You make one huge assumption before you even really start thinking.

You trust your senses.

You trust that they are not mere phantoms of your brain. You trust that there is a world out there, that they are showing you, and that they are giving you accurate information about it.

The rest of your reality is built on that one assumption.

Later, you learn that your senses can be fooled. You learn that there is information out there your senses don’t pick up on their own. You learn that your brain can mess with your senses, or record their impressions wrong, and other things besides. You also learn at some point that not everyone has all five senses.

Back up a minute.

You do not make one initial assumptions. You make five, bundled as one. Smell, taste, touch, hearing, sight.

So add another: a sense of (or for?) the numinous.

You might have it. (Like the other five senses, not all people do.)

You might not trust it, if you do. (Like the others, it can be tricked, your brain can mess with it, or you may simply have learned – or decided – not to trust it.)

If you do not have it, the claims of certain folk that they feel the presence of the divine or whatever sound absurd. Nothing they can say can prove their experience to you – can you explain color to a blind person, to use an overused cliche?

If you do not trust it, the claims of those folk sound deluded – don’t they know it’s “just” a feeling?

If you have it, and trust it, the divine is not a theory; it is as much a fact of your existence as the things you touch, smell, taste, see, and hear.

Hold up, now.

Did you know that the primary definition of faith is “confidence or trust in a person or thing”?

We all have faith in our senses.