fullyveiled,
Thanks for your heartfelt reply and for sharing your experiences. Very, very interesting. A lot of what you said was very different from my own thinking, however, at least one thing was nearly identical: I made the decision several years ago that I would try to follow the facts where they lead, even if I don't like the conclusions. This is why I became convinced that, in terms of evidence, the best explanations for the universe are scientific ones, which do not assume more than what is strictly necessary to explain the evidence. (In other words, many facts are explained with the fewest assumptions possible.)
A few observations:
- Your experience seems to suggest that there are basically two options: 1) Belief in one particular metaphysical proposition (God/Abrahamic God) and a religion, most likely a common religion (I assume Sikhism or Jainism or Wicca were mostly off your radar); 2) A life of utter confusion and cynicism. But this is a false dichotomy i.m.o.
- You seemed to neglect (in your post) philosophy, science, history, politics, literature, art, music as potential sources of meaning, truth, etc. You wanted to find "truth" (as we all do) but you mostly looked in only one place, religion, and you mostly focused on one question, whether God exists.
- You could look for "truth" or for a sign, or ask God or a book or whatever to prove itself. However, I don't think this is so hard to do. Lots of ideas, beliefs, scientific theories, etc. are internally consistent, and do a reasonable job of providing coherent stories to account for the facts. The ancients said the Milky Way was a goddess' breast milk; and look, it really does have a milky appearance in the sky! The god of lightning was vengeful and mysterious; and look, lightning does strike people down for almost any provocation! These explanations are *compatible* with the facts, as far as they go. The problem is that many other possibilities are *compatible* with the facts.
The real test is to find the parts that are *incompatible* with the facts. That is, to look for falsifiability in ideas. In other words, not only *could* this idea be true (it's compatible with fact), but there are facts that *would* falsify it, if such facts were observed (there is some fact that would be, if observed, incompatible with this idea).
If there is no observation, or only very few observations that I could potentially make that would falsify your hypothesis (whether it is your conception of God, or any other hypothesis) then we really can't evaluate that hypothesis objectively, and we have no right either believing or disbelieving in it. We should either refine the hypothesis, and make it more precise so it is falsifiable, or disregard it. The next stage, once we've narrowed the field down to *falsifiable* hypotheses only, is to try to make observations that will falsify them and thus narrow the field further to a small set of hypotheses. Some of the hypotheses won't be "falsified" but only made a little less likely than others. The final stage (i.m.o.) is to try to figure out which hypotheses are the *most* falsifiable, and the *least* implausible.
I.m.o. narrowing possibilities down to the "least false" ideas is a better method than searching for the "most true" ideas, because it's less likely you will get trapped exploring one semi-true or mostly-true idea, the way a ball will roll into a low point without necessarily finding the lowest point on the terrain.
Now, bear with me because this is necessary to understand my final observation about your post:
- You say the lack of direct evidence for God is because God does not manifest himself, he does not simply come down for a "meet and greet"
. Okay, the hypothesis of a God that is "shy" in this way is *compatible* with the fact that we don't observe it. However, this hypothesis is compatible with ANY fact. That is, there is no observation I could make which would ever rule out a shy God, or a shy planet or asteroid that always evades positive identification. The hypothesis has to be refined more so that facts could potentially disprove it. Otherwise we can't evaluate this hypothesis, if we are honest.
On the other hand, consider the hypothesis that the idea of a "God" is a man-made concept. There are *many* potential facts which would easily rule out this hypothesis e.g. God comes down for a meet-and-greet
. Credible miracles such as healing via intercessory prayer could be documented. It could even be more subtle than that: we have stock-market experts who can identify patterns in random data influenced by intelligent beings (humans cheating on the stock market). We have paleontologists and geologists who have ways of distinguishing between "natural" and "artificial" artifacts and formations. We have biologists and engineers who can recognize intelligent design vs. evolution by natural selection. And so on. And furthermore, the "man-made concept" hypothesis explains so much. It does not explain anything about God (which is okay, because the existence of God is questionable, we only need to explain it if it definitely exists). But the "man-made" hypothesis does explain a lot about *belief* in God (and no one questions the existence of *belief* in God, so it definitely requires some explanation).
Why did the ancients believe in gods that were more "hands on"? Because violent weather and eclipses and comets could only be explained by wrathful gods, since no scientific explanation was available. Why do modern people believe in gods that are "shy"? Because gods do not exist, so in order to maintain belief in gods, it has to be assumed that they are inexplicably shy, unlike Barack Obama and the Sun and all the other humble entities whose existence is not so difficult to establish (because they are real).
