a) First, religious and spiritual perspectives are a primarily a perceptual experience, not a set of beliefs. For those who have this perception, the object of which is technically named “the numinous”, it is self-evident. The numinous stuff clearly “is there”, for anyone to see/feel/notice/perceive/experience/etc., and they cannot quite grasp the concept of someone saying they notice nothing.
Here are two analogies of how this works.
For people with numinal perception, hearing “it’s pretty, but that’s all” is somewhat similar to someone with perfect vision hearing from a born blind person they don’t see anything. The person with vision can only imagine “not seeing” as “seeing a black background”, similar to what they perceive when they close their eyes or are in a perfectly dark room. Not seeing isn’t seeing black, it’s not seeing.
Consider, for another analogy, that a dove with normally functioning magnetic field sensing were able to talk, and it asked you: “So, if you don’t feel North, which direction do you feel?” You’d reply “none”, and the dove would at most be able to imagine you feel something like up or down, because they cannot grasp what it is like not to physically feel cardinal directions.
The opposite also applies. People with no numinous perception at all are baffled by those with it describing they perceive something that quite evidently isn’t there. Their immediate take is that the person is self-deluded, or maybe suffering from some perceptual issue, maybe even schizophrenic, if not outright lying. At their most charitable, they’ll attribute this perceptual error to a form of synesthesia.
Unsurprisingly, it’s much more likely to be a Theist or similar if one has numinous perception, and much easier to be an Atheist if one doesn’t have it, though there are exceptions. I don’t remember if it was Carl Sagan or Isaac Asimov, but I recall one of them explaining in an interview they did have this perception of a “something” there (I don’t think they referred to it by its name), and were thus constantly tempted towards becoming religious, but kept fighting against that impulse due to knowing it as a mental trick.
b) Thus, if we establish numinal perception is a thing, it becomes easy to understand what religions and spiritual beliefs are. Supernatural belief system are attempts, some tentative and in broad strokes, others quite systematic, to account for these perceptions, starting from the premise they’re perceptions of objective phenomena, not of merely subjective, mental constructs.
Interestingly, in my experience talking with people with this perception, what’s perceived as numinal varies from one to the other, which likely account for religious preferences when one has a choice.
For example, for some the navy of a Catholic cathedral is shock full of the numinal, while a crystal clear waterfall in a forest is just pretty but not numinal at all. Those with this kind of numinal perception are more likely to be Christian.
For others, it’s the reverse. Those are more likely to go for some religion more focused on nature things, some form of native religiosity, unstructured spirituality, animism or the like.
For others yet, they feel the numinal in both contexts. These will be all in with syncretisms, complex ontological takes, and the like.
c) Finally, on whether perceived numinous thingies are objectively real or not depends on one’s philosophical assumptions.
If one’s on the side of reductionism, then they’re clearly some kind of mental epiphenomena either advantageous or at least not-disadvantegeous for survival, so it keeps being expressed.
If one’s an antireductionist, they can say numinous thingies are quite real, but made of pure qualia, without any measurable counterpart to make it numerically apprehensible, so either one has the sensory apparatus to perceive them, or they don’t, external devices won’t help.
And the main issue here is the choice for either reductionism or antireductionism is axiomatic. One either prefers one, and goes with it, or prefers the other, and goes with it. There’s no extrinsic way to decide, only opposite arguments that tend to cancel out.
In conclusion:
To more directly answer the question then, when someone says they believe in God, what they mean is they perceive a certain numinal thing-y, and that the most accurate way to describe that numinal thing-y is with the word “God”, plus the entire set of concepts that come with it in the belief system they’re attuned with.
If they abandoned this specific explanatory system, that wouldn’t affect their numinal perception qua perception, so they’d likely either go with another explanation they felt covered their perception even better, or more rarely actively force themselves to resist accepting the reality of that perception. The perception itself would remain there, calling for their attention.
The answer is threefold.
a) First, religious and spiritual perspectives are a primarily a perceptual experience, not a set of beliefs. For those who have this perception, the object of which is technically named “the numinous”, it is self-evident. The numinous stuff clearly “is there”, for anyone to see/feel/notice/perceive/experience/etc., and they cannot quite grasp the concept of someone saying they notice nothing.
Here are two analogies of how this works.
For people with numinal perception, hearing “it’s pretty, but that’s all” is somewhat similar to someone with perfect vision hearing from a born blind person they don’t see anything. The person with vision can only imagine “not seeing” as “seeing a black background”, similar to what they perceive when they close their eyes or are in a perfectly dark room. Not seeing isn’t seeing black, it’s not seeing.
Consider, for another analogy, that a dove with normally functioning magnetic field sensing were able to talk, and it asked you: “So, if you don’t feel North, which direction do you feel?” You’d reply “none”, and the dove would at most be able to imagine you feel something like up or down, because they cannot grasp what it is like not to physically feel cardinal directions.
The opposite also applies. People with no numinous perception at all are baffled by those with it describing they perceive something that quite evidently isn’t there. Their immediate take is that the person is self-deluded, or maybe suffering from some perceptual issue, maybe even schizophrenic, if not outright lying. At their most charitable, they’ll attribute this perceptual error to a form of synesthesia.
Unsurprisingly, it’s much more likely to be a Theist or similar if one has numinous perception, and much easier to be an Atheist if one doesn’t have it, though there are exceptions. I don’t remember if it was Carl Sagan or Isaac Asimov, but I recall one of them explaining in an interview they did have this perception of a “something” there (I don’t think they referred to it by its name), and were thus constantly tempted towards becoming religious, but kept fighting against that impulse due to knowing it as a mental trick.
b) Thus, if we establish numinal perception is a thing, it becomes easy to understand what religions and spiritual beliefs are. Supernatural belief system are attempts, some tentative and in broad strokes, others quite systematic, to account for these perceptions, starting from the premise they’re perceptions of objective phenomena, not of merely subjective, mental constructs.
Interestingly, in my experience talking with people with this perception, what’s perceived as numinal varies from one to the other, which likely account for religious preferences when one has a choice.
For example, for some the navy of a Catholic cathedral is shock full of the numinal, while a crystal clear waterfall in a forest is just pretty but not numinal at all. Those with this kind of numinal perception are more likely to be Christian.
For others, it’s the reverse. Those are more likely to go for some religion more focused on nature things, some form of native religiosity, unstructured spirituality, animism or the like.
For others yet, they feel the numinal in both contexts. These will be all in with syncretisms, complex ontological takes, and the like.
c) Finally, on whether perceived numinous thingies are objectively real or not depends on one’s philosophical assumptions.
If one’s on the side of reductionism, then they’re clearly some kind of mental epiphenomena either advantageous or at least not-disadvantegeous for survival, so it keeps being expressed.
If one’s an antireductionist, they can say numinous thingies are quite real, but made of pure qualia, without any measurable counterpart to make it numerically apprehensible, so either one has the sensory apparatus to perceive them, or they don’t, external devices won’t help.
And the main issue here is the choice for either reductionism or antireductionism is axiomatic. One either prefers one, and goes with it, or prefers the other, and goes with it. There’s no extrinsic way to decide, only opposite arguments that tend to cancel out.
In conclusion:
To more directly answer the question then, when someone says they believe in God, what they mean is they perceive a certain numinal thing-y, and that the most accurate way to describe that numinal thing-y is with the word “God”, plus the entire set of concepts that come with it in the belief system they’re attuned with.
If they abandoned this specific explanatory system, that wouldn’t affect their numinal perception qua perception, so they’d likely either go with another explanation they felt covered their perception even better, or more rarely actively force themselves to resist accepting the reality of that perception. The perception itself would remain there, calling for their attention.