“Revelation then, as self-disclosure, must be a different kind of knowledge when applied to God, than when applied to human beings.”

Okay, let’s presume that, at least nowadays, the gods and angels don’t use material means of self-revelation such as presenting themselves physically before you or talking audibly to you or doing things physically in the world that you can observe. Thoughts inside your mind work like this as well. If you were an ancient or even a follower of Descartes, you might regard your thoughts as having originated in the immaterial, ideal realm of form or spirit. Good thoughts come from good spirit; bad thoughts from bad spirit. On the other hand, you might regard most of your thoughts as having come from inside your own head, generated by fully materialistic processes happening at the synaptic level in your brain. So now you have two possible sources of unspoken, invisible information: spirit, or brain. Don’t you have to discern whether some particular thought is one or the other, or perhaps even some mix of both?

I was recently having a discussion with a fellow whose wife went off the deep end a couple of years back. She believed that her employer and the government, and perhaps also the Mafia, were spying on her 24/7. When her husband tried to reason with her, getting her to consider possible alternative explanations, she decided that he was part of the conspiracy against her. Self-reflexivity is essential in discerning whether one’s ideas originate from “self-revelations” of the outside world or from inventions of one’s own brain. As the adage goes, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you. At some point paranoia becomes the more plausible explanation — to everyone except the paranoiac. Was the poor woman deluded by evil spirits, or had something gone tragically wrong with the biochemical wiring in her brain?

Gravity has tangible effects in the world, but gravity itself is an abstraction. Surely there have been times in history when the downward pull of the earth was regarded as a spiritual force exerted by the earth goddess. Maybe that’s true; maybe the sun god has more spiritual power than the earth goddess. Young children tend to believe that a rock rolls down the hill because the rock wants to go down there. Maybe that’s true too.

On some level I’m prepared to remain agnostic. I believe that thoughts originate in material brains, that brains can go haywire causing bizarre thoughts, that gravity is a natural force. But I might be wrong. And maybe you’re wrong about spirit beings revealing themselves non-verbally to humans. We each have convictions about these things that can be stated clearly and that aren’t patently ludicrous. Let’s agree to disagree. Why should believing something about immaterial beings and forces, beliefs that many sincere people find implausible, be regarded as the most important criterion for building dividing walls between people?