This blog rests on a basic premise: uncertainty about fundamental metaphysical questions regarding reality—such as: how confident can we be about religious matters like the existence of God or the correctness of a given religion?

But uncertainty doesn’t mean every possibility is equally likely. Coherence, reason, explanatory power, and fit with what we know about the world still separate live possibilities from impossible ones. And among the possibilities that remain, some are more likely than others.

This uncertainty isn’t just a matter of unanswered questions. Many things that feel settled to most people still carry large error bars—the range within which the true value plausibly falls, given what we actually know.¹ The chance that a “certain” position is wrong in some way isn’t small.

For example, that the universe had a beginning is widely taken as settled, but whether ours is the only such universe or one among many remains genuinely uncertain. This has big implications for how we understand what is observed about our known universe. Standard historical narratives are often treated as given, yet they shift regularly as new archaeological evidence surfaces. Such can have big implications for how we interpret ancient religious texts. Examples like these are everywhere.

The more interesting conversations live in the comparative question—why does one position sit where it does—rather than in a binary of proved versus unproved. Why does one position seem more likely, even under real uncertainty? Why might someone choose a position other than the one current evidence suggests is more likely? What values guide these judgments when uncertainty limits what reason and logic can settle? And how do upbringing, personal history (old grievances included), and lived experience shape the choices we make?

The goal of such conversations isn’t certainty—it’s figuring out where to place our hope. These discussions often get framed as descriptions of belief, but that framing implies more confidence than is warranted. Hope asks less of its object: only that it be possible, and wanted.

I think even asking these questions is worthwhile in itself. It guards against total dogmatism and clarifies who we actually are. For me, this kind of reflection has exposed moments where I cared more about comfort than about truth—and that recognition pushed me to reexamine questions I’d previously taken for granted.

Ignore the error bars, and you end up with a comfortable but unwarranted certainty: pleasant, but ultimately self-deceiving. One consequence of that certainty is intolerance toward other positions, in place of curiosity.

I’m genuinely interested in how other people see this—not just what they believe, but why. And not only why they reject certain claims (including ones I place my hope in), but why they’ve chosen to hope in whatever they hope in instead.

These conversations don’t have an endpoint. Our collective understanding of reality keeps shifting, and each of us keeps learning things new to ourselves individually. That kind of exploration is better shared than solitary—I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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1. An “error bar” is a way of representing the range of plausible values around an estimate, given the uncertainty in the data or reasoning behind it. ↩︎