I'm getting off topic here but the point I'm making is that I think we make a mistake if we rationalise all anecdotal information away. The more anecdotes, and the more consilience between them, the likelier they are to be true (though of course that's no guarantee).
Not necessarily. The more one speaks about anecdotes, the more they become affixed in the subconscious. If you grow up being taught about God, chances are you aren't going to question it, as you view your parents and other adults as authority figures who have already taken the appropriate steps in determing its reality. People being taught that God is mysterious and elusive may in turn try and find God in the minor details and will then
expect God to be as such.
They may then likely associate or attribute
any anomalies as God communicating to them in that
mysterious way that was taught to them as children, and what they've come rationalize all their lives.
The same could be said of ghost stories. Where I work is co-located with an old Army fort that dates back to the Revolutionary War. There is also an old lighthouse on the grounds, both of which set the mood for spooky ghost tales. The old lighthouse keeper's home is also located on the property and it is said that at night (conveniently) on occasion you can see the lighthouse keepers wife's ghost vigilantly standing in the window.
My point is, prior to hearing the story, I didn't think twice about it. Now that I've been told the spook story, it really is kind of creepy at night. So is it that there really are ghosts at the fort or the lighthouse, or that now my subconscious has been tapped in to?
The more one hears about ghost stories or about the divine, the more one contemplates on their existence. That may not necessarily be consilience but rather a manufacturing of beliefs.
"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind." -- Bertrand Russell