progresses through the seasons, it can even go some way towards explaining why I get an emotional response seeing it in various states and stages - and why I can appropriately mourn when it dies. It can explain all of that. And yet, there is still more. There is something in the wonder of a tree, of life, of existence, of reality that is way beyond the scientific empirical definition. There is a spiritual reality in parallel.

So I believe at least.