God and the Computer Simulation

Our Shadowy World

They say reality is an illusion.

For instance, maybe we’re dreaming. In the Zhuangzi, an ancient Taoist text, we find Zhuang Zhou’s famous butterfly dream. In it, the sage experienced himself as a happy butterfly. When he woke, he felt confused. Was he a butterfly now dreaming he was a man, or a man dreaming he’d been a butterfly? He couldn’t tell, for we can’t always trust our senses. [1]

During the early twentieth century, the Baha’i teacher, Abdu’l-Baha, taught this same thing, that the world is an illusion. Reality exists only in God’s realm. What we see here “is only its shadow stretching out.” [2]

Plato, too, used shadows as a metaphor for our life on Earth. To explain his notion of perfect forms, the philosopher used the allegory of the caves. He imagined a dark place where imprisoned individuals sat unable to turn their heads, staring at the stone wall in front of them. The only light came from a fire flickering at their backs which puppeteers used to create shadows that flickered and danced along the wall. The captives thought they knew what reality was, but all they knew were shadows. [3]

Waking When We Die

Typically, such teachings have been used to explain that an existence more true than this one waits for us when we die, as if we were sleeping while alive and would wake once dead. Zhuang Zhou’s butterfly dream is a metaphor for our transformation from embodiment in an earthly form to freedom and awakening. This can happen upon our death or upon our enlightenment when we realize that, while the butterfly and the philosopher are distinct beings, one can become the other. “This is called the Transformation of Things,” Zhuang Zhou wrote. [4]

We can’t determine beyond all doubt whether it’s a god that makes this transformation occur, assuming it does, so in most Eastern traditions, they don’t talk much about deities.

For the Baha’i, though, God is core. God created our universe, and God sustains it. To this God, we return when we die. Plato, too, had some belief in a divinity. In the Socratic dialogue, Phaedo, in which he wrote about the day Socrates died from drinking hemlock, Plato suggested that philosophers live in service to the gods, which would indicate he believed in them. He argued, also, that the human soul is immortal. [5]

Many religious and philosophical thinkers suggest that something more real exists beyond this life, and we live now in a kind of dream.

Breaking the Game

This idea is probably more popular now than ever. Scientists have confirmed we cannot trust our senses, that they often fool us, and not just with optical illusions. Our past history and beliefs influence what we perceive. If we humans mostly agree on what we see, feel, hear, taste, and smell about the world, it’s only because evolution shaped us in similar ways.

Yet, as the neuroscientist, Beau Lotto, states, the point of evolution isn’t to be smart or discern reality clearly. Nature selects for survival. That’s all. The question becomes whether our imperfect perception of our existence provides us a better chance to survive than would a rigidly accurate one, or whether an accurate sense of the world would take so many internal resources, it wouldn’t be worth the energy expenditure. [6]

But maybe there’s another explanation. Maybe we’re so easily tricked by our senses because we are no more than a computer simulation. We know what we know because that’s what the program allows us to know. It wouldn’t do for us to be able to see the fire that spread the shadows, for instance, or wake from our dream. If we knew the truth of our situation, that we are no more solid than a character in a novel or the cursor on a screen, if we understood we weren’t really alive, how would we feel? What would we do? Perhaps our knowing would break the game, and all would be lost.

Maybe that wouldn’t be any more terrible than the destruction of Earth itself, and if death is a complete cessation of thought and identity, how would blinking out when the game ends be any worse?

Bostrom’s Hypothesis

Yet I wonder. Most of us need a sense of purpose to keep on living. If nothing else, a sense of responsibility to the next generation can keep us engaged. Yet if we learned that no base reality exists, at least in our universe, why would we bother going on? Our suffering might not be real, but it feels as if it is. Why endure it? We might as well end the game.

Of course, for most of us, life–illusion or not–can also be joyous. Yet if we determine that’s all there is, a bit of joy here and there, how will that influence our values and behaviors? Will knowing the truth make this shadow realm a better place for most of us or a worse one? Maybe we never should have asked the question in the first place.

But we did. At least, Nick Bostrom did in his 2003 paper, “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?” In the article, he never drew a definitive conclusion, but he did offer three propositions for our consideration:

1. “the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage;
2. any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof);
3. we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.” [7]

After exploring these possibilities, Bostrom concludes that only if we are simulations will we evolve into posthumans running our own simulations. That’s because, by the time that happens, simulated beings, who will soon invent their own simulations, will vastly outnumber their flesh-and-blood creators. Chances are good, then, that we’re one of the creations, not one of the creators.

Simulations All the Way Down

Some people, such as Elon Musk and Neil deGrasse Tyson, are quite taken with his idea. [8] Others are less so.

For instance, why believe proposition 3 rather than 2? That’s what Anthony Bruekner argues in his article, “The Simulation Argument Again.” Assuming a posthuman civilization had the nearly infinite computing power to run simulations of their own history, why would they bother? Wouldn’t they, he asks, “have better things to do?” [9]

Additionally, he points out that a simulation can only create simulations of a simulation. In other words, it wouldn’t really be a simulation, making proposition 3 even more unlikely.

But would a simulation’s simulation be any less real than the one before it? Might there not be simulations all the way down? Maybe there’s no reality anywhere, just a fantasy within a fantasy and no mind to create it.

In other words, is there a first cause or not? It’s hard to believe a simulation is like a universe that popped into existence all on its own, for a computer simulation would take enormous technological sophistication and a nearly endless energy source. Without a prime mover or a base reality populated by super-intelligent beings, there could be no computer capable of making a simulation such as ours. Could there?

How in the world do we know if Bostrom’s right? Where’s the proof one way or the other?

Seeking Proof

As Anil Ananthaswamy explains in his article, “Do We Live in a Simulation? Chances Are About 50-50,” a number of scientists are trying to find out. Take David Kipping, an astronomer at Columbia University who used Bayesian reasoning, which involves probability theory and a lot of advanced math, to figure out the odds that we are a simulation. He deduced the chances are about fifty-fifty.

But to reach that conclusion, he had to make assumptions about reality. For instance, having to assign prior probabilities to each model he considered, he started with “the principle of indifference,” which, Ananthaswamy quotes him as saying, “is the default assumption when you don’t have any data or leanings either way.” [11] How do we know such an assumption is correct?

Next, Ananthaswamy writes about the mathematician, Houman Owhadi, who started with quantum physics. In the quantum world, reality exists as a wave. When we observe that reality, it collapses from probability to actuality. Physicists disagree, however, about whether this reflects an actual change in reality or a change in what we perceive about reality. Perhaps there is no collapse, but only the simulation of one. Owhadi and his colleagues conceived of five possible experiments they could use to figure this out. Unfortunately, they don’t know if any of them will work.

Then there’s the physicist, Zohreh Davoudi, who suggested that, if we are a simulation, an unusual stream of energy, such as cosmic rays, would come from the simulation source. [12] We ought to be able to detect such a thing. So far, no one has. Even if we did, though, it wouldn’t prove a simulation, for real stellar objects could produce a similar effect for an unknown reason.

God as Computer Geek

Trying to figure out if we’re real or not seems about as fruitful as our attempts to prove there’s a god, which is to say, not very. Besides, even Kipping has doubts about his conclusion. He cites Occam’s razor, the philosophical tenet that asserts that, barring other evidence, the simplest answer will be the correct one.

In this case, what is the simplest answer? Are we an elaborate projection that’s been fooled into thinking we have flesh and blood or are we flesh and blood wondering if we even exist? Kipping believes the simplest answer is the latter one.

But let’s say he’s wrong and we are no more than an invention of some computer geek. What is that geek? Would it be a kind of god to us? After all, it created us.

The whole thing reminds me of our endless attempts to understand the nature of the divine.

Worshiping a Cruel God

Once upon a time, when life was simpler, we believed in sky gods, corn goddesses, and sea witches. Priestesses and shamans rose before the sun to ensure that, through their rituals, another day would arise. Every year, their sacrifices and prayers guaranteed life’s rebirth in spring. We were active participants in the maintenance of God’s creation.

Then, as Julian David describes in his book, A Brief History of God, patriarchal invaders from the northern Steppes overran the matriarchal Sumerian society that had lived in affectionate companionship with nature for millennia. At about the same time, Abraham entered into a covenant with a similar male god that would make the Hebrew people more powerful than any nature deity could. Our instinct to survive is strong, and if some authority can assure us that we continue, many of us will accept a little oppression here and there.

Why these brutal communities swept across the world, killing and oppressing entire populations, and why the cult of Yahweh gained precedence, we don’t know. David suggests that, for the northerners, unlike for the Sumerians, life was harsh. Winter nights in their country lasted nearly all day, and temperatures could plunge to minus 50 degrees. Their society became as cruel as nature herself. [13]

These Steppe dwellers, however, were not the only ones to subsist in harsh conditions. For example, the Inuit, who live in a frozen north, never decimated entire populations, nor developed a society based on lust and power, nor established a religion of domination. Besides, the Hebrews lived in a sunny climate like their more tolerant neighbors.

A Shift in Belief

Something else must be at work here. Could a curious programmer have wondered what would happen if they changed conditions by introducing into these idyllic lands a brutal, warrior tribe? That’s how some of the best stories start, with a “what-if.” Maybe our creator is nothing more than a curious writer.

However it happened, and whether our history is real or not, we can look back into the past and see that these patriarchal societies flourished, coming to influence communities everywhere. The three religions that arose out of this new vision of reality—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—have made their mark in small villages in the frozen north and in the arid towns of Australia. A few tribal groups continue to subsist unmolested here and there, and Eastern religions flourish, along with some outliers like Zoroastrianism. You could even call secularism a kind of faith. But this god who led Abraham out of Ur is a jealous one, insisting there be no others, and many people believe in him.

Yet his reign has shifted over time. As our societies become more sophisticated and as we realize, for instance, that we are not the center of the solar system, that our Earth is no different from trillions of planets out there, and that natural selection can explain the miraculous diversity of life all on its own, we depend less on the idea of a god, at least of a creator one.

So what do we believe in now?

Enthusiasm for Eastern Thought

Many Westerners dabble in Eastern traditions, such as Hinduism. The Hindu supreme deity, Brahman, is distant and aloof. Though Brahman may be the essence of everything, we cannot communicate with it. Researcher Karen Armstrong writes, “Thanking or praising it for creating the world would be entirely inappropriate,” for Brahman is “utterly alien.” [14]

Even so, this essence lives not only in everything we see, hear, smell, and touch, but also in us. So we can know Brahman, after all, just not with our minds. Armstrong quotes the Upanishads, noting that “Brahman is ‘What cannot be spoken in words, but that whereby words are spoken . . . What cannot be thought with the mind, but that whereby the mind can think.’” [15]

We can’t understand Eastern philosophy with our rational minds, but only through metaphor, poetry, and lived experience.

Buddhists, too, find the divine–in their case, enlightenment or nirvana–by going within. While Hindus use yoga, Buddhists meditate. It comes to much the same thing, and it is very different from the Abrahamic model in which an intimate and accessible deity creates a time-bound universe for us to live in, directing and sustaining it with his omniscience and omnipotence until the end of days shall come and the reign of peace arrives. It may seem ironic that a warrior god should usher in ultimate peace, but some of the most avid pacifists are veterans.

An Unprovable Reality

With time, though, many cultures have become more secular. Many of us are less dependent on the natural, for instance, sheltered as we are and spoiled by an ability to throw money at every problem that comes up. If we’re hungry, we buy food; thirsty, we turn on the tap to get water. Our relative comfort makes it easy to fool ourselves into thinking we make it all happen and that we don’t need a god to protect us. We can protect ourselves.

So god becomes a myth, and reality, not a thing with tooth and claw, but an illusion. If something like a god exists for us now, it seems it’s the being who invented the physical laws that bind our lives and placed us on this holodeck. If it’s simulations all the way down, what’s at the bottom? That’s like asking what existed before the big bang. How can we possibly know?

It’s not surprising, though, given our fascination with all things virtual, that we should wonder if we are real ourselves. The answer may come down to Occam’s razor, as Kipping suggests, or it may be that, since we can’t prove reality one way or the other, we would be best served to live as if reality were real.

Or, maybe not. With the proliferation of AI and virtual reality, it makes sense that we would think of god as a computer geek. Who cares if we can prove it? Billions of people believe in unprovable gods.

Is It All Meaningless?

Our past models of God and reality were based on the world we inhabited at the time, whether as hunter-gatherers, shepherds, farmers, or industrialists. This simulation model of the universe has arisen as we immerse ourselves in virtual reality. No longer do we need a deity who assembles us like a watchmaker does a watch, determines the timing of the rain, makes the sunrise anew each day, or tracks the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings. God is the computer technician in the sky, and we are its pawns.

Such a belief makes it hard to care. Why strive to save this world of ours or even the individuals we love? Enjoy the day if you can, and if you can’t, you might as well take out your anger on everything around you, for nothing is real, so nothing can be destroyed.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen such Nihilism. Even in the Bible, we read:

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
    says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
    Everything is meaningless.” (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

Yet if we read further in the text, we see that although everything has been done many times before, and though life is wearisome, and though the sea never grows full no matter how many streams flow into it, in the end, Earth will endure. A future exists for someone, and that gives us purpose.

In faiths that understand life to be a dream, still, God exists and our spirits endure beyond death.

It Matters What We Believe

In 1951, Sophia Lyon Fahs wrote the poem, “It Matters What We Believe.” [16]

Some beliefs are like walled gardens. They encourage exclusiveness, and the feeling of being especially privileged.

Other beliefs are expansive and lead the way into wider and deeper sympathies.

Some beliefs are like shadows, clouding children’s days and fears of unknown calamities.

Other beliefs are like sunshine, blessing children with the warmth of happiness.

Some beliefs are divisive, separating saved from unsaved, friends from enemies.

Other beliefs are bonds in a world community, where sincere differences beautify the pattern.

Some beliefs are like blinders, shutting off the power to choose one’s own direction.

Other beliefs are like gateways opening wide vistas for exploration.

Some beliefs weaken a person’s selfhood. They blight the growth of resourcefulness.

Other beliefs nurture self-confidence and enrich the feeling of personal worth.

Some beliefs are rigid, like the body of death, impotent in a changing world.

Other beliefs are pliable, like the young sapling, ever growing with the upward thrust of life.

Though the world has changed exponentially since Fahs wrote that, her words remain true.

No matter what we decide about the state of reality, we must act as if we exist. As someone who does not believe we have free will, I still think we can do no other than behave as if we do. Similarly, we can’t help but act as if we are real, even if it’s simulations all the way down. We’ll continue to care about the vulnerable and the wounded if it’s in our avatar’s nature. If we currently value compassion over indifference, beauty over destruction, and kindness over cruelty, that won’t change. Simulation or not, what we endure feels like life, so we act as if it were.

Acting As If

We don’t all believe in the same thing, and we never will. The values Fahs endorses aren’t universal. Perhaps that’s why we’ve made a good mess of things. We’re close to wiping out everything that lives and breathes on this Earth. Soon, we might even destroy the planet itself.

Yet, even if Earth survives, and it probably will, at least until the sun takes it out, you and I will not. Death will take us, and there will be an afterlife or there won’t. Will it matter then if we were faithful and noble or frightened and cruel? Perhaps if we’re good, the computer geek in the sky will put our avatar in another simulation.

For even if we aren’t real, something must exist. Even if a random quark could have produced a singularity that evolved into our universe, I hardly think it could have popped a technology into existence complicated enough to create endless avatars unless a base reality exists somewhere from which the virtual could spawn.

And therein may lie our purpose, for if we have no real existence in the first place, and no life after death, still what we do here today might influence that base reality in the same way that a novel or a play can transform our human minds. Virtual or not, we can shift the reality that lies at the bottom of the simulation pile and edge it toward sunlight, community, and life. No matter what is true about our plane of existence, I like to think it matters what we believe, for it matters how we behave, at least for someone, somewhere.

In faith and fondness,

Barbara

Credits

1. Zhuangzi, trans. Watson, chapter 2, Wikipedia, Zhuangzi (book), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi_(book)#.22The_Butterfly_Dream.22, accessed February 11, 2023.
2. Talley, Radiance, “Is Physical Reality and Illusion?,” Bahaiteachings.org, April 15, 2022, https://bahaiteachings.org/is-physical-reality-an-illusion/, accessed February 11, 2023.
3. Cohen, Mark, “The Allegory of the Cave,” 2006, https://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/cave.htm, accessed February 11/2023.
4. Watson.
5. Connolly, Tim, “Plato: Phaedo,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/phaedo/#SH3d, accessed February 11, 2023.
6. “Is Reality an Illusion? At the World Science Festival, Experts Reveal the Power and Peculiarities, of the Brain’s Ability to Sense the World,” Columbia Zuckerman Institute, June 6, 2019, https://zuckermaninstitute.columbia.edu/reality-illusion-world-science-festival-experts-reveal-power-and-peculiarities-brain-s-ability-sense, accessed February 11, 2023.
7. Bostrom, Nick, “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?,” The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 3, Issue 211, April 2003, pp. 243-255, https://academic.oup.com/pq/article-abstract/53/211/243/1610975?redirectedFrom=fulltext, accessed February 11, 2023.
8. “Simulation Hypothesis,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis, accessed February 18, 2023.
9. Bruekner, Anthony, “The Simulation Argument Again,” Analysis, Jul., 2008, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Jul., 2008), pp. 224-226, 225, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25597884, accessed February 18, 2023.
10. Ibid 224.
11. Ananthaswamy, Anil, “Do We Live in a Simulation? Chances Are About 50-50,” Scientific American, October 13, 2020, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50/, accessed February 11, 2023.
12. Ibid.
13. Julian, David, A Brief History of God, Austin MacCauley Publishers, 2021, 18.
14. Armstrong 30.
15. Ibid 31.
16. Fahs, Sophia Lyon, “It Matters What We Believe,” Singing the Living Tradition, Boston: Beacon Press, 1993, 657. (I say the poem is from 1951 because I found a mention on Google Books of a 14-page document titled “It Matters What We Believe” published by Beacon Press. https://www.google.com/books/edition/It_Matters_what_We_Believe/sfHQtgAACAAJ?hl=en&kptab=overview.)

Photo of robot by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

Photo of woman by Abhyuday Majhi on Unsplash

Copyright © 2023 Barbara E. Stevens. All Rights Reserved.