Alien epistemology

Am I being too obstinate and nitpicky about accepting (notional) evidence for a god? People are whispering in my ear to that effect, but I don’t think so. I’m not saying “No evidence would ever convince me no matter what” – I’m saying “I don’t at present see how anyone would know it was a god and not just a very surprising Something that we didn’t know about before and still have no idea how to explain.”

I’m having a hard time figuring out what kind of evidence would force me to accept the label “god” for a novel and surprising something – even if it were very very very surprising. Maybe I just haven’t thought hard enough. Maybe various kinds of cognition and action would convince me that this new entitity could only be called a god…

Unless I said that an entity couldn’t be a god if there were evidence for it because it’s central to my definition of god that it is always Hidden.

Perhaps if I invented a new and exciting word for it – would that be good enough? I wouldn’t want to be both gnu and obstinate. That would be bad.

69 Responses to “Alien epistemology”