Personally I don’t think in terms of “true” or “false.” I’d say instead that empirical claims are subject to embarrassment or negative feedback. As philosophers of science have noted long before me, we can always blame the failure of a prediction on some other piece of our system of beliefs.
Generally an empirical claim directs us to expect this perception rather than that one, this measurement rather than that one. I don’t see how an OOO-God allows for this.
With respect to the bolded question, the scientific management of belief is the exception rather than the rule. And then what people even mean by “God” varies. Many sophisticated theists would disagree with you, I think, that theism is an empirical hypothesis.
I respect some manifestations of theism, so I am not an anti-theist. But I am skeptical about “metaphysical” theism. If God is “only a thesis,” then that’s just another speculative theory. Then argument tacitly becomes the God of God, because the concern shifts to making a case, and away from the meaning of the thesis in the first place.
How is this theism performed ? For instance, is homophobia justified in terms of the OT ? Is the OT taken to be written by God in the first place ? Is the OOO more of a global God, detached from any particular tradition ? All this stuff matters. Is there an afterlife ? If so, why should one believe that ? The more vague God is, the more easily defended, at least in political terms. But what exactly is being defended ?
Let’s say Joe is a theist. He is sure that God exists. But he knows nothing definite about God. Is Joe kinder to people now ? More arrogant ? Less arrogant ? Does Joe give money to widows and orphans ? What does belief in God do with the body ? I’d even say that belief is primarily what the body does, and the mouth here is part of that but not the focus.
Do you know the work of Whitman or Emerson ? Great stuff. My view, expressed metaphorically, is that every existence is a “face” of “God.” This is one version among many of the “God == Reality” approach. You might say that I am only naming reality with this word “God.” And I agree. But I see reality as nothing hidden “behind” experience. Reality is there as the shared world that we are in the middle of making sense of. Post-Hegelian Christian-influenced thought might be called “visionary humanism.” Metaphorically speaking, it understands the “incarnation” to be total, so that God is only mortal flesh in the world. From this POV, we ourselves are each little pieces of God. But this God is not complete, not perfect, not devoid of evil. The “God” is something like the historical process itself, that comes to understand itself as such in a gradual intensification of time-binding self-consciousness. I might choose the early work of Feuerbach as the best source on this.
