There's a difference in believing that something is possible and that something is true. "It's possible that swans evolved to have blue feathers." I believe that statement. "Swans have blue feathers." I don't believe this latter statement. 'It is possible that swans have blue feathers' and 'swans have blue feathers' do not express the same proposition.

In propositional logic, the distinction between these two kinds of statements is shown with the possibility operator: <> (the symbol is a diamond). Atomic statements are given capital, middle of the alphabet letters like P, Q, R. Atomic statements are the most basic sentences that come in the language (think subject and predicate and nothing else). Here are some examples: "The swan is blue" "The ball is red" "El_Gringo is from OK." To these basic atomic statements various connectors and operators may be used to modify what's expressed.

Negation, like our diamond, is a sentential operator for instance, and is usually expressed as a tilde in symbolic form: ~. Negation, placed in front of a statement gives us a statement with the "opposite" truth value. For instance, "~The swan is blue" expresses that the swan is blue is false. "~El_Gringo is from OK" expresses that it is false that El_Gringo is from OK." We all understand that to believe that "El_Gringo is from OK" is not the same as to believe that "~El_Gringo is from OK." Indeed, holding both of those believes is contradictory. So, "~P" has the opposite truth value of "P". Negation is a truth value modifying operator. Moral of this story, don't mistake a statement for what gets expressed by that same statement modified by a sentential operator.

Our <> is also a sentential operator. It modifies whether the statement is about the actual world or about a possible world. "Possibly El_Gringo is from OK" does not express the same thing as "El_Gringo is from OK." What it expresses is that there is some possible way reality could have gone such that El_Gringo is from OK." Notice that "<> P" (Read: possibly P) does not imply "P", although the reverse holds. That it's possible for Sordavie to be ruler of the universe does not entail that it's actually the case that Sordavie is the ruler of the universe. Our language is filled with words to help distinguish the hypothetical from the actual. For instance, we have all kinds of conditional statements (if.. then; if it were... then it would be...). Words like 'can', 'ability', 'achievable', 'could be' all distinguish between actuality and some kind of possibility. People who don't think there's a big difference between P is true and P is possibly true are unfortunately mistaken, and they haven't thought hard enough about the distinction between possibility and actuality.

Believing that things in stories are possible or achievable is quite different than believing a particular account of spirituality. It's not that you're to believe that this particular account of spirituality is possible or achievable. The latter is more akin to believing a scientific theory. There's no amount of believing that a scientific theory is possibly true or achievable such that you can make it true, if you try hard enough. It's either an accurate account of how the physical laws work or it is not. An account of spirituality likewise is either an accurate account of how the spiritual reality is like or it is not. So, I still think this misses the point.

By the way, this is the topic of my dissertation. Since, ostensibly, what makes statements about a possibilities true or false isn't the way the actual world is, the question is what makes such statements true. Should we countenance mere possibilities in our ontology? Are such statements meaningless? Do they mean something other than we thought they meant? I survey various answers in the literature and argue for what I think is the best answer.