What would it take?

I was thinking about what it would take to convince me that there was a god. This is a question that theists seem to like to ask, so I thought I should have an answer.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and they don't get much more extraordinary than the claim of an all-knowing, all-powerful being that's everywhere at once and cares what I do while I'm naked. It would require a demonstration that included a verifiable violation of the laws of physics, and in order for that violation to truly be verifiable, we would need a complete understanding of those laws. Is there a deity out there just waiting for us to stumble upon a Theory of Everything before it makes its presence known? I'm not holding my breath.

Theists often assume that if we had proof of a god, we would have no choice but to bow down and worship. This is not the correct response. If we met a non-human intelligent being, we should treat it the same way whether it was a god, an alien or some kind of super-chimp. The correct course of action (after learning to communicate) would be to invite the being to join our society as an equal. As a person, human or otherwise, it would have "human rights" (I don't like that term) and the obligation to afford other persons the same rights. If the god agreed to abide by our laws, we could get along amicably, and I would enjoy watching its party tricks, but if any appreciable portion of the Bible is factual, it would not accept. This is understandable, as it would need to immediately be brought up on charges that would result in imprisonment for innumerable consecutive life sentences, assuming the death penalty was not feasible.

Of course, an omnipotent being could not be forced to comply with our laws, or any punishments we deemed necessary, but if it refused to do so, it would certainly not be a being to be worshiped, but one to be hated and resisted in any way possible. Only a tyrant would demand worship, and it is the duty of any thinking person to resist tyranny.

Thoughts on morality.

I was thinking about morality today, and it suddenly dawned on me what defines what is and is not moral. I was thinking that despite differing opinions of individuals on what should be considered moral, it's pragmatically a society's consensus on morality that matters. Then I realized, morality isn't what each individual thinks it to be, or even what society agrees it to be, and it certainly isn't what some invisible man in the sky says that it is. What defines morality is what it will be agreed to be.

I don't just mean that the morality of an action must be decided after the fact, what I mean is that what is most moral is what will be considered moral in the future. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins discusses what he calls the "changing moral zeitgeist". This is the phenomenon by which morality evolves (so to speak) through time. Prime examples of this are racism and slavery, which have been the norm until very recently in our history, but are abhorred by anyone we would consider civilized today. I admire Thomas Jefferson, but Jefferson was a slave owner. We all hate Hitler, but the racism that fueled his genocide wasn't nearly as far behind the moral zeitgeist as we would like to believe. The trick to being as moral as possible, I realized, is to be ahead of the curve. Don't try to do what people consider right today, do what will be considered right tomorrow, or next year, or in a thousand years.

Of course, without precognition, it's difficult to know what direction the moral zeitgeist will take. Short-term changes can be sometimes be predicted based on other recent changes as a natural progression, such as the acceptance of homosexuals following from recent moves toward race- and gender-equality, and those who are slightly ahead of the curve already vehemently oppose homophobia and campaign for gay rights. Long-term changes are harder to predict, and even the most progressive among us surely hold beliefs that will be considered appalling within a few generations, but we don't see anything wrong with them today. Perhaps the best we can hope for is to be far enough ahead of the zeitgeist that our posterity will recognize our good intentions, and as with Jefferson, chalk-up our failings to the times in which we live.