You seem to be saying that you are aware of a realm of reality outside this universe based on your experiences in it. Is that correct? Because you are conscious in here, there must be more out there?
Science isn't grounded in philosophical materialism. Science could precede exactly as it does if every science were a materialist, idealist, neutral monist, dualist, or was agnostic on the matter.
The practice of science is grounded in observing physical reality. That brute fact is known as methodological materialism, and gives a nod to those who might want to speculate that there is something that exists that is not part of physical reality, by which is usually meant the collection of objects and processes capable of interacting with one another.
But scientists need not be materialists philosophically, and making that assumption neither helps not hinders scientific progress.
Nothing about the spiritual realm can be proven? How about convincingly demonstrated? How about suggested by evidence better explained by positing a spiritual realm. If I understood you, you consider consciousness of that.
If so, I doubt you'll find much agreement here. Consciousness is evidence that consciousness exists in our universe, and is no better explained displacing it out of physical reality than by naturalistic hypotheses of its origin.
So it's really not just that nothing in this proposed alternate reality outside of ours can be proven, nothing in it can even be slightly supported with evidence, and nothing in it is demonstrable or observable to us even in principle. It's not just that we cant reach out and explore this realm now. We never can, at least in life.
My problem with that is that that is my definition of nonexistent. What is the fundamental difference between the existent and nonexistent? Exactly what are we saying about something when we call it nonexistent?
The difference between a rock actually orbiting Pluto and a nonexistent apple orbiting it is that the first one, even though we have no way to see that rock from earth and are very unlikely to ever encounter it ever, it is possible in principle to experience it by visiting it, or possibly even experience its extremely weak gravitational effect.
What we mean when we say that the apple is nonexistent is that it cannot be demonstrated, observed, or in any way experienced even in principle. Isn't that also what you say about the spiritual realm?
If the nonexistent and the undetectable are indistinguishable, why think about them differently?
I assume by that you mean a method of knowing about a posited spiritual realm. If that were true, why do people think they know anything about it including of its existence?
Christians would say that their door to this other world is received scripture, church tradition, and prayer. This is how they know what they claim to know about God and realms such as heaven and hell.
Nor does religion or any approach to explaining reality. Saying that God did something has no more explanatory power than saying that it did it itself without a god. What if I said that Norman did it? Is than an explanation? No. Explanations include mechanisms for how something happened, which is why Darwin's theory can be considered an explanation for the diversity and commonality observed in the tree of life - a common ancestral population + genetic variation + natural selection + time --> what we see - but creationism cannot be called an explanation.
What would be the religious explanation for the existence of consciousness? That it is a creation of God? Does that make sense? God might be able to create conscious creatures, but He cant be the author of consciousness itself. He'd be conscious while doing it, right?
How about a multiverse?
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