There is currently a debate going on in another thread on the site in which a Muslim visitor is attempting to convince one of our regular posters about the divinity of the Koran. He's arguing that it's beautifully written, which makes it a miracle, or some other garbage like that. Our atheist regular is asking for proof, of which he is getting none. The question is being asked what we'd accept as proof that the Koran (or any holy book of any religion, I suppose) was the word of gods.
I thought about this for a while, and came up with a list:
1. First, the idea of spreading the message of a god through a book brought to me by incompetents, liars, frauds, murderers and pedophile sex predators, is stupid. An omnipotent god described by the world's biggest religions could easily tell me its message itself, without relying on these monsters and fools to do its work for it. So the first thing I'd expect is for there to not be a book at all, but a direct message from the god to me.
2. If there is a book, I'd expect it to contain some useful knowledge which could be used in foresight, not just hindsight. Rather than obscure and relatively useless
information about the jet streams, or esoteric information about embryology, as our Muslim guest is claiming, I'd expect something along the lines of,
"Make sure to wash your hands before eating or conducting a medical procedure, because there are tiny little creatures which can make you sick." Or how about instructions for making fusion energy work? See, what's going to happen is that after we do get it to work, some putz is going to interpret a passage of the Bible/Koran to claim that it was there all along. But if it isn't clear enough to be used in foresight, not hindsight, what good is it?
3. I'd expect the book to be error-free and to correspond to reality. The Bible fails miserably at this, as its stories of creation do not match what we observe in reality. If we're supposed to take such things as myths or stories or whatever, then I'd expect the book to contain a guide as to which of its stories are to be taken literally, and which are not. I wouldn't expect the book to force me and everybody else to decide for ourselves.
4. I'd expect to know the book was holy as soon as I read its words. This shouldn't need faith or convincing. An omnipotent god should be able to create a book such that the moment any person looks at it, they know it is divine and correct truth, impossible to deny. Here the religious will argue that this would take away our precious free will, but no it wouldn't. We'd still have the choice whether or not to worship, but we'd just know that the book is divine.
5. I'd expect the DVD and Blu-ray versions to have been released by now, not with actors, but with the actual people and the actual events. Why can't we see it with video? The argument that there were no video cameras at the time is invalid if you're arguing for an omnipotent god.
6. I'd expect to be born with the text of the book already imprinted in my brain. That way if I'm a poor Hindu kid living in a Hindu area, I wouldn't have to wait for a Koran-bearing messenger of the gods to come to my house/shack with a copy of it. How many Hindus have died without ever having been told about the truth of the Koran?
7. I'd expect the book to be much shorter, and possibly even just a single image. An omnipotent god shouldn't need so much verbosity to get its message across. It must, by definition of 'omnipotence', be able to create just a single image to convey its entire message, including all of the knowledge we need about it and this world. That would allow the illiterate and young children to understand it, save on translation and printing costs, and make it easier to distribute the truth to non-believers. We could airdrop leaflets (on biodegradable paper, of course) into those poor Hindu areas. Dropping Korans from planes on them would not only be more expensive, but also much less humane.
8. I'd expect that if nobody had shown me the Koran in my life, that I'd have this yearning for it. That the book wouldn't seek me out, but that I'D be seeking IT out. That I would know from the time I was a small child that I must find this book as soon as possible, irresistibly drawn to it, like the guy in
Close Encounters of the Third Kind is drawn to that mountain/rock.
These are the biggest things I'd expect of an omnipotent god with a very important message for me. The fact that not a single one of them is the case in real life is a big red flag for me that none of these monstrous jackasses has any idea what they're talking about, that the books were written solely by men with no divine inspiration, and that they contain no useful information at all.