Unverifiable personal gnosis

Unverifiable personal gnosis (UPG) is a neopagan concept. The general idea of UPG is that some insights into divinity and the universe come unbidden to a particular individual, and cannot be tested or verified by anyone else. This is most often the case with neopagans who feel "called" to a particular god or pantheon.

When someone's UPG is mild and irrelevant to anyone else, most neopagans are willing to go along with it. For instance, when someone with a strong interest in and knowledge of a particular pantheon feels called by a member of that pantheon, most neopagans will go along. However, every neopagan has their personal limits. (Usually, when the UPG in question starts giving completely culturally inconsistent attributes to a deity, other neopagans start to avoid the person in question.)

Sometimes, however, a neopagan will attempt to push their particular UPG on a whole group. This usually becomes either a cult or a really lonely neopagan.

Of course, strict rationalists will consider the whole idea to be a pile of bunk. Even some of the more rational neopagans look askance at the whole idea (even while secretly accepting it), while others tend instead to subscribe to the Socratic saying,

Curiously, though, if you slap the label "Holy Spirit" on this insight, you get a pretty accurate parallel in the core pillar of the belief system of that bastion of Christian "reasonable faith", William Lane Craig: The way in which I know Christianity is true is first and foremost on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart. And this gives me a self-authenticating means of knowing Christianity is true wholly apart from the evidence. And therefore, even if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity, I do not think that this controverts the witness of the Holy Spirit.