“Twelve-year-old Carly Nix of Lakeland
says breaking the wishbone from the turkey is a silly tradition,
but that won’t hold her back from testing her luck this year.”
I have to start by confessing that until yesterday evening I’ve never seriously considered this possibility.
Why would anyone bother?
Then somebody – thank you, Jeffrey Mercer – introduced a whole new twist into this conundrum.
‘What if this whole (computer) simulation thing is nothing but yet another attempt to make sense of the Universe?
To attribute sense to the Universe?
Which whole thing, if anything, is the epitome of anthropomorphism…’
I took the liberty to rephrase Jeffrey Mercer’s words. To make them more ‘suitable’.
To fit better my preexisting answer. Yet another ‘anthropomorphic’ thing….
My immediate answer was ‘our world is indeed a simulation. Or maybe not as much a simulation as an artifact.’
Before delving into the matter, I’m going to formulate two questions. Hence ‘the furcula’.
If we live in a simulation, what kind of world does the simulator live in?
Why would anyone bother? To study us responding to its simulating our senses/minds? Why doesn’t it study itself? Its own self/persona?
Coming back to my initial answer, I have to point out that the key word here is ‘our’.
We’re speaking here about ‘our world’. The world we live in. Our reality!
We, the ones trying to make sense of this world/reality, have a few characteristics.
We’re made of matter and we have, each of us, a conscience.
Having a material nature introduces certain limitations and being conscious widens those limitations.
Us being conscious widens those limitations, by introducing a ‘new dimension’, but this doesn’t mean those limitations disappear. A bucket is ‘wider’ than the circle at its base – the bucket has height, hence volume, while the circle is ‘flat’ – but the bucket itself continues to have limits.
Let’s examine the consequences of us being conscious agents of a material nature.
Limited conscious agents of a material nature…
Us being conscious means us being aware of our material nature. Of our limits.
Having a material nature means the most powerful instinct we have is our ‘need to survive’.
Both as a biological organism – a.k.a. animal – and as a conscious agent.
Our consciences – I’m speaking about the individual ones here – are very crafty ‘devils’. They can accept our individual material fate – death – but have a problem accepting their own dependency on the ‘bodies/brains’ they need to inhabit.
Hence ‘the soul’.
Which ‘soul’ has been invented – by our conscious selves – as the first step towards building a sense for this world. For the reality we inhabit.
Which soul is the building block for all religion. For all religion known/built to/by man.
Are you still here?
I have to make a pause here. And to mention the fact that I’ve already cut a few corners… A lot of corners… What I say is probably rather hard to follow. Mostly because I don’t have time/space to explain myself. Not now but certainly in due time.
And yes, what we call ‘religion’ is of our own doing.
The Bible itself has been written by us, regardless of the origin of the ideas mentioned there.
It doesn’t matter whether we have been the interface between (a) God and ‘the world’, we are the ones who have written the Bible. And all other sacred texts.
We have written them, we have believed in them and we have shaped the reality we live in.
We have done all that according to how we have interpreted the teachings we have inherited from our forefathers.
And we continue to.
Even those of us who consider themselves to be ‘free of religion’. We might not believe but we continue to act as if. Believers and nonbelievers alike hold the same things as being valid. Don’t kill, don’t steal, respect the values which keep society together…
What about where we started from? What about the ‘original’ simulation?
One moment please, I haven’t yet finished with ‘God’.
If (a) God made us who/what we are, then who made God?
If someone took the trouble to build the simulation we consider to be ‘home’, what about the ‘real’ world? What about the reality harboring the simulating agent?
There’s no need for an outside agent?
The world we live in, our world, is the world we have built for ourselves? Using the things which were at our disposal and the information we have gleaned about how things work?
Maybe not always fully aware of what we were doing?
You got it! That’s exactly what I was trying to say!
If you’re still interested:
Confirmed! We live in a simulation. by Fouad Khan
Of course we live in a simulation by Jason Kehe
nicichiarasa 