There are meditation methods that aim to provide a method to conduct experiments to provide evidence to the practitioners consciousness — but again, this can’t be converted into data, at least not yet, so won’t clear the matter up for others.

My point about belief is that metaphysics is outside of physical measurement, so is impossible to quantify through the means available. But that’s not to say it doesn’t exist. Scientists have never measured dark energy, yet many believe it to exist. Similarly, you can’t go inside a black hole with your measuring tape and yet we still hypothesise what’s inside them. Light can never escape, so we will never get data from inside one, yet some still talk about their contents with confidence. Lack of objective proof isn’t proof of lack. So to say something definitely doesn’t exist, which is outside of our ability to measure it, strikes me as a belief. Which is absolutely fine and understandable, but a belief none the less. When it comes to metaphysics, we’re like medieval sailors guessing what’s on the bottom of the ocean.

I’m sorry to hear you had a negative experience with Christianity, and I agree you shouldn’t have had beliefs forced on you. I understand that protestantism for one was supposed to be founded on the idea of ‘justification by faith alone’, that whether to get baptised was supposed to be a matter of personal belief, but so often these messages get lost. I guess I just started commenting on this thread because I have seen faith act as a positive influence in people’s lives, just as science or the arts or a sense of community does for others. I don’t think it’s always about fear amd judgement, even if there are many examples of people acting as you describe.