If you place a collection of books on a shelf, walk away into another room, and return later to admire your collection, would you expect to find that the books have remained just as they were when you left them? It seems that many people would say that unless another being or object moved them they will be in the exact same place as before. The concept for this is called object permanence, the idea that material objects remain in existence and in place when they are not perceived by a conscious subject.
Object permanence is likely assumed by a vast number of people. And yet, if one analyzes the concept one sees that it cannot be deductively proven that objects really stay a certain way when unobserved, or that object permanence will persist in the future. I simply know that when my consciousness watches a material object, whether a book or a dart board or a tree, the object does not vanish, and that when I turn away and look back the object often seems exactly as it was when I remember last seeing it. When I express skepticism about object permanence here, I do not mean that I am unsure if objects remain in place as I perceive them, for this is infallibly true of my immediate experiences; I am instead expressing skepticism about how objects are situated when I am not observing them.
Object permanence is an excellent example of something that I cannot prove--something that I do not know is true or will continue to hold in the future if it is true--but also something that the entirety of my recalled experiences with the external world reinforces, giving a very strong perception that it is indeed the case. When I leave a book in my room and walk away, I cannot know for sure if the book is as I left it while I am gone, only that when I return what I see will either match my memory of how I left the book or not.
I will use object permanence as an analogy for Christian doctrines at this point. Some people continue to misunderstand just what I mean when I identify as a Christian, since I am a rationalist first and I admit that I do not know what I cannot prove and do not believe what I do not know (to believe means to hold to be true). I cannot prove Christianity in full [1], just like I cannot prove object permanence in full, and yet all of the evidence suggests that Christianity is indeed actually true. There are other things that I could substitute for object permanence in this analogy, like the past existing for longer than a single moment [2]--I know for sure that it seems like the past stretches on past the preceding moment, but it does not follow from me having memories of events before the previous moment that those times really occurred.
The difference between me and some people is that I do not believe in object permanence. I do not hold it to be true. But I act like it is true, because all the evidence I have access to supports it, and there is no evidence that contradicts it. In the same way, I live for Christianity, not because the entirety of it is necessarily true or because I can know that it is true in full. I live as if it is true because it is supported by all the evidence.
[1]. By "in full" I am acknowledging the fact that some aspects of Christianity cannot be false. For instance, Christianity recognizes axioms, necessary truths like "there is a way reality is" and "a thing is what it is." The Christian doctrine of an uncaused cause is also something that is logically necessary, even if the uncaused cause is not the Yahweh of the Bible. Christianity also teaches that matter exists, and the fact that I experience physical sensations proves to me that matter of some kind does exist. The parts that I cannot prove "in full" would be the parts that are not true by logical necessity.
[2]. By the time I have consciously experienced or reflected on the present moment, it has already elapsed into the past.
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