Every morning, I’m treated to 45 minutes aboard one of the speeding death toilets that serve our railways. It’s a time for quiet contemplation & writing. Every evening, I get another 45 minutes, but that isn’t, because I’m inevitably standing up & don’t have room to move my arms.

This morning, I was enjoying one of my favourite views: sunrise over the outskirts of Swindon. It has a sublime combination of beauty & despair that speaks to me. Mostly it says “Don’t live here. It’s a dump.” But the juxtaposition of majesty & urban decay honestly does get my imagination going. It’s like a sneak preview of the apocalypse, which is handy when you’re writing post-apocalyptic sci-fi. Wordsworth had his picturesque countryside, I have Marshgate Industrial Estate.

Anyway, today I had an epiphany about my book. Only a little thing, but they all count. Then I had an epiphany about my epiphany. Philosophy occurred. Nations fell. I blarted it out via a series of ill-formed tweets and promised myself I’d come back to it later. So!

Imagine we were all born with a HUD, like in computer games or the film Predator. It just sort of sits somewhere between your optic nerve and the world, displaying information to you. Only ours has just one item: a little dot that floats in the top right of your field of view at all times.

This dot is either green or red. For many people, it remains the same their whole lives. For others, it may – very rarely – change. Perhaps once or twice in a lifetime. We have no control over whether it does this or not. At some point, you become consciously aware that this dot is one colour or the other. That it has significance. People talk a lot about their dots.

The reason for this is because, over time, it has come to be known as your ‘God dot’. A green God dot gives you reason to believe there is a god. A red God dot doesn’t. People then start to wonder what this god might be like. Good? Loving? Forgiving? Really awesome superbeings probably don’t do things by halves, so if they’re better than us then they must embody all of what we find virtuous. Otherwise, why would we find it virtuous? QED. So it is decided over time that a green God dot is good.

Now, because god clearly exists by dint of the fact they consistently experience a green dot, reason the Greendots, there must be something faulty with the Reddots. They’re doing something wrong that’s messing up their dots. Maybe they really do see a green dot, but just want to be different so claim otherwise. Or perhaps they’ve done something bad, so god has abandoned them to teach them some manners.

Meanwhile, the Reddots are a bit worried because the Greendots keep telling them to do or not do things. For example, you should always wear colours that complement green, but not colours that clash with it. This makes the Greendots happy because everything looks nicer for them that way. Failing to do so can make them very unhappy. It is wrong, they say. Otherwise god wouldn’t be green, would he? Such is the natural order of things.

When asked to prove this purported fact, the Greendots point out that they have a little green God dot in the top right of their vision. It being green is good, because it shows god is there. And if it being good is because god is there, that means god being there is good. So god must be good. And a good god wouldn’t want people going around uglying-up the place by wearing the wrong colour clothes and whatnot. So regardless of what colour your God dot is, you should dress appropriately.

As with many things, this divide escalates to beyond what might be considered reasonable levels of disagreement. Freedoms are restricted. People are marginalised. Maybe there are camps. All because some people have a little green dot & others have a little red dot.

But what is really meant by all this? Very little. What is called evidence for – or proof of – god is actually just an expression of a minor detail about the way individuals experience the world. It is saying “I have a green light”. Calling it god doesn’t describe an actual being. It is not evidence of a deity. It just means you got one colour rather than the other. You believe it shows more because you were told it does. No other reason. All “there is a god” means in this world is “I’ve a green light”.

So when you’re asked to justify depriving someone of their freedom, think carefully about your answer. Be sure it isn’t a dressed up version of “because I find it more pleasant that way”.  The real question isn’t “why do you believe there’s a god?” It’s “what do you mean when you say you do and why do you think that?”

Announcing we have a God dot of one colour or the other is to say almost nothing of the world. It simply shows how we assign meaning to things, what stories shape our world and inform our understanding. So while we consider how to treat our fellow beings, perhaps the colour of our God dot should be given less weight than our actions and the consequences they have for others.