this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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There’s no hypocrisy here.
On one hand, the belief in a god doesn’t just end there. There are beliefs in what that god does and what he has control over. So it’s completely logical to believe that there’s no god (although, as someone else pointed out, it’s also not random arrangements of atoms).
On the other hand, simulation theory is a logical theory to rationalize the “purpose” of why we exist. It’s not a belief. The simulation doesn’t respond to prayers or requests. It’s simply conjecture or hypothesis to explain the “why” of the universe. No one who talks about simulation theory (much less who “believes” in it) pretends that the creator of the simulation is uniquely interested in them and responds to their requests and tells them how to live their life. In fact, that would go against the entire concept of simulation theory.
Religion and religious belief have specific definitions. This feels just as dishonest as people claiming that LGBTQ ideology is a religion or that evolution is a “belief”.
Even more importantly: God is omnipotent, which means they don’t make mistakes. A simulation doesn’t imply a higher power that is perfect in every way.
Actually, no - the dictionary definition of omnipotent is literally being able to do anything. God being faultless is a different thing entirely and depending on how you interpret scripture, that is a false statement. He regrets making humans, so you could argue he sees humans as his own mistake - which is an entirely different kind of fucked-up for another day’s topic.
So whomever is running the simulation would be omnipotent, because they are literally making whatever happens in our universe happen by running a simulation of a universe.
EDIT: meant “everything” instead of “anything” but fuck it
I mean, the creator of a simulated universe isn't omnipotent though, for two reasons: first, there are plenty of things that they cannot do in their own universe, being just some regular person there, but more importantly, there must be limits on what they can do in the simulation, because that simulation has to exist on a computer which presumably has finite hardware limitations. "Framerate" or equivalent won't matter as much because time doesn't have to pass at the same rate, but the computer still is only going to have so much storage and memory space, or whatever equivalent the technology involved uses, and so nothing that would exceed those limitations can be done in the sim.