And how would one go about that? You either are or are not born into a particular historical/cultural/experiential context. You either are or are not indoctrinated as a child to construe God and religion in a particular way. You either had or did not have a particular set of experiences, relationships, sources of information/knowledge etc., embedded/embodied in “I”.
And that has always been my point. Once you recognize the existential parameters of “I” here, you can set about to the best of your ability to establish what all reasonable men and women are in fact obligated to believe about God and religion instead.
And I’m always the first to acknowledge that this may will be something that can be accomplished. But, in a world bursting at the seams with contingency, chance and change, you would seem unable to entirely preclude sets of circumstances that might nudge “I” in different [conflicting] directions. If only from the cradle to the grave.
Instead, what would need to be established empirically/materially/phenomenally is the existence of God such that the variables I speak of are rendered moot. In other words, a God able to render “I” moot. A god able to subsume any common “I” there might be.
That extant God able at last to connect the dots between the behaviors that we choose on this side of grave and our fate on the other side of it.
Again, the rest is faith. An existential leap to God. Or a “bet” on God.
Still, in a philosophy forum, the quest is always to go beyond that. To grope and to grapple with ways in which to reach God using the tools at the philosopher’s disposal.
Or to acknowledge that may not even be possible. We just don’t know what is true here. We only know that oblivion is out there somewhere…waiting for us around one or another corner.
Then what?
Then maybe God and religion are things that we invent in order to comfort and console ourselves when confronted with “I” leaning over into the abyss that is nothingness for all of eternity.
I would like to believe in God myself.
And, here and now, I suspect the “scorn” that may occasionally filter into my reaction to those who already do revolves psychologically around a resentment that they are comforted and consoled and I am not.
And, with respect to this frame of mind, whether God does in fact exist or not is [ironically enough] immaterial.