Occasionally, I hear people make claims about how the “total evidence” does or does not support theism. Those people are incorrect: *nobody* has considered all the expansive evidence for/against that claim. Nor is it feasible that any person ever will.
The total evidence includes not only thousands of publicly available arguments and lines of evidence that can, in principle be examined by all. Some of it is available on Wikipedia and some only in the basement of dusty libraries or the unfinished manuscript of a polymath.
The total evidence also includes the subjective experiences of countless people: e.g. an encounter with a mysterium tremendum et fascinans. Some of these experiences may be available proximately to others through testimony. But even that doesn’t capture the experience itself.
So nobody can ever capture *all* the evidence. And when people speak in sweeping absolutist claims as if they can, that tells you something about their own apparent need to have mastery of this question. For the rest of us, a modicum of humility is the order of the day.
