HOW DID WE FIND OUT ABOUT GOD?

      I never cease to be amazed at how difficult it is to get people to understand why the habit of talking about God is little more than an exercise in futility. In the essay titled "God" I posed the question of our first awareness of such an Entity. I'd like to elaborate somewhat on that question.
     It is a sure bet that you did not come up with the idea on your own. Someone told you about it. And that someone was no doubt a human being. Everything we know about God is based upon the words of another mortal.
     Unless of course you are prepared to step forward and claim that God Himself/Herself/ITself told you (of Himself/Herself/ITself).
     Somehow, I don't think you are. Can you imagine? What would you do if you were in a public place with a friend, maybe doing some shopping, or having lunch, and your friend, without warning, were to blurt out, "Hey, look! There's God. Come on, I want you to meet Him."?
     I don't know about you, but if I were with someone who did that, I'd ask them how exactly they knew it was God (assuming they were serious about such an outburst). I mean, does He wear an ID badge?
     Which brings me to one of my absolute favorite thought experiments:
     How indeed would you know it was God if you ever were to meet Him?
     It's not like you've met Him before. So you would have no basis for recognition. A thing must first be cognized before it can be re-cognized.
     The problem is the original cognition.
     If you were to come across a ball of bright light, so bright you couldn't look at it for fear of going blind, and heard a voice coming from it speaking to you, would you assume the big ball of light was God? If so, why?
     I remember an episode of Star Trek (Errand of Mercy) wherein Captain Kirk and a Klingon emissary were on a planet (Organia) where they were having some dealings with another alien species, whose members were composed of pure energy. And being composed of pure energy gave them the ability to appear in any shape they desired. Two members of their species (in human form) were speaking to Captain Kirk and the Klingon commander when, all of a sudden, they started to glow and then turn into spheres of dazzling light, so bright that Captain Kirk and the Klingon had to shield their eyes.
     Spock was also present and responded with his usual, "Fascinating." He then proceeded to explain to Captain Kirk and the Klingon that the beings were made of pure energy, that they were advanced forms of life, “...not as we know it at all.”
     I found it highly interesting that neither Captain Kirk nor the Klingon - not for a single moment - suspected that they had just been in the presence of God (or a god).
     It was this episode of Star Trek that gave me the idea for the thought experiment. I was thinking about it one day, and in very much the same way that Beaver would ask his big brother, I thought, "Gee, Wally, if a big ball of light came up to you and talked to you, but wasn't God, just somebody from another planet, how would you know it was God if He walked right up to you?"
     Good question, Beaver. I'd like to know that myself. Or, as Wally might put it, "Heck, Beav, I don't know. Ask dad."
     Even if the light told you everything you ever did, you still couldn't say (with complete assurance) that it was God. It just so happens that, at this very moment, scientists are avidly working on the technology that will enable ordinary human beings to do that very thing. It's called nanotechnology, a downright ambitious enterprise dedicated to the development of molecular-sized machines that can do the utterly amazing. Molecular-sized means of course not visible, which further means that they could be floating all around and you would never be aware of it; and some of those machines just might be sophisticated cameras spying on you.
     And no sort of God is needed to make this happen, just technology.
     The question bears repeating, but in a slightly different form: what exactly does a being have to do in order to be promoted to (considered worthy of) the position of God?
     I honestly can't think of an answer, which means nothing of course, because if I were to think of an answer, it would most likely be worthless. It would be my answer, and what am I? Last time I checked I was just an ordinary human being, and what the hell do I know about God? When you think about it, isn't that what it would take to recognize God? I mean, another God, and that would mean that there would be no God (because there would be gods).
     How could a human point to something and say it was greater than a human? It truly seems to make some sort of sense that only God could recognize God. If something were greater than us, how could we tell? How could we make such a judgement? What does it even mean to be greater than human? To have the power to truly make such a determination implies that we are somehow already greater than us, and thus have the power to recognize such, which is obviously absurd.
     Heck, Beaver ... I don't know what to say.