I know. The prequels maybe weren’t well thought out. That shit talker would have served among the Jedi and during the purge.
Jedi are supposed to be incredibly rare, about 10,000 in a galaxy of quadrillions. It’s perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of them (Other than the ten thousand years of historical proof of space wizards doing cool shit with physical records).
However, Lucas hates math, so, like, a couple million clones can fight this war, right? Now this one cog actually probably did meet a Jedi because the only universe worse at reconciling feasible reality with background details is 40k.
The EU actually did a really good job of explaining this attitude with an Imperial propaganda campaign that painted the Jedi as frauds running the Republic from the shadows, justifying both the skepticism and the purge to the citizens. RIP.
Might to be rare, but they also had a massive temple located on the capital planet, very near the political and military centers on that planet. They served as generals in the Republic Army - the Army he likely served in before it was reorganized into the Empire. He would have known of them and their exploits, if not first hand, then from news and military reporting.
Of course the EU (which Disney wiped away) would have tried to clean up George’s short sightedness.
Or, the stories of the Jedi’s exploits faced a counter-narrative that it’s a conspiracy propaganda. QAnon Star Wars edition, and he was totally there for it.
Reminds me of cultivators in Chinese novels. I always explain their rarity as imagine them being olympic athletes. You know they exist, you hear about them but you would probably never bump into one or if you did you would never know. (of course cultivators are such chuds that if you did bump into them they would just smite you because something something show face and cowtow)
I don’t think he wasn’t believing in the force, he just wasn’t buying the mysticism surrounding it and didn’t think it’s such a big deal. He knew Vader is a powerful force user, but the Death Star is literally one shotting entire planets, so the force didn’t feel that significant to him in the grand scheme of things.