Simulation Hypothesis: "So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."
Religions of the world can still fit within the container known as the "simulation hypothesis".
I thought some images from video games would be worth more than anything I could write with regard to the single line from Genesis that I put in the topic line.
Let’s not forget that God also gave us complet freedom and it’s up to us decide how to us it.
It could be in a good way or a bad way.
Technically speaking I'm a deist. I believe in a creator/catalyst. I simply don't believe what is written in the words of humans, by humans in small books is accurate. Those to me are the creations of man. Seeking to explain things they observed and over time they take on a life of their own. There are good moral teachings in many such books, and there are also good possible historical information.
Yet for me as a deist I simply observe and use reason. I do believe their are signs of intelligent design, and I actually lean heavily towards the simulation hypothesis. These things fit nicely with Deism.
Why isn't Deism well known when founding father Thomas Payne who wrote "Common Sense" that spread fires in the minds of people for the Revolutionary war, as well as Thomas Jefferson were both deists?
I think it is simply because it has no text, no authority figures, etc. The only word of "God" is that which we can read within reality itself. We also can only read the parts we are able to observe. We can't guarantee our interpretation is accurate. Observe and use reason.
Yet without authority figures, and religious texts it doesn't lend itself to a priest class that can give sermons and dictate a specific interpretation as fact. I truly think this is the only reason it has remained so small and mostly unknown though it has been the belief system of numerous profound thinkers in the past.
I think that many thinkers of the past had something to do with the Bible. I also believe that truth is one of the highest values.
When the human will is directed by truth, honesty and confidence, man is guided and directed by an unerring vision of right, and even thought failure should await his efforts, his whole moral nature has been strengthened by disinterested endeavor, and the way is prepared for some greater achievement with more telling results.
Moral intelligence is another topic less known these days but certainly not the less important one. I believe that whoever applies it believer in God or not, will end up in the same place.
Like two parallel lignes going in the same direction. The catholic religion demands that you think before you act and demands that you question everything it teaches. Because a catholic that dos not question it’s religion is faithless. When it comes to our creation that God created us in his image it’s a way of telling us that whe are his children. Parents can say the same thing to there children. Its a beautiful way to tel us that He loves us and a beautiful way to tel them that they are loved.
At some points in history it did not. e.g. The Cathars, Luther, etc. The terms Heretic, Blasphemer, etc.
Yet this is not the sole province of Catholicism. I am a firm believe that most organized religions will become corrupted at varying points in history just as corporations, nations, etc become corrupted. They all are directed by humans, and there are always those that seek power, and they tend to rise to the top more often than those that just want to carry on with their life.
I have a big problem with the bible in the form of the two Councils of Nicea. The first over 300 years after Christ's Death/Resurrection, and the second hundreds of years later.
Both decided what would be in the bible, and what would not. In otherwords, editing. They were humans. The bible as we know it did not exist until after the first council as that is where it was created. Yet many writings did not make it in, and many were potentially edited to more closely fit with others.
Were they intelligent thinkers? Yes. That doesn't mean they didn't have an agenda.
It also makes me scoff at the "word of God" aspect when people speak of the Bible (or any other religious text) for they are clearly the word of man, and limited by the words and knowledge available to man.
Thus, as a deist the only bible I trust is reality itself. The mysterious golden mean repeating throughout so many things, the wonderous fractal designs everywhere, physics, chemistry, the strange phenomena in the quantum, and the dancing stochastics that surround us and we find difficulty in predicting. Pretty awesome, daunting, and beautiful. Not so easily described in the words of humans, and an ongoing adventure to try to read/observe that bible that thankfully for us may very well have no end. :)
If there was nothing left to seek or know I'd be miserable.
The simulation hypothesis also explains miracles. In fact it explains everything.
Question...how many levels of simulation might there be?
I had fun with that in a post here a couple of years ago where in the end they were watching a simulation they had coded and looking at the computer monitor their sims were looking at and on that monitor they saw themselves. :) Paradox is fun.
yup...philosophy/religion...gotta love it.
I prefer the empirical
I do value speculation and imagination. I know you do too. It is a necessary step in the pursuit of answers. It is the hypothesis stage of the scientific method. The danger is when people treat their speculations as fact and forget it began as them guessing at a possible explanation for something they observed, or even worse "simply heard about".
Yup...if the data doesn't support the hypothesis then the hypothesis is fiction.
That's why I'm agnostic in all things. It's not possible to prove something right...it's only possible to prove it to be wrong.
Observe and use reason. :)
reason is essential but it has limits.
If your assumptions are wrong so is your conclusion.
Well if we apply the scientific method a conclusion should never be without challenge. We use what explains the most data until we find something better.
yup..but NOTHING is sacred. Anything and everything should be questioned.
One data point is all it takes to invalidate ANY hypothesis.
Yep.
No clue what this simulation hypothesis is. Reading the comments made it stay unclear. Need to go Google it ;)
It just caught my eye because I was at a Christmas party one time and I just sat there in the corner listening to a bunch of women all "yes, yes"-ing each other as they went about their "God made us in His image" (yes, yes) "and God is not BLACK" (Oh no, good heavens, NO!) "therefor the blacks are not like the rest of us because only WE are made in HIS image" (yes, yes, yes, amen to that) "We are pure and like the Divine Himself" (yes, yes, absolutely) "The blacks are the ones that are evolving from apes but they still have a way to go" (yes, yes) "you can clearly see they are only half white on their hands and feet but they are still like the apes" (yes yes) "not like us who were created in His image" (yes yes. Amen to that)
So I thought it would be fun to stick my nose in and went: "Excuse me, ladies. I couldn't help but overhear... I wonder if you could clarify something for me, please. If God made us in HIS image but half of us are male and the other half are female, does that mean that half of us are NOT made in His image or is He some kind of freak that is both male AND female while NOT having both genders...well.. how many men do you know with vaginas? On the other hand, if you are NOT calling God a freak (ARE you?) then you must mean HE is either male OR female. So if we are made in HIS image, does that mean that men or women were made in HIS image? Does that mean God looks like you or like me? I'm just curious..."
They stared at me for about 15 seconds then continued...
"Did you see that cake recipe in this week's You magazine?" (oh, yes, yes, it looks so divine).
I just sat back with a chuckle and continued listening to the floor...
The first comment on this thread states that simulation theory explains everything... Does that explain how WE look like GOD even though WE don't look like one another? Gender and ethnicity included in that comparison.
Hahaha... those that go with the literal aspect of the bible will argue back with you that he created Adam from his image, and he created Eve from one of Adam's ribs. :P
Not that I believe any of that.
lol, yeah... I tried to find a way to add that to the conversation but I tried to keep that conversation short so as to make it sound like a query, not a theological discussion :P
I am a programmer and pride myself on my sense of logic and analytical thinking. I wanted to mention that all men look like God and women look like men's body parts.... and hear what they have to say about that! :P lol
So many thing I wonder about... How can men and women spend so much effort hiding their bodies from one another if we are all made to look like God anyway? Surely then all men and women look the same right? :D
Let's see what those racists terms are: Black people are just called "black", people from China/Japan/etc are called yellow, the English are called (well in South Africa at least) Red Necks (just realized now that the Americans have a repurposed use for that particular term), I forget what they call Mexicans... anyway, if we literally look like Him (all the billions of faces ignored for the time being) then skin color DEFINITELY has to be an issue... We need to start worrying about if we chose the right religion AND if we are born with the right skin color... lol
How about this:
Everything that happens is His will... even though we have free will (no contradiction there)
So every murder, rape, child molestation, accidental weapon discharge, someone backing a car over a child... In church it's called "God's plan" or "We don't know His plan but He called that person back to Him" ... but when the person is caught then it doesn't matter if it was an accident, drunk driving, free will or whatever, the hardest punishment possible (death if possible) is called "Justice"... and the people pray to God to bestow the justice of killing the person who used his free will to carry out the Will of God in the first place. His free will was still His plan after all...
My programmer mind can't make any sense of faith based (lack of) logic :P
Maybe we are in the Matrix and that part of the code is using GOTO statements where it really shouldn't be using GOTO statements... ever:P
And while we are on the topic of religion AND explaining everything that exists, there is something else that I wondered about for a while now... curious if this could be explained also.
So, was Satan just an angel that God banished to hell because Satan was jealous of Him or was Satan just as powerful as God and got banished to hell because God didn't like the competition? The reason why I ask is because the devil has so many names that I don't see listed in the Bible and can't help but wonder where people keep discovering all these names that are NOT in the book of God... Devil, Satan, Luficer, the morning star, Bealzibub, father of all lies, the unclean, the impure one and everything else you ever heard in any exorcism movie. So much stuff seems to be made up by the Faithful that it's hard to know what is faith and what is fiction...
If there is something bad to be said / to be implied by a name, you can use that as a description of the devil. The stinky one, the unclean. God, on the other hand, He is all that is good and pure and wonderful and marvelous and there is nothing bad that can possibly be said about God... So now the question becomes the following:
Does the Bible omit the part where it reads: "And on the 8th day Satan used his great power to create hell" or does it omit the part where it reads "God then created a pit of eternal suffering and evil and all things wicked and cruel and dastardly and all things so unspeakable that it is unthinkable to the human brain ...and when the devil got jealous of God, God sent the devil to that place which He has already created in all his glorious holiness" ...? Or maybe it reads "Satan was jealous of God so God banished the devil to Hell, a second paradise filled with daisies and rainbows which Satan, using only the power of an angel, turned into such a horrible evil place that the horrors cannot even be conceived of by the human mind... before becoming such a rival to God that all souls ever brought into this world will either return to God or go to this angel who was just as powerful as any other angel when he got banished to the second Eden God named Hell"?
TLDR version of the question:
Did God create Hell and all the evil that existed there before he sent the devil down there or did he "banish" (as in punishment inferred) the devil to a paradise where Satan then, with only the strength of an angel, turned it into such an evil place that all humanity now forever live their lives on a scale to see "Which one of these two beings will get my soul"? How did the devil become so strong that he basically rivals God to the point where all Faithful fear the threat of hell as much as they love the promise of Heaven?
Did God create Hell or did he give Satan the power to do so? Or are all angels as powerful as God? Remember, God is the maker of all things and everything that happens is HIS will... so did he give the devil his power and it was HIS will that hell exists and ruled over by the devil? Or do angels have godlike powers that they get all on their own with God being unable to take it away from them?
Or was hell invented just like the dozens of names the devil has but which are NOT mentioned anywhere in the Word or God? Kinda makes me wonder if the all knowing and infallible God first wrote the Bible then came down to a few scholars to add some notes He forgot to add in the first draft, to be distributed via word of mouth only... and spent a great deal of that time fixing the Bible focused on name calling the devil. Again, is hell something that the Faithful should believe in or is it pure fiction?
Simulation theory answer that! :D
Is that the theory that we are all actually in the Matrix as in for real? That nothing we know is real? Hmmm... and now to go Google it, finally! :)
Spooky.