Some questions in life sit in a strange space—where no amount of evidence, research, or philosophical discussion can really touch them. This is where what’s known as Permanent Agnosticism by Principle comes in. It’s a stance we take on questions that aren’t just unanswered, but likely unanswerable—because they live outside the realm where evidence can even apply.
A classic example is the question: “Do you see red the same way I do?” Maybe what I call red is what you experience as green. Or maybe your “red” is something so alien to me that I couldn’t even begin to imagine it. There’s no way for either of us to climb into the other’s mind and confirm what we’re seeing. So, we’ll never really know. It’s not about lack of information—it’s about the limits of what we can experience and share.
That’s how I’ve come to think about what people describe as “hearing the voice of God.”
It seems deeply personal. For some, the voice sounds gentle. For others, it’s commanding. Someone else may describe it as joyful or even humorous. One person may hear a soft, feminine tone. Another, a deep masculine one. Maybe it even shifts depending on who’s listening and what they need at the time.
But here’s the thing: we don’t have a way to test or compare any of this. I don’t think two people have ever claimed to hear the same exact voice at the same exact time in a way they could verify. So how do we prove—or disprove—what they heard?
We probably can’t. And that’s okay.
Some things live in that space beyond certainty. Not because they’re necessarily mystical, but because the tools we use to understand the world—like evidence, reason, and shared experience—just don’t stretch far enough to reach them.
Just my thoughts.